Too Busy to Cook? How Meal Planning Apps Simplify Weeknight Dinners

Key Takeaways   

• Singles and working couples don’t have to sacrifice nutrition and budgets when they're too exhausted to cook after a long day.

• Meal planning apps offer a cost-effective alternative to takeout and meal kit services while maintaining food quality. 

• The better apps generate shopping lists from selected recipes, reducing mental effort and enabling grocery delivery integration options. They also help you minimize food waste. 

Disclaimer: Neither the author nor Novi Wealth receives compensation or promotional consideration for products and services mentioned in this blog post. 

Many of our clients are working professional couples who are too exhausted to think about what to cook after a long day of work. When you are mentally out of bandwidth, it’s tempting to reach for GrubHub, DoorDash, or the local pizza parlor app on your phone. You might also be tempted to use healthier alternatives such as prepared meals from Weight Watchers, Hello Fresh, or Home Chef, etc.

Just know that most of the dinner solutions I mentioned are a tradeoff between time, money, and food quality. Takeout saves time but can be costly and less healthy. Bulk meal prep saves money and time, but eating the same meal day after day can get repetitive. Meal kits reduce grocery planning but often cost more. All of these conveniences can put a significant dent in your wallet and add inches to your waistline.

Fortunately, there’s another alternative -- meal planning apps – which deliver high-quality ingredients at grocery-store prices with far less mental effort than preparing from scratch.  Meal planning apps allow users to choose specific meal plans and recipes, create shopping lists, and track nutritional information, all from the ease of a mobile device. There’s an app for almost any dietary need, whether you’re crunched for time to plan for meals, looking to shed some weight, or prefer to prepare meals in large quantities. These apps make it quicker and easier to cook at home, saving you time and money. Meal planning apps also allow you to eat healthier by utilizing fresh ingredients and controlling your portion size. They also help you reduce waste because each recipe is customized for your dietary needs and the exact number of people you are feeding.

I’ve tried many meal planning apps, and Mealime seems to work for people with limited time. You simply log on to the app, pick your meals for the next several days or week ahead, assign which days you want each meal, and it autogenerates a grocery list for you with the exact ingredients and portion size you need. I like to use Mealime on Sundays to plan my meals for the week ahead. Even better, if the weather is terrible or you don’t have time to get to the grocery store, there’s a “shop online” option that integrates with most major grocery stores in your area. You can have your autogenerated grocery list added to your local store’s online shopping cart or Instacart for delivery.  

You can also ask Mealime to suggest meals for you based on your preferences and dietary needs. It’s really good at choosing a “portfolio” of meals to help you minimize waste. For instance, if three of the meals on your weekly list require chicken either as the main course or an ingredient, Mealime knows exactly how much chicken to order for the week ahead. 

Financial Benefits of Mealime:

• Supports intentional grocery shopping and avoids overspending, i.e., sticking to the list.

• Allows people to cook more by reducing the mental fatigue of meal planning.

• Reduces food waste by suggesting recipes that share ingredients, making sure you use up leftover perishable ingredients. 

Other Features of the App: 

• It can choose meals for the week from a catalog of recipes. 

• Automatically create a suggested weekly meal plan based on diet restrictions and preferences. This is the mode that helps reduce food waste. 

• You can also enter ingredients you already have, and the app can build recipes for you to help you use up those ingredients before they go bad. 

• The app will autogenerate a grocery shopping list, saving time and making it easier to stick to the list when grocery shopping.

• If you prefer pickup or delivery for your groceries, there is integration to import that grocery list into online shopping carts for most major grocery chains. 

• You can assign a meal for each day of the week in the calendar feature, so you don't have to think about what to eat today when you get home from work. 

• The recipes and cooking instructions are easy to follow.  

Cons:

• Mealime has a feature to import other recipes from the internet, but I found this tool to be a bit clunky. 

• The recipes will often suggest meal prep steps that add time to improve the quality of the recipe. For example, for taco recipes, the app will often suggest buying a block of cheddar and shredding it instead of buying a bag of shredded cheese. For some people, this is great because it improves taste and saves money. But personally, I’d rather just save the time. Now I have caught on to its suggestions, and I opt to buy the shredded cheese instead when I see that block of cheese on my grocery list.  

Pricing:

• Free Option: Most of Mealime’s benefits are available in the free version. It provides access to a large number of recipes and lots of customization around food preferences for the auto-suggest weekly meal plan tool.   

• Paid subscription is $2.99/month. The extra features include access to more recipes, more detailed nutritional information about the meals, and more filter options for the auto-weekly meal plan tool, such as being able to filter recipes by estimated cost per person and cook time. The app can filter recipes to show only those that are under $5 per person and that require less than 30 minutes to cook.

Conclusion

Thanks to apps like Mealime, being a busy professional or being a senior who no longer drives doesn’t mean you have to break your budget, sacrifice nutrition, or miss out on the simple joys of cooking. If you or someone close to you has concerns about your diet, eating habits, or work-life balance, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m happy to help.

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Devin Starr, CFP® Associate Wealth Advisor at Novi Wealth