Buying meat in Bulk Part one

This is just one part in a multiple part series on how to cut your costs and still eat well.

In order for us to eat well and on an appropriate budget I order my meat in bulk and keep it in the freezer. Depending on our budget at the time I order anywhere from 4-7 months worth of meat at a time. I have had many people ask me how I figure it out, this is my system.

We are a family of four. (Though I don't add the baby imto the calcukations as of yet) 

1) First look at how many times a week you eat meat, for us it is 6 times but two of those days are leftovers. Write this number down, for my family that is 4 meat meals that I need to cook a week. Figure out how often you eat different meats. For us we eat chicken once, Beef twice and pork or seafood  (usually shrimp) once a week

2) Next look at how much you cook per meal, I have found that if I average .5lbs of meat per person per meal it all averages out, sometimes it is slightly more but most times it is less,. Add up the amount of each different meat for a week, for us it is 3lbs beef, 1.5lbs chicken, and .75lbs pork and .75lbs seafood (

3) Figure out how many weeks you are buying for, write this number down this time around we are buying for 28 weeks,
4) Multiply the weeks by the amount of different meat per week. Write this number down
for us we need 84lbs of beef, 42 lbs of chicken, 21lbs of pork, and 21 lbs of seafood.

5) Look at your number and meat prices and adjust accordingly, for me that seafood number looks really high, I know that I will buy some turkeys when they go on sale I also know that I would like to order more pork then that, so maybe this time around I will plan for 1lb pork a week and .50 of seafood. So the number for pork goes up to 28lb and the number for seafood goes down to 14lbs, which is a much more manageable number.

6) Now you know how much meat to order where do you get it? How do you package it up? How much space do you need to freeze it?