$5 Dollar Meal Plan Your Toddler Will Love

Did you know that, on average, you might spend two hours planning your meals each week? That’s a lot of time you’d rather spend elsewhere, like with your kids or working on your business. Right?

Honestly, you are tired of cooking the same thing every.single.night. But you just don’t know what else to prepare that not only your family enjoys but also your toddler. Simply, you’re out of ideas and as a busy mom, you just don’t have time to sift through new recipes on Pinterest all day.

I was the same! That’s why when I heard of the 5 dollar meal plan I was intrigued to check it out.

So if dinner is stressing you out, if you hate meal planning because it’s SO time- consuming then definitely stick around for my post. Because in this post I reveal my honest review of the $5 Meal Plan, on whether it’s worth it, if it saved me time and money, and most importantly, did my one-year-old eat it?

Before I fell pregnant I used to love to cook every day. But now, as a stay-at-home mom blogger to a one-year-old, I just don’t have the time to spend all day in the kitchen or at the shops. 

So every night I was faced with the same dilemma. Does this sound like you? 

• What to cook that is fast and doesn’t take me longer than 20-30 minutes of prep time so that I can easily squeeze it in before bathtime
• Easy to make (and ideally little dishes used)
• Fresh using seasonal ingredients 
• AND that my one-year-old toddler will eat too!

I wasn’t actively looking for a meal plan service but when I discovered the $5 Meal Plan on a friend’s blog I wanted to find out what it is.

What is $5 Meal Plan?

$5 Meal Plan is a weekly meal plan service for you and your family to help you take the stress out of meal planning and put simple delicious meals on the table every day, that even your toddler will love, whether that’s breakfast, lunch or dinner.

How does the $5 Meal Plan work?

For just $5 a month, you get sent a delicious meal plan where every meal only costs about $2 per person, and in most cases less. (Erin, the founder, makes these meals for her family of 6 for $5 per meal!)

Your weekly meal plan recipes include:

• 6 dinner recipes
• 1 breakfast recipe
• 1 lunch recipe
• 1 dessert recipe
• and usually a snack, beverage, or side dish idea

But that’s not all, because you also get a super handy shopping list.

Shopping list

Together with your meal plan recipes, you get sent a shopping list that’s organized by categories like spices, pantry staples, and dairy as well as recipes.

It’s easy to see which ingredients you need.

So you simply tick off the food items you’ve already got at home or substitute them to suit your dietary needs.

I love that it gives me a shopping list because it’s so well organized. I don’t know about you, but it takes time to even create a shopping list. So having the shopping lists all done for me before the new week starts already saves me so much time.

You can simply substitute things you don’t like, for example, chickpeas instead of lentils, or for supermarket special.

Who is the $5 Meal Plan for?

The $5 Meal Plan is for busy moms, moms on a budget, frugal living moms, stay at home moms who are tired of thinking about what’s for dinner day in day out, moms who want to save on groceries, and spend noticeably less time in the kitchen, but still cook healthy meals.

Meet the frugal foodie dinner mom – A busy mom of 5!

Erin Chase, a busy mom of 5 and was looking for ways to cut her food expenses down as well as the time she spends in the kitchen. And that’s how she invented the $5 Meal Plan.

Erin LOVES to create meal plans on a budget to help take the stress out of getting dinner on the table AND to help you spend less on groceries each week. All of the meal plans provide recipes and shopping lists designed to help simplify your already crazy, busy mom life!

Erin designed the $5 Meal Plan with you in mind to help you save money on groceries and time in the kitchen.

FREE 14-day trial 

The amazing thing about the $5 Meal Plan is that they offer a free trial. 

That means you can try it out for free for 14-days. 

During this time, Erin from the $5 Meal Plan will send you 40 (!!!) of her recipes, completely free, for you to try and see if you, your family, and your toddler, like them.

You can cook them, print the recipes, print the shopping lists, try them out and if you don’t like them, you can get your money back, no questions asked. It’s completely risk-free for you! Pretty amazing!

I immediately signed up for the trial because I wanted healthy recipe suggestions for me and my toddler, anything really to help me save time and take the guesswork out of cooking so that I could focus on building my blog instead.

In today’s post, I will walk you through the exact steps you need to follow to start your free trial.

Click the link HERE NOW to start your free trial today!

