One printable month grid for breakfast & dinner — plus a USDA grocery budget & an anti-repeat variety score
Default tier is Low-Cost. The grid covers breakfast + dinner (≈2 of 3 daily meals); the budget scales to whatever you set above. Children use one age band — a toddler + teen household is averaged.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
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Families who batch-plan dinners for a whole month keep repeating the same meals, forget what they already cooked, and over-buy groceries because a single weekly view never shows the month at a glance. This planner fixes that with one printable monthly grid — weeks as rows, Sun–Sat columns, a Breakfast and Dinner line on every real date — plus a USDA-based grocery budget and an anti-repeat variety score. Everything runs privately in your browser, free.
DAYS = real length of chosen month (28/29/30/31, leap-aware)
WEEKS = DAYS / 7
ADULT_COST = avg(USDA female 19-50, USDA male 19-50) for the tier
CHILD_COST = USDA child cost for the tier + age band
BASE = adults×ADULT_COST + children×CHILD_COST
SIZE_FACTOR = 1:1.20 2:1.10 3:1.05 4:1.00 5-6:0.95 7+:0.90
ADJUSTED = BASE × SIZE_FACTOR (all 3 meals, household)
MEAL_FRAC = clamp(meals_per_day / 3, 0, 1)
EATOUT/mo = round(dinners_out_per_week × WEEKS)
COOK_NIGHTS = max(0, DAYS − EATOUT/mo − leftover_nights)
PER_MEAL$ = (ADJUSTED / DAYS) × 0.40 (dinner ≈ 40% of food cost)
BUDGET = max(0, ADJUSTED×MEAL_FRAC − EATOUT×PER_MEAL$ − leftover×PER_MEAL$)
WEEKLY = BUDGET / WEEKS
PERSON/DAY = BUDGET / (household × DAYS)
REPEAT = COOK_NIGHTS / distinct_recipes
VARIETY = clamp(round(distinct_recipes / COOK_NIGHTS × 100), 0, 100)A family of 2 adults + 2 children (age 4–8) plans March 2025 (31 days) on the Low-Cost tier, grid covering 2 meals/day, with 1 dinner out per week, 4 leftover nights, and 12 distinct dinner recipes.
Pick the month so the grid uses the right number of days and starting weekday, set your household and how many meals a day the grid plans, then print the monthly calendar — a breakfast and dinner line sits on every date with the budget in the footer.
The tool estimates it from the USDA Cost of Food at Home plans (Jan 2025), charging adults and children at their own rates, applying USDA's household-size factor, scaling to the meals your grid plans, then subtracting eat-out and leftover nights. It's a planning estimate, not a guaranteed bill.
Distinct dinner recipes ÷ nights you actually cook. 100 means every cooked dinner is unique; lower means more repetition. It also shows the average times each recipe repeats. Intentional batch repeats are fine — it's a repetition gauge.
No. USDA figures are food at home (groceries) only, which is why eat-out dinners are subtracted. Restaurant meals, alcohol, paper goods, cleaning supplies, and pet food are excluded, so your receipt may be higher.
It reads the real calendar for the month and year you pick, leap years included, so nothing is hardcoded to 30 days or 4 weeks. Dates land on the correct weekday and the budget scales to the true month length.
Yes. It is 100% free and fully client-side — every calculation and the printable grid are generated in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere or stored on a server.
Everything is calculated in your browser. We don't store or sell your data.