Here are some tips for keeping your family fed without breaking the bank:

Preplan Your Menu

If you can get into the habit of sitting down on a weekly or monthly basis to preplan your meals, you’ll likely find you can save a lot of cash starting right away. Your menu planning will not reduce the cost of groceries but will organize your grocery list so you can and do spend less. There is an unlimited amount of free recipes online and on television so you can keep meals from getting boring.

Plan for Sales

When you complete your family menu, use it to make a list of all the ingredients needed to go into each dish for the week. This list will become your shopping list at the store. Rather than run to the usual grocery store, take the time to review sales fliers to find out where the deals are. By utilizing the planned menu as a shopping list, you will be more effective at clipping and using coupons to save even more.

Buy Fresh Weekly

In order to avoid wasted food, shop for fresh ingredients once a week. Nonperishable foods and items like paper products can be purchased on a monthly basis or when sales are worthwhile. Remember that may fresh products can be safely frozen such as green peppers and onions and are handy to grab when you want to spice up your meal. Invest in reusable bags and containers to keep food safe from freezer burn.

Use Versatile Ingredients

As you continue planning meals, you’ll begin to build a nice supply of staples which you will only need to replenish once in a while. You should focus on using recipes with versatile ingredients like chicken breasts, ground beef or turkey, and other food items compatible with many different kinds of recipes.

Many families fail at meal time planning because they feel there is not enough time in their busy schedule. But if you can take an hour at night or a few hours on the weekend to prepare several meals in advance, families are more likely to spend time at the family table than in pricey restaurants or the unhealthy fast food drive-through.

Cheap Ways to Feed a Family of 4 was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

The Keys To the Kingdom
Financial experts will tell you over and over that the key to start the engine of turning around your debt situation is budgeting. With budgeting, there is no one-size fits all solution for everyone. A budget can only be based on individual finances and as the master of your own finances, you alone need to resolve to commit to a budgeting system. Until you know where your money is going and just how much of it you can spend, you will never see the light at the end of the financial tunnel. Taking back control of your finances is a feeling like no other after struggling through the overwhelming fears of debt. Knowing where your next dollar earned is going is just as important as knowing where your next meal is coming from for your family. Being in control of your money means that your money is no longer controlling you. That freedom can be a motivating factor to get out of debt faster and more efficiently than you ever thought possible.

Setting Yourself Up for Failure
A budgeting system will undoubtedly fail if you and your partner can not commit to it fully and for the long term. Many will try to work the numbers according to someone else’s system and then give up for good when the system ultimately fails them. A budgeting system should be flexible and make sense to you or you can never expect to live by it long term. Trying one that fails should not be the end of the line or a reason to going back to your old money ways. Like many things in life, you need to try and try again until you find one that suits your finances and your lifestyle. While you may get advice from a third-party counselor, it will ultimately lie on your shoulders to follow through.

Make It Your Own
If you don’t know where to start on your budgeting plan, it’s okay to look around at other people’s ideas and advice but overall you need to learn to make it your own and develop it as you see fit. You also need to have a clear understanding of what is going on within your budget in order to make it stick. After years of writing about personal finance matters, I have just come to find a completely made up system that allows me to see at a glance what my financial responsibilities are each week and how much cash I have access to at any given time. This method works great for my husband and I who have in the past created and subsequently ignored numerous concepts that just didn’t work for us. Now we live virtually debt free and never worry about overspending or not putting money towards our savings goals. What a relief to have the knowledge we have taken care of our money matters and will likely not have to live in fear of debt down the road

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If you come from a family of spenders, it is likely that you too are a spender with very different perspectives than that of a saver. You may hold to the thinking that you are living for today and since you can’t take it with you, you might as well spend it. Savers, on the other hand, believe that everyone should be saving for the future, for unexpected events, or just to keep the stress of finances from taking over your life.

• Your perspective of money can certainly be affected by what you learned as a child and beyond. It now is up to you to change your mindset and move forward in a more money-savvy fashion. Like with anything, you need to want to change and not do it for any other reason. Start reading up on tips for better money management and begin to incorporate small habits or change of habits into your every day life, one step at a time. Trying to do an entire overhaul in one day will be just too overwhelming.

