how to make a meal plan and groceries list

I must admit to being a bit supprised when I found out that some people don't make meal plans. After all how do you know what to buy if you haven't planned what you're going to eat? Then I started to look at some of the tools that are out to help make a meal plan and I was amazed. With fancy fonts and charts they made the whole thing seem complicated, when it doesn't have to be.

1. On the top of a blank piece of paper write down the days of the week.

2. Look at your schedule for the next week and decide what you are going to eat for supper over the next 7 days. Be logical. Chose easy meals or leftovers for days where you won't have much time at home and leave more elaborate meals for leisurely evenings.

3. Write down what meals you have decided on.

4. Go down the list of meals and see what ingredients are needed for each meal. Check and see if you have each of these ingrdients. If you do not write them on the bottom of the piece of paper.

5. Take a tally of what you normally eat for breakfast, lunch and snacks and make sure that you have the makings. If you don't add them to the list. (In my house this is easy because breakfast is the same every day, lunch is the leftovers from the night before and snacks are almost always fruit.)

6. Make sure you have enough of your beverage of choice. (MILK!) Add to the list if needed.

7. Decide if you will be doing any special baking over the next 7 days and if yes make sure you have the ingredients, if not add them to the list.

TADA! You're done, no one died and with a bit of practice should be able to do this in 10 min or less. You no longer order take out or buy frozen or canned dinners. You don't end up throwing stuff out that never got used.

Essentially I've changed the way that you look at grocery shopping for the rest of your life.

Needs and Wants

One of the first things that we are (hopefully) taught as children when it comes to money is the difference between a need and a want.  Unfortunately, while it is very easy to point out a "want" to a child, that new toy or an ice cream, needs are a bit more difficult which leads to a bit of a grey area.

So I divide the idea of needs into primary and secondary needs.

Primary needs are what you need to live.  Missing them tends to lead to a deterioration of health and then death.  They are found on the bottom two tiers in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  You need water, food, air, shelter and access to appropriate medical care.  Food does not mean caviar, it means basic nutrients that  your body needs to survive.  It doesn't even means variety in the food you eat, just that you can eat.  Shelter doesn't mean owning a home.  In certain cases a tent might suffice, or an apartment shared with a friend.  Just something to protect you from the elements.  Clothes would fit in here only as much as was needed to keep you healthy.  You don't need a $1,000 coat, you need one that will keep you warm when it snows.

Secondary needs are what you need to get and keep a job that will provide the resources for your primary needs.  This means appropriate clothing for your job (office ware for sales men, scrubs for nurses and steel toed boots for construction workers.)  A cheap cell phone (pay as you go) so that you have contact info for your resume may be a need.  Other misc. needs may include fees for a professional college or materials you are expected to provide yourselves. A car is only included if your job includes moving yourself and materials a considerable distance, such as a truck driver or a home health care nurse.

Everything else that you spend money on is a want.  I doesn't make it bad, it just means you don't need it.

Reader Question - My Financial Road

I got an interesting question this week.  

"How did you get started on your financial road? I am 51 and wanting to get things in order. "
-Anonymous

It's interesting because it's complex.  How much of my success do I chalk up to my personality, to my child hood or my planning as a young adult.  There are many, many reasons why I am in such as comfortable financial position so I've decided to whittle it down to what are (likely) the three most important factors.  

1. I was able to earn and manage money at a young age.  I learned it's value by working for it and then using it to buy what I wanted.  I also learned the importance of saving and giving it away.  You can check out detailed posts on how talking to kids about money is important, learning to handle money as a kid, and making money mistakes early on.  

2. I always lived on less than I earned.  When I started earning money as a young child 40% went to savings and 10% went to charity.  I only spent half of it.  When I earned money lifeguarding as a teenager every penny was saved.  Working for minimum wage over my university years I lived on 50% or less of what I took home and invested the rest.  Currently I live on 48% of my income and the rest either gets tucked into my RRSP or goes to building equity in my house by paying down my mortgage faster.  This may be a difficult idea for somebody who is use to living off 90% of their income, but try deflating your lifestyle a bit.  I am willing to bet that you lived on a lot less than you do now 10 - 20 years ago.  I am also willing to bet that you were just as happy 10 - 20 years ago as you are now.  So start moving back to your old spending habits.  

3. I know what I want and I plan for it.  Even though I'm not sure what my life will look like when I retire I know how much I'll need to maintain my current lifestyle and I'm working towards it.  I planed and researched my investment strategy in detail over a couple of years.  I also planned for the purchase of my house and saved for it for four years.  At all these points I knew what I wanted, where I was, and I made a detailed plan to cover the distance.  

Have a question?  I'd love to hear it!

Strong Financial Learning

If someone were to ask for one piece of advice, and only one, when it came to learning about finances my advice would be as follows:

One third of your reading material should be information you agree with, one third you should disagree with, and one third should cover topics that you hadn't really thought about.

Actually this advice pretty much sums up what I would tell you if you wanted to learn about anything.  (For those who are less old fashioned than me, substitute reading for podcast/video documentaries etc.)