How to start your FREE 14-day trial 

First, you need to click on the link here and then enter your details. The $5 Meal Plan is subscription-based, which means that, unless you cancel it, will run over into a $5/ month subscription. Therefore you’re required to add payment information in case you decide to continue the $5 Meal Plan after your trial. But don’t let that stop you – there’s plenty of time to try it out before you have to make up your mind.

100% money-back guarantee

If after 14 days you decide that the $5 Meal Plan is not for you but you forget to cancel your trial, then they will refund you your money back immediately. Because you’re covered by a 100% money-back guarantee so you won’t lose anything.

PayPal

I opted for PayPal because I don’t like entering my card details. So whenever there’s an option to avoid that, I’ll go for that.

Upgrades (optional)

Before you get to finalize your trial you get offered a bunch of upgrades, which are totally optional (I found this part a bit confusing at first, so I am hoping that I can make navigating for you easier). For example, for an additional one-time purchase you could also get the following meal plans:

• 6-Week Slow Cooker Meal Plan
• 6-Week Paleo/Whole 30 Meal Plan
• 6-Week Vegetarian Meal Plan
• 6-Week 30-Minute Meals Plan
• 6-Week Summer Slow Cooker Recipes Meal Plan

But please note that these “specialty meal plans” are not included in your free trial.

If you want to buy them, I believe they cost $8 extra which is definitely worth it because you get the free shopping lists per recipe (which can save you a.lot.of.time not having to create a shopping list). 

BUT if you’re not interested you can just skip these and start your free trial.

Confirmation email

Next, check your inbox and look for your confirmation email. If you can’t see it, check your spam folder. Mine went in there.

Follow the link from your email and you should be able to log in to the member’s area.

Log in to the member’s area

Once you’re logged in you’ll notice that you’re now in the member’s area. This member’s area is SERIOUSLY jam-packed with free stuff that you’re going to love. But more on that later.

For now, from here that you can customize your meal plan recipes. It’s super easy to do, I’ll show you how.

Custom meal plan

All the recipes are sorted by category. Simply select a category that interests you to view the recipes available.

You can choose from the following categories:

By Meal of the Day

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner
• Snack
• Dessert
• Side dish
• Beverages

By Cooking Method:

• Baked
• Dutch oven or saucepan
• Freezer friendly
• Grilled
• Instant pot
• One dish dinners
• Skillet dinners
• Slow cooker

By ingredients:

• Beans
• Beef
• Bread
• Chicken
• Eggs
• Fish & seafood
• Pasta
• Pizza
• Pork
• Potatoes & sweet potatoes
• Quinoa
• Rice
• Salads
• Turkey & Ham

By dietary preferences:

• Dairy-free
• Gluten, dairy, soy-free
• Paleo (which is coming soon)
• Vegetarian

Click on whatever category you like to get shown the recipes.

Select recipes

Next, you can select your recipes. For your free trial, you can add 10 recipes to your meal plan. It’s really super easy to do and I’ll show you how.

Simply drag and drop the recipes you like over into “My Meal Plan”.

Vegetarian options

I love that you can sort the recipes by vegetarian because I am a vegetarian (however, I do eat fish here and there, so you can call me whatever you like).

Before you decide which recipe to go for you can double click on them to open up a recipe card. The card holds all the information about ingredients and cooking instructions to help you decide if it’s right for you.

Underneath each recipe, you also find related recipes.

Print meal plan

If you like the recipes you have selected, click Download My Meal Plan. A printable PDF with your chosen recipes and complete shopping list will download to your computer. Or you can send yourself an email with the PDF to download later. 

My preferred option is to download the PDF because I want to print them right away.

5 dollar meal plan sample

My daughter and I both loved “Coconut Rice and Beans”. I choose this because, for a start, I love coconut and pineapple. But this meal also contains beans for protein and I can fork-mash it for my one-year-old. And it’s easy to pop leftovers in the fridge.

And we also love “Pina Colada Baked Oatmeal” for breakfast, although I substituted oatmeal for semolina as it’s easier to eat for my one-year-old toddler. 

Modify your Week’s Meal Plan

You can easily modify your week’s plan that you get sent. 

Because you might like some of the recipes but not all of them.

All you have to do to change your meals is drag out the ones you don’t want and add in ones that you and your family will enjoy.

This way even picky eaters will get something they like.

To do that click on “Build My PERFECT Meal Plan” and then click on “Modify This Week’s Plan.”

More FREE stuff

Inside your member’s dashboard, there is SOO much more to discover to help you save time and money, like:

• Coupons
• Free printables
• Free 40 Simple Side Dishes Ebook
• Popular Ingredients & Price List

Definitely check out the video series Erin made especially for your free trial. It’s jam-packed with free content.