• Start changing your mindset about buying. Recognize the vast difference between your wants and needs. Think about how saving the money you want to spend will add up and allow you to do other things, such as taking a vacation or just having the reassurance that your financial concerns will be alleviated.

• Start small and tuck away a few dollars in the beginning to get into the habit of saving. Once you begin to see the money add up into a nice chunk of change, your motivation levels will likely rise naturally and inspire you to do more savings.

• Analyze your current expenses and cut out what is wants versus needs. Tuck that money into an interest-earning account. You will soon understand that you can make small sacrifices but achieve great rewards.

• Get out of your comfort zone. While you might have grown up with parents who seemed to easily ignore those calls from collection agencies, understand that it probably wasn’t the case. Your parents probably stressed over money way more than they let on to their children. Don’t avoid the phone calls and get a handle on where your credit stands. Avoidance only makes the situation worse.

• Stop placing blame on your teachers. Just because mom and dad were not great at managing their money or saving for a rainy day, doesn’t mean you can not change tradition and make your finances more manageable.

• Teach your own children how to budget money and help them to understand the real value of money and money management. You of all people should know who hard it was to change your ways, so start your kids off on the right financial foot. Don’t hid financial information from your children that pertains to the family. Get the kids involved in creating and abiding by a family budget. Your children will learn the most financial lessons from their own household.

• On the reverse side of this advice, never manage your money using methods you do not understand, Your money management methods need to work for you and your family. Do not do things just because other people think you should. No one method will work for every person.

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As more families are creating and abiding by budgets, kids may feel a bit anxious or resentful about not being able to get the things they want – or at least feel they should have. One of the important ways to bridge this emotional gap with kids is to discuss it and work out a budgeting plan that allows kids to take part in the responsibilities of family finances. Clothing is just one example of things kids will ask for but since it is also a basic necessity, we will use clothing as our example.

Create a Kid Budget
Even though the family as a whole works on an established budget, there is no reason you can not establish a budget within a budget and teach your children the real value of money. Setting a budget limit for each month will help your child understand that they need to take time to think about what they need and control their impulse buys at a young age – or they will end up having to go without.

Decide on Money Earning Opportunities
By simply giving a child money to use with their budget, you will miss a key learning experience about the real value of money. Instead, use the experience to get your child used to earning their own money. Even 5 year olds can earn money by working around the house, doing simple chores such as folding washclothes or dusting the tables. The older the child, the more responsibilities, the more money you pay.

Teach Smart Shopping
Once your budget has been created and the income potential has been established, it is time to take it one step further and teach your child how to spend their hard-earned money wisely. Help them to identify what items they want and then work with them to find the best prices. Use store fliers or the internet price comparison sites. Let them know that just because one store has a certain price tag, doesn’t mean another store will have a better deal. Kids will likely enjoy learning about shopping and most importantly, they will enjoy the time they are spending with you.

Teach Money Management
just because you set your kids up with a budget, make sure you continue to work with them until they can understand how to manage their money. You want to make sure they understand thinking ahead about what they will need to make sure they can afford it all. You want them to understand that blowing all of their cash on that cool pair of sneakers will leave no money for their new jeans for the school dance.

Provide Incentives
Kids who pay attention to your money lessons and who learn to follow their budget can be rewarded with a little something extra from mom and dad. Maybe your child has been wanting that new jacket at the mall and have been working to save up. As a bonus, you can kick in what you can afford to help their savings progress. This teaches kids that with dedication and hard work, bonuses do come.

Relax on Your Opinions
Kids love to express themselves and generally fashion is their mode for self-expression. When you give your child responsibility for saving for and buying their own clothing, you, as a parent , need to relinquish some of your own control and allow your child to buy what they want to buy. Chose your battles wisely if you disapprove with some of the purchases. Children need to make some mistakes to keep learning lessons about money and life in general.

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