Earlier this week I went food shopping. Since I’ve been making an effort to meal plan for my family, four things have begun to occur before I head out to the store.

1. I keep a grocery list on the refrigerator. On it I write the items we’ve just run out of and need to replace. I encourage my family members to add to the list as necessary.

2. Each week I write out our meal-planning menu–nothing fancy, just a list of things we could have for dinner.

3. On Wednesday when the supermarket circular arrives in the mail, I go through it and compare it with my grocery list. If there are items that are on sale–like last week’s drumsticks for $.99 a pound–I plan to stock up by stocking my freezer.

4. Before heading out the door to the supermarket, I pull out all of the coupons from the past Sunday’s paper–and any others I’ve been stockpiling–and compare them with not only my grocery shopping list but also with what is available on sale at the supermarket that day.

Then, I grab my reusable shopping bags, a clickable pen (so I can click it on at the store when I need to cross something off the list and then click it off when I’m done, so I don’t risk drawing on myself–one of my hazards) and I’m off.

Yesterday’s food shopping was a record-setting event–for two reasons. First, I was in and out of the store in less than an hour, and I was there to do a full food shopping. And second, I got out of the store with spending $128.00 only.

For the longest time I was averaging, at the very minimum, $180 a week for groceries. More often it was closer to $200 or $225, which meant that we were spending more than $800 a month on groceries. I knew that if I did a better job with planning, I could bring that number down. And it looks like in November, I will have succeeded.

Not only has meal planning helped, but so has the notion of buying packaged items when they’re on sale and when I have a coupon only.

Case in point: yesterday I stocked up on crescent rolls. We use them for a makeshift version of pain au chocolat, if I’m making a breakfast pizza for dinner, or if we just want to have dinner rolls with our meal. This week my store had both the Pillsbury version of crescent rolls on sale along with the store-brand version. But I had a coupon for the Pillsbury brand, which when doubled would give me $.70 off the purchase. I did some quick math in the refrigerator aisle and figured out that while the store-brand version, on sale, was $1.50 per package, with my coupon and the sale price combined, the Pillsbury version was $1.43 per package. I’m sure you can guess which brand I purchased.

Additionally, because I’d been stocking up on meat products when they were on sale (such as the aforementioned drumsticks), I didn’t need to buy any meat this week. And considering none of the meat that my kids like was on sale, that added up to a huge savings.

Finally, someone had once suggested to me that I try to skip a week of grocery shopping to cut down on my grocery shopping bills. At first I thought this idea was ridiculous, because I figured that the week I went back to the store, I’d spend twice as much. I soon learned otherwise.

Here’s how November has played out so far:

Week 1: Skipped a full grocery shopping but needed just a few things to pad the cabinet. Spent $14.
Week 2: Back to full grocery shopping; spent $236
Week 3 (this week): Full grocery shopping based on what we needed; spent $128.

This adds up to $378 spent on groceries so far this month.

Next week is Thanksgiving, and I’m not hosting it, so I will likely be able to get away with a minimal grocery shopping again. So if I’ve figured things right, we might be able to keep our grocery expenses below $500 this month. That would be amazing considering how much I used to spend on groceries. Plus, because of my commitment to meal planning, we have been able to sit down and enjoy dinner together nearly every night this month–save for evenings when the kids need to go to soccer or basketball practice. But soccer ends this week, meaning we can enjoy more dinners together without rushing around.

That’s why this week I’m giving the Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval to meal planning. Without it I wouldn’t have been so successful in making feeding my family as frugal as possible.

How about you? How has meal planning helped your bottom line?