A frugal weekly meal plan outlines three inexpensive meals a day for a week that are followed when shopping and preparing the meals. The meal plan may be reused from week to week by replacing particular meals. Multiple frugal weekly meal plans can be consolidated to make a frugal monthly meal plan.

Frugal weekly meal plans may be written on a calendar, maintained in a journal with a page dedicated to each day, recorded in a computer program or maintained on a smartphone. Some people develop their own frugal meal plans and others utilize published meal plans found in magazines or on internet websites. Some families use meal planning software such as Shop’N Cook Menu or Meals Matter to generate frugal weekly meal plans. http://www.shopncook.com/menu.html http://www.mealsmatter.org/MealPlanning/index.aspx

Frugal meal plans generally make use of leftovers either as a second meal of the same food, or a different meal created from the leftover item. They rely more on grains and legumes which may be available at lower costs than meats. Frugal weekly meal plans take advantage of bulk purchases of sale items either by incorporating multiple meals using the same food or by utilizing bulk items frozen when purchased. The meal plan may include a grocery list to be used for shopping for the week’s needed items.