The first third is fairly easy.  This material will enhance your general knowledge on a subject, they will supply new ideas and variations on tactics that you may not have though of before.  On top of that you will have the pleasant experience of patting yourself on the back every so often as you confirm that what you are doing is perfectly correct.  Myself I have a number of blogs, whose philosophy I generally agree with, that I follow on a daily basis.

The second third is the hardest.  People generally don't want to believe that they are wrong in any way shape or form.  However, it is essential to becoming well rounded on a subject that you read disagreeing material (and not so that you can go to the comments section and insult a person's intelligence.)  Think critically about what you read is it possible that they have a point?  Can you form a well founded counter argument using logic and scientific data?  Is it possible that the other person's solution works for some situations but not yours?  I have a couple of blogs that I read with whom I am not in complete agreement (actually some are quite insulting in tone).  However this forces me to think about the issue being discussed from another vantage point.

Finally the third third is a bit ambiguous.  It is somewhat hard to read on a subject that you have never, in your whole life, had a single thought about.  Rather see this as a challenge to look for topics that are related to your primary topic but branch out.  For example I have long been passionate about personal finances but have just recently begun looking at literature on macroeconomics as they shape and are shaped by culture.

Without all three components you will have difficulty mastering any subject.

Have a question?  I'd love to hear it!

Book - Money-Smart Kid$

I recently had the chance to read Money-Smart Kid$ by Gail Vaz-Oxlade.  (I'm a huge fan of hers by the way.)  It was quite an interesting read.  I have to say that she certainly knows how to bring finances to a kid's level.

The book is all about teaching parents how to teach their kids good money management.  She encourages parents to have their kids split their money into groups, spend, save, and give (to charity).  This introduces fundamental lessons early on.  As kids get older (and hopefully more responsible) she suggest giving them access to more financial resources, such as handing over control of their yearly clothing budget.  They'll either learn to spend it as they need it and save for the big items (like prom clothes) or spend part of the year wearing what was "cool" last season.

She even explains how to introduce concepts such as credit cards and borrowing before they are out in the real world with big and painful consequences.  I love the way that she suggests to open the bank of Mom and Dad for credit.  Let your kids spend when they are with you using their homemade "credit card" (obviously you pay the store with real money) and then the parents present the kids with their bill monthly.  True to real life if the total balance (which should be reasonably capped) isn't paid off each month interest starts to accumulate.  If they continue to fall behind on payments you have the option of foreclosing on what ever they decide to use as collateral (new MP3 player perhaps?) and of course if they ruin their credit history with you they eventually won't get any more loans from you.  Better they learn the painful lessons at home rather then out in the big bad world where they can cause permanent damage to their financial future.

The only bone of contention I have with her suggestions is the idea of an allowance.  I understand that kids need access to money so that they can learn to use it properly but I would worry that just handing over a certain sum every week would not teach them the value.  I earned money as a child by reading books and writing reports on them.  (See this post.)  I think that it was a fair way to earn money, I could earn as much or as little as I wanted, and I knew how hard it was to get.  For families not as book oriented as my own I'm to sure what to suggest.  Everyday chores (like making your bed or cleaning up the kitchen) should not, in my opinion, be paid for.  (You help get it dirty, you help clean it up.)  but being paid for jobs above and beyond normal chores is an option.

All in all I think this is a great read and would recommend it to any parent.  Though I would recommend your kids earn their money I think that you will find plenty of valuable advice in this book on how to introduce your kids to the reality of money.

Cheers to an Influential Teacher

I have been extremely lucky during my academic career.  I have had some of the best teachers on the face of the planet and many of them have made the subject that they teach a life long passion of mine.  There is one teacher, in particular, who stands out in my mind while I write this blog.  (For obvious reasons his name and school will not be disclosed.) 

My 11^th grade math teacher was one of the coolest guys I have ever met.  Funny and engaging, he never failed to put an interesting spin on what we learned, and he was always willing to talk to students about what interested us.  He was laid back enough that every one was comfortable with him, yet I never once saw him yield control of the class to unruly students. 

He is the teacher who introduced me (and the entire class) to a book called “The Wealthy Barber.”  A couple of the chapters were required reading, and he encouraged us to read the whole book.  I did and fell in love with the subject of personal finances. 

I’m not sure what the curriculum required him to teach us about finances (if anything at all), but I am sure that he took it a step further.  We calculated simple and compound interest and applied it to real life situations such as car loans and mortgages.  He taught us to use our graphing calculators to figure out the cost of saving for retirement (putting off saving for 10 years will cost me HOW much?) and how to calculate interest on a loan (what do you mean a mortgage is going to cost me $80,000 in interest?) 

The subjects that he chose to teach us, as well as the links that he made to everyday life, have had a huge impact on how I deal with my finances.  Because of his lessons, I have never carried consumer debt and my mortgage will be gone in a 6^th of the time my bank expects.  Since 16 years old, I have saved religiously for university, a house, and my retirement. 

Coming from one of the neatest teachers in the school, these lessons held so much more weight then they would have coming from my parents.  So thank you for your lessons, they have made my life all the easier.  

Kids and Earning Money (I need a moose!)

