Monthly Meal Planning - September

I like meal planning.  It gives my type A, list-making personality something to smile about.  I try to help my family stick to a meal plan/meal budget, but we can all do better.  For me, going to the grocery store weekly for a more frequent meal plan is the quick way to financial disaster.  Even at Aldi, there are times when I get out of there $30 over the budget that I came in with.   I got inspired by an awesome woman named Julie (mammaneedsanap) that I follow on Youtube who meal plans by the month, and I am going to give that a go for September. 

Luckily, Corry and I have been stocking up and keeping certain ingredients on hand for months now of foods that we favor, so the shopping trip for this month is not as massive as it would be if we were starting from scratch.  It is not a lie to say that thinking about spending a bulk of our grocery budget in one trip at the beginning of the month is a bit daunting.  I understand that we will still need to shop weekly or so in very small doses for things like milk and our CSA produce, but the vast majority will be purchased in this one day.  I decided to play it safe and stick with mostly meals that we have made before for this first month, however I did throw in a few meals that we have not had previously to test a few new recipes. 

I am not changing the way that I meal plan/build a shopping list/etc; I am just planning for more meals upfront.  I will include recipe links when I have them and will do recipe posts on the ones that I don't have yet.  I will also keep up the practice of not planning a specific meal for a specific day unless we have produce that is going to spoil soon, etc.  We are less likely to stick to a plan, for some reason, if we are "forced" to have a certain food on a certain day. 

Here are our meals for the month:

Salsa Chicken & Spanish Rice x 3
Breakfast Casserole
Grilled Steak & Chicken, grilled sweet corn & fruit salad x 2
Chicken Chili x 2
Spaghetti x 3
Tuna Salad (kids will have something else not decided upon yet) x 2
Baked tacos x 3
Pulled Pork & side dish
Spinach, Alfredo, & turkey pepperoni pizzas
Grilled chicken salads
Sandwich & Homemade Soup (cream of chicken with wild rice & chicken noodle) x 2
Chicken Spaghetti x 2
Red Beans & Rice
BBQ Chicken Sandwiches

I need 28 dinners total for the month of September.  This is technically 25, but I gave us three dinners eating out in case we are out later than expected or feel like a treat.  Most of these recipes are 'diet' and I will include the nutritional info on them in the recipe post if I have it.  If not, I will include the portion(s) that we are having so you can get a general idea.  I need to shop at three different stores to get all of the items that we need - Target, Aldi, and Walmart or Albertsons.  Target's shopping trip was a bit distracted because of diapers, a new skirt for Grace and a few other random items but we did manage to get $10 worth of grocery items.  Aldi was where I spent the bulk of our money and it amounted to $111 and some change, which wasn't bad considering that consisted of a large volume of meat.  I still need a buy 2 items from the list that they don't sell at Aldi and they didn't have for some reason at Target.  All in all, our budget this month for groceries should be less than $200, which is pretty good for a family of five.  Next month that will change because we won't have as many items on hand and we will have a different menu (hopefully).   

Have you ever done a monthly meal plan?  What did or did you not like about it?