Weekly menu

$5 Meal Plan is full of meal plan options for you to choose from.

• Easy to print recipes
• Very easy to follow instructions
• Simple recipe cards
• Very printer-friendly: printing them doesn’t rinse your printer ink as they only use a little black ink.

Variety of meals

With the $5 Meal Plan, you get access to a large meal plan selection of there are lots of meals you can choose from.

With your free trial alone you get 40 meal plan recipes to choose from. So you can really take a look and try some of them before you make up your mind.

Summing up my review – Is the $5 Meal Plan worth it?

For me and my one-year-old toddler, it’s worth it because it saves me so much more time than coming up with new recipes every night! It’s a great deal.

Don’t get me wrong, I can cook and I actually love to cook, but having recipes suggested is simple a great base to start from.

• The recipes are flexible enough for you to swap whatever you want to use up from the fridge.
• If I don’t have green capsicum in the fridge but green then I’ll use green.
• This means, that instead of buying food I end up not using I find that I am making better food purchases that really help me save money on a weekly basis. So for me, working from home and raising my one year old, it’s a great option.
• What I love about the 5 dollar meal plan is that the recipes are simple enough to cook for me and my one-year-old daughter.
• I am vegetarian but the normal plan worked fine for me.
• It’s one of the cheapest and best meal planning services I’ve come across and I’ve tried meal kits subscription services before.

The five dollar meal plan will save you a lot of time!

I’ve tried other meal delivery services but prefer the $5 Meal Plan because of the delicious, frugal recipes that are easy to cook and that my one-year-old eats too!

But with the $5 Meal Plan, I spend less time in the kitchen, and I no longer star into my fridge, holding the fridge door open and trying to think of something tasty to rustle up for me and my baby girl.

What’s great about the $5 Meal Plan is just really simple to use and get’s to the point. No complicated app or sign up required. It’s fun!

What I absolutely love about a meal service like this is that it takes the guessing out of meal planning and allows me to claim back my evenings.

Did my one-year-old toddler like it?

She loved it! But what I loved, even more, is that I had lots of leftover ingredients I could freeze for another day. That’s lunch for my little one sorted!

How do I cancel your free trial?

If you don’t like your free trial, you can cancel it anytime. Simply click on “Cancel Your Account” in the sidebar. 

If you don’t cancel your plan, the $5 will come out automatically monthly.

If you’re feeling a little uneasy about signing up for a subscription for a free trial, you’re not the only one. 

I felt a bit confused by that too. But the $5 Meal Plan is subscription-based to ensure you get sent your weekly meal plans, without interruption. 

What if I forgot to cancel my free trial and don’t like the $5 Meal Plan?

Don’t worry. Erin and her team will refund you the money on the spot.

Here are other common questions you might have:

How do I know if I (or my family/kids) will like it? 

They offer a 14-day trial of the service, absolutely free. That means you will see forty recipes during your trial to figure out if they’re right for you. Also, they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee so if you decide, even after you pay, that it’s not a good fit – let them know and they’ll give you a complete refund. Their plans aren’t for everyone but if you’re reading this, chances are they will work for you and they just ask that you give them 14 days to prove it to you.

My family has dietary restrictions.

Because I deal with multiple food allergies and intolerances in our family, we lean towards recipes that make for easy and straightforward substitutions or changes. I’m acutely aware of the challenges that you go through and create plans with that in mind.

How does the guarantee work?

If you are not satisfied, for any reason whatsoever, just let them know and they’ll refund your last payment immediately. It’s as simple as that.

How do I write a meal plan?

Normally you sit down and start planning out your weekly meals. Depending on how quick you are this can easily take up to 2 hours of your time. But with the $5 Meal Plan, this is all being taken care of for you! Less meal planning means more time with your kids or to work on your blog.

What is the best meal plan?

The best meal plan lets you select your meals based on your eating habits and preferences, you can select your best meal plan by different categories to make it easier to find something you like, just like the $5 Meal Plan does.

How to plan a menu for a week?

The $5 Meal Plan makes planning your menu for the week easy. You simply choose 10 meals from a huge selection and create your weekly plan. The best part is, that you also get a complete grocery list for each of your meals, so you know exactly what you need to buy and can tick off what you’ve already got at home. 

How much is $5 per meal?

The $5 Meal Plan costs you $1.25 extra per week