Budgeting & Meal Planning

We are needing to get back on a tight budget. Well, we are back on a tight budget, but we are doing even more to help save money, as we want to have this crap paid off ASAP. So we are starting meal planning! Again. We did it for a month or two a while back and loved it, it simplified our lives, made cooking during the week easier, saved money grocery shopping, we wasted less, ate out less... But we stopped for whatever reason, and now we need to start again.

Our budgeting is because we are almost debt free. We have our car to pay off, and one last small loan that we didn't forsee. The loan will take 4 months, and the car will take 24 months after the loan. We can't do things faster because our savings are depleted (I think we have 38¢ in savings right now?) because we wanted to pay off the last of our credit cards & debts. Maybe not our smartest move, but part of the tight budget is putting $200 into savings from each paycheck, which is $400 a month. We will also be putting everything left over at the end of each paycheck into savings, you know, the extra that we leave in the account in case we go over budget for some reason. We want to get $3,000 into savings as quickly as possible, and then pay off debts quickly & put less in savings each month, and once debts are paid off we will keep adding to savings so as to have a safety net of $10,000-$15,000. That is our goal. Our budget does have room for some extra spending because we want to travel while we are still in Europe (we PCS in March and can't let this opportunity pass us by) and our anniversary & my birthday are in September. We are thinking of making a second savings account to put money in each month specifically for travel, that way even that is budgeted... It depends on if the second savings account is free with our bank.

Anyway, so we made this week's meal plan, and will start on next week's tomorrow. In the mean time, I made a quick off-the-top-of-my-head list of meals we like to make it easier to think of things to make when setting up each week's plan. Not all of these things are meals by themselves, but main courses or sides, which still makes planning easier for me. Here goes:

• Grilled cheese sandwiches & tomato soup
• Falafels, tabouli, and cucumber yogurt sauce (aka homemade tzaziki)
• Pasta salad
• Rice & beans (Gallo Pinto)
• Baked Mac n Cheese
• Beef in beer with herbed dumplings
• French onion soup
• Ratatouille
• Philly cheese steaks
• Sandwiches (deli meat, cheese, tomato, lettuce, cucumber, etc)
• Salads (salad w/ fruit, Greek salad, etc)
• Fruit salad & biscuits
• Filet mignon
• Green beans & mashed potatoes (sides)
• Soups (vegetable, beef & vegetables, chicken & vegetable, chicken & noodle, etc) (crock pot!)
• Chicken pot pie (crock pot!)
• Lebanese chicken & rice
• Lentils & rice
• Homemade pizza
• Homemade calzones
• Sourdough bread (side, bread, just need to make it!)
• Stir fry
• Curry
• Arroz con Pollo (chicken & rice, Costa Rican style)
• Picadillo (side) (really finely chopped green beans, chayote, shredded carrot)
• Salsa fresca (side)
• Hummus (side)
• Enchiladas

Any other suggestions, friends? We are looking for good crock pot meals, they just take some finding. We made beef braised in wine in the crock pot today, but it wasn't as good as we had hoped, so it's not making the list of "make again" meals.