Have you been sitting on the fence when it comes to creating a weekly meal plan?

You may have heard some good arguments, but you’re still not 100% convinced…

Well, now’s the time to take note, and take action!

In this post, I offer some good reasons as to why creating a weekly meal plan, be it breakfast, lunch, or dinner, can help you make the most of your time and energy.

If you’re looking for some step-by-step meal planning help, be sure to check out my post, How to Create a Weekly Meal Plan.

You can stay within your budget.

Having a weekly meal plan in place can help you keep stick to your budget.

Preparing meals at home is much, much cheaper than take out, or eating out at a restaurant.

What’s more, you can even set a budget for the individual meals you prepare. 

For example, you could balance more expensive meal ingredients, such as meat, with less expensive ingredients such as pasta, or beans.

You can then rotate those meals as desired, throughout the week.

You’ll be more productive.

Just think of all the time it takes to figure out a meal on the fly, and multiply it by seven. You’ll open pantry doors, the doors to the fridge and freezer, and then begin that some process the very next day…. Not a pretty picture, huh?

Doing your planning in one session makes the whole process go smoother. It’s one trip each to your pantry, fridge, and freezer. You can use all that extra time you’d spend staring into the refrigerator to do something else.

You can delegate meal preparations to others.

Once you have a meal plan in place, you can easily share it with other people in your household. This is perfect for those times when people are wondering, “What’s for dinner?”

Those who are home, such as older children, or babysitters, can get the dinner preparations started, or take the lead and prepare the meal themselves. It’s just another way to help spread the load in a household and make it run more efficiently.

You’ll make the most of your shopping trips.

Going grocery shopping without a plan can be a sticky situation. You may end up buying items you don’t really need or want.

Having a meal plan in hand makes it much easier to do your shopping. You’ll know exactly what you need to purchase for a particular meal, no guesswork needed! You might even finish your shopping sooner, rather than later.

You’ll have one less thing to worry about during the week.

If you dislike coming up with dinner ideas every single night of the week, meal planning may be a good choice for you. Sure, you’ll still have to do meal planning, but it will be only one time during the week, and that’s that!

With practice, putting together meals will become second nature, plus, you’ll have a whole batch of weekly plans you can use over, and over again.

How about you? Have you been thinking about creating a weekly plan? Are you going to do so, or not? What’s holding you back? Join the conversation and leave a comment below!