Whenever families tell me they have no room to cut anything from their budget, I ask them to focus on their food spending. Why? Because it is the third-largest expense category in the average family budget, representing 10-12% of income, and the largest variable category that you can most immediately change and control. The fastest way to reign it in?

Eat more at home and meal plan. These meal plan ideas will help you get started...

Plan Meals to Save Money

Coming up with what to eat every night can be exhausting. We've all been in those ruts. We let food go to waste because take-out is easier, and end up spending 3x times as much - food we bought to cook ends up in the garbage and eating out is double the cost of cooking at home.

So, a while back, I started sharing what I made for dinner every night in my Instagram stories to give all of you some meal plan ideas. More and more of you started asking me if I had these recipes saved somewhere - and until now - I didn't, other than in my highlights.

Full disclaimer - I am not a food blogger. These aren't picture perfect, and recipes are not always perfectly measured. But they are all real meals I manage to pull off on weeknights with 3 kids.

Here's to making your first meal plan and saving you money!