Who loves a good plan for the week? I personally love knowing the answer to “What’s for Dinner?”!
I think we all know that cooking at home saves money and is generally more nutritious than eating out every night. Our family of 6 that includes teens, tweens and adult-ish children can easily spend $90 on a simple dinner out!
This week I’m going to share my menu for the week. This includes 5 dinners. I wish I could say that I’d make 7, but inevitably “life” will happen one night and Pizza the on the other. I’ve made peace with that.
This week’s menu is compliments of the gals at Our Best Bites. Their blog and cookbooks having been my saving grace for many years now. Prior to finding them, my meals usually consisted of a protein and a sauce simmering in a crockpot all day. They have fantastic cook books. Here’s a link to their first book! It’s one of my very favorite Click on the book below for more details!
I can’t begin to recommend them enough! Dinner is fun and family-friendly without me needing to over think things!
Here’s what’s for dinner this week.
Monday: Guiltless alfredo penne with Caesar salad
Tuesday: Asian Beef Lettuce Wraps
Wednesday: Chicken Enchilada Soup
Thursday: Spicy Honey Chicken with steamed rice and roasted broccoli
Friday: Stovetop Chili Mac 
The ingredients for these 5 meals will cost less than one meal out at a sit down restaurant with the family. Additionally, there will be leftover ingredients from the grocery purchase that I can use on future meals!
Want to hear one hack that saves me hundreds of dollars per year on my dinner groceries alone? Ready?
I buy store brand ingredients whenever possible.
To prove this, I grocery shopped the above menu at Walmart, a store that much of America has access to.
Now, many items like onions, peppers and much of the meat was not branded. Those items did not factor in.
Likewise, I did not factor in things like rice, salt, olive oil etc that you probably have on hand.
I DID include everything else. All the veggies, meats, dairy items and so on.
I swapped out for “Like” items. For example, Great Value broth is compared to Swanson, not a bougie organic bone broth. I wanted items to be comparable products.
Around 25-30% of the menu had items that could be swapped out. Barilla was replaced with Great Value penne. Bush’s pinto beans could be swapped out for Great Value’s pinto beans and so on.
The total for 5 dinners this week using name brand products was $76.44. The total with store brand: $64.63!
$11.81 might not sound like a lot. However, remember that all the rest of our groceries are not calculated into this total. Also, remember that there are 52 weeks in a year.
Over the course of a year, this savings equals $598.52!!!!! What could you do with nearly $600 extra dollars?
If you took this money every week and put it into a travel fund, you could EASILY pay for 2 or 3 flights within the continental US, depending upon your destination.
Or pay to stay at a Hyatt Place for several days! This includes daily breakfast!
You could purchase a couple of multi-day passes to Universal Orlando.
You could rent a mini van in Hawaii for a week.
You could purchase 3 day Go City passes for 3 people.
My bigger family could eat out on vacation for probably 6 nights at a moderately priced sit down.
$600 extra cash really is quite a lot.
Are there times when I buy name brand? Yes, I will own it. I love Tillamook cheese and sometimes it calls to me. A lot of soup recipes this time of year call for V8. I know my husband will drink the leftover juice if I buy the jug of V8 versus the can of Great Value Tomato Juice.
Where are the biggest savings found? Dairy is a biggie! The Philadelphia low fat cream cheese cost $1.96 vs Great Value’s at .84 cents! Borden whipping cream will run you $4.18 for a pint vs. Great Value’s at $2.34! The savings here are substantial. Watch your dairy purchases closely. Store brand purchases in this area will run you 50% savings or more!
Additionally, store brand tomato product offerings were much less! Most name brands of tomato paste run 12.2 cents per ounce. Great Value ran 7.7 cents per oz. Pasta is cheap, but $1.28 for a box of penne is quite a bit more than .82 over the long haul.
Tell me, is this a hack you already subscribe to? If not, try it and get back to me on how much you save.