I remember when my husband and I were first married. I tried so hard to enjoy meal planning. I spent hours writing out menu plans and filling a folder full of cute little meal planning calendars, creative ideas clipped from magazines and a whole lot of other organizational tools intended to motivate me to become the meal planning guru I thought I should be.
Then came 2008 – that was the year I was expecting our second son and it was also the year that my husband was suddenly laid off.
Suddenly saving money on groceries and meal planning was less about being super-mom and more about surviving our lack of income.
That was also the year that I bought my first eMeals subscription.
If the fact that I started paying for a meal plan after my husband lost his job seems backward to you, I understand. But may I remind you of the old adage – “Time is money”?
It’s true, you know.
I’ve been an eMeals subscriber for almost four years now. That’s hundreds of hours I haven’t spent meal planning, grocery-list making, and scouring Pinterest for ideas on how to spend less time meal planning and grocery-list making.
It’s also hundreds of hours I have spent finding other ways to save money – couponing, deal-hunting, freebie-finding, and earning extra cash online. By trading the time spent on meal planning for time spent saving my family money in other ways, I can only guess that I’ve save thousands of dollar since I started paying $5 per month on eMeals. Talk about your return on investment!
And now that I am an even busier Mom of three boys, saving time has become an even greater priority for me. Not to mention, finding a plan that fits my family.
eMeals continues to come to the rescue with the addition of the eMeals app (which saves even MORE time!), Breakfast and Lunch Meal Plan options and a whole slew of family and budget-friendly menu plans such as:
- 30 Minute Meal Plan
- Slow Cooker
- Low Carb
- Kid Friendly *NEW*
- Gluten Free
- Paleo
- Natural & Organic
…and so much more. Not to mention, many of these meal plans are created around the weekly sales at stores like ALDI, Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, Target and more.
Sign me up for the eMeals lifetime subscription please.
Tired of menu planning stress and dinnertime insanity? Right now you can sign up for a FREE 2 week trial of eMeals. This is a fantastic way to find out if eMeals is right for you. If you decide it isn’t, just cancel before the 2 week period has ended with no obligations!
Click here to select a menu plan that fits your family.
Learn more about eMeals here.
A few questions:
If a meal hits it big with the family, can you somehow mark it and get it into a frequent rotation?
Are you constantly making new dishes?
Are leftovers planned into the week?
And finally, what about meals you currently make…can those be entered into your personal info and used in your own meal plans?
Sorry for so many questions, but this is a timely post. And your introduction sounds SO much like me….trying so hard to like meal planning. Time is money, and so is money. And when I fail to meal plan, we also eat out more. That DOES cost!! I will be presenting this idea to hubby. 🙂 Thanks.
Good questions, Jen. 🙂 There isn’t a way to personalize meal plans, but you can save all of your plans if you’d like to make a binder or a file on your computer with your family favorites. What I typically do is use one meal plan for two weeks and supplement it with my family favorite meals and any easy recipes I like to throw in. Each meal plan offers 7 days of recipes, but I typically find a couple of recipes that my family won’t like as much and don’t purchase the ingredients for those meals (which is easy to do). I find that some recipes show back up from time to time, but for the most part, the recipes are new each week. Again – this is where a binder with your family favorites would be helpful. 🙂
Hope that helps!
It seems you’ve saved a ton of time using emeals, but how have you saved money? Where is the $1000s in savings coming from?
Hi, Catie! Sorry for the confusion! I am a huge believer in the adage that Time is Money. Over the years since I started using eMeals, it has freed up hours and hours for me to save money in other ways – like couponing, finding freebies and deals online, earning extra cash online and more. So what I mean to say is that I traded the time I used to spend on meal planning for time spent finding other ways to save money. Does that help?