Meal planning, like budgeting and clipping coupons is one of those tasks that I always groan at. However, meal planning does make a mom’s life easier, not just in knowing what to make for dinner each night, but in grocery shopping as well. When you know what you’re going to serve, you know what to buy.

Over at KitchenMonki.com you can get help with the process of menu planning. Add your own recipes, use them to meal plan, and even print out a shopping list. KitchenMonki.com also has a social aspect in that you can share or get meal plans and recipes from others.

The site is free to use so check out KitchenMonki.com and start meal planning.

In my attempts to save money, meal planning and grocery shopping has become more complex. I’m clipping coupons, shopping multiple stores to get the best prices, and planning meals around what’s on sale. Being domestically and organizationally challenged, this new way of cooking and shopping has been difficult for me to manage.

But I’ve just come across a great new web and phone app that can make it easier. Ziplist offers lots of great features to create a shopping list and plan meals. The shopping list can be organized by aisle or store. It can be shared with other members of the family so that they can add items.

Not sure what to make for dinner? Ziplist has tons of recipes and with a single click all the ingredients can be added to your list. It will even show you items that you may already have at home so that they aren’t added to the list. And if you find a recipe on another website, you can save it to your Ziplist recipe box.

When you’re ready to shop, you can print out your list or access it by through your SmartPhone (iPhone app coming soon).

To learn more or to create your own list, visit Ziplist.

It is possible to much of your grocery shopping online. But if you don’t live in a delivery area for one of the grocery stores that deliver, you still need to go to the market to get fresh items.

I hate grocery shopping. The very worst part is the unloading and putting the items away. But I also don’t like the actual shopping. I can’t find thing I need and almost always forget something.

Dave Cheong had a similar problem and he found a way to fix it. He created at the grocery shopping helper which is an online program that can help you organize your shopping trip by providing you with a list of all the items you buy sorted by the isles they are found in. No more back tracking or hunting. Simply take the list, mark the items you want to buy, and head straight to the store and isle.

You do need to do a little leg work before using the program by creating the list of items and visiting the store to find out what isle they are in. But once done, it could save you loads of time in the grocery store.

Check out the Grocery Shopping Helper here.

The Coupon Mom is offering 3 free ebooks that can help you save big at the grocery and drug stores. And you don’t need to register or give your email to get them!

I recently saw the Coupon Mom on a re-run of Oprah. She bought $125 worth of groceries for about $37. I was impressed! So I visited her site to get the low down on grocery shopping. The ebooks offer some great tips to get you started. However, I think discount grocery shopping is a skill that is developed over time. I ended up spending 25% over my normal budget and spent over 5 hours (3 of them grocery shopping) in the process. I can only hope that the 6 boxes of cereal, 8 cans of diced tomatoes and other items I stockpiled will last long enough to have the end result be a lower monthly grocery bill.

To learn more about the Coupon Mom and to get the free ebooks, visit CouponMom.com

Grocery shopping is one of those tedious tasks that has to be done, but it can become less tedious by using Amazon.com’s Subscribe and Save program that will ship items to you on a schedule you choose. The eligible items include household supplies, food and snacks, health and wellness products, baby items and nutritional foods. Aside from reducing your trips to the grocery store, other benefits include:

* automatically receive a new shipment of the item in intervals you select–every one, two, three, or six months
* get a discount on Amazon.com’s everyday price
* get free shipping on every Subscribe & Save shipment
* pay for each order only when the item is shipped
* have the option to cancel at any time
* get an email when the subscription process is started so you can update your order if needed.

To learn more, visit Amazon.com’s Subscribe and Save program.