 Kids need money when they are young.  Yes I mean need money; I don’t consider it a childhood luxury.  Rather money at a young age is an essential tool for kids to learn its value and how to manage it.  This in turn allows them to put a value on the physical things that surround them.  As children, my siblings and I had a reading contract with my parents.  I detailed how this worked in “Best $50 I ever spent,” to say the least we worked hard for our cash. 

One of the things that my siblings and I spent most of our cash on was ice cream.  To spare us the gouging and highly inflated prices charged by the ice cream truck, my mother would buy boxes of popsicles from the store and charge us the per unit price (including tax) when we wanted our afternoon treat. 

One day when we were being babysat by a couple of teenage brothers, my mother gave them permission to give us ice cream without collecting the regular fee.  She neglected to inform us of this temporary change, so when the babysitters gave my little sister an ice cream, she refused saying “I don’t have a moose!”  The babysitters were bewildered as too why my sister wanted a moose before having an ice cream, but they continued to offer it too her.  She became more and more upset insisting that she didn’t have a moose and until she had a moose she wasn’t allowed to eat the ice cream.  The younger brother eventually clued in and realized that she was saying that she needed a quarter (which has the engraved picture of a moose) to pay for her ice cream.  With this understood, they were able to reassure her that Mom had told them that she didn’t have to pay today, (meanwhile my brother and I felt no qualms about taking advantage of what we thought was a lapse in our babysitters’ judgment.) 

That said, at a young age earning money, having it, and spending it on what we wanted taught us the value of money.  We knew that for the better tasting ice cream we had to work more for and if we spent all of our money then there would be nothing left for our afternoon treats.  (We probably drove the electrical bill up quite a bit hanging over the edge of the freezer debating the pros and cons of flavor and price.)  Just as important we also learned that we were not entitled to things we had yet to earn.  

Talking Money

One of the family stories that is often retold in my family occurred shortly after my younger sister (the youngest of three) started school and my mother went to work for a safety planning company.  One night my mother brought home some documents to read and was working her way through them when my sister went by.  Being a curious soul my sister asked “What are you doing mommy?”  Instead of my mother cutting the answer short with something simple such as “reading,” my mom took the time to explain about her job, that she was being paid to do this reading, and that she was paid by the hour.  At the end of the conversation my sister looked at my mother solemnly and said “well mommy, if you read slower then you’ll get paid more!” 

The point of this anecdote is not my sister’s mercenary mindset at such a tender age, but rather the family climate that we were exposed to as children.  Unlike many families, the subject of money was not taboo in our household.  I believe that neglecting to talk to children about money severely cripples our society.  Without open dialogue on the subject of finances how can children be expected to become financially sound adults?  There is a great example of this on Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s show “Princess” where an 18 year old with a maxed out credit card was not aware that she was paying interest on the balance.  She was under the impression that the nice people at the credit card company were giving her money that she could repay at her leisure. 

Contrary to the taboo, my parents were open to talking about finances.  We knew how much our parents earned, where the money for the house came from, and that it was important to invest in the future.  My Grandparents were also a part of this process, reinforcing the difference between needs and wants, and how you should never put something on a credit card that you haven’t already got the cash to pay for.  Talking with your children about money will allow them to think about the subject and ask questions.  Though the conclusions that children draw about money are ultimately their own, empowering them to think about money will help to prevent them from using it thoughtlessly.  

Kids and Money

I have decided to take the following week to talk about teaching money management to children.  A bit of a leap, you might think, for a person who doesn’t have kids.  So instead of telling you the best way to going about teaching your child I'll give you an idea of how I learned money management as a kid. 

Key to me learning about finances at a young age were three main factors: 

• Having money discussed and modelled in every day life. 
• Having to access to money and having to earn it. 
• Having money management taught to me by multiple sources.  

That said every child is unique and what will work to teach one child may not work for another.  As a parent/guardian you are uniquely positioned to meet your child’s needs.  With that said I will leave you with some notes on how a child thinks which has absolutely nothing to do with finances, I just think it’s kind of cool. 

Child’s Oath

I, a child, will be ever energetic and curious, as only a four-foot-peanut-butter-and-jelly fueled machine can be.  I vow to keep my eyes and ears open at all times, including and especially when adults tell me to close them.  I will learn by what others around me do and make no guarantee that I will change a behavior because an adult say so. 

I here by reserve the right to ignore anyone and everyone who tells me something is impossible.  Instead I chose to view the world with what you would consider to be irrational optimism.  I will embark on schemes even if you decide they are crazy, because we both know you’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first. 

Please do not mistake my innocence for ignorance or weakness for it is neither.  Do not make the mistake of thinking that my innocence is complete because I too am part of an imperfect world.  Though that imperfect world may include my perpetually unmade bed have no fear; I know how to fix the world and I am determined to remember how so I can fix it as an adult. 

I refuse to understand that different is bad because I know that’s not how the world works.  Most of the time I won’t notice that someone is different until you tell me at which point I’ll shrug because it doesn’t really matter.  Should I ever become so blind as to the fact that I can not see how I am identical to everyone else I give you permission to ground me indefinitely. 

Now, can I have a snack?