It has almost been a year since I signed up for E-Mealz. E-Mealz provides a weekly dinner menu along with a shopping list. They claim that their dinner menu costs you about $70 at the grocery store. Basically what they help you do is plan. I still would have to plan for breakfast, lunch, and snacks but dinner would be taken care.
See, I was feeling like I was in a rut. Making the same thing for dinner. When I would venture out I was literally spending hours scouring the cookbooks and making my list. Guess what? I don't have hours. I also felt like I could do it for less, $70 just for dinner was too much. I am frugal. I am a stay at home mom by choice. Which means we sacrifice things. I have strived to keep our monthly food budget at $300 a month for our family of 5. This has gotten harder since the kids have gotten bigger, but I don't splurge on things. Snack around here is popcorn, usually the old fashion kind that you must cook on the stove, and some fruit or a veggie, sometimes they get yogurt. After my kids visit their friends homes, they come back and let me know how deprived that they are. :)
After using this new plan, my grocery bill has been about $125 a week. That is ALOT for us! My goal is to get that down but for now that is what it is.
Lately I have been debating wether or not to keep using E-Meals. I have absolutely loved it and it truly has saved me time, effort, and energy. The question was, am I really saving money? Could I cut that out of my budget and save more myself? So this week I thought I would just shop for the dinner menu and see if in fact I was spending the ballpark figure of $70 for dinner items.
We just got a Fresh and Easy in town and I really like it! I usually do my shopping at Winco but this time I decided that I would go to Fresh and Easy. All total I spent $62.00. I did use one $6.00 coupon and I did get some apple turnovers that were not on the list. That was for 7 dinners. After doing this little experiment I have decided to stick with E-Mealz. Although it cost me a little more, the time saver of what it does for me is too much to give up. It's also nice that we are trying new meals and I don't even have to do the work to find them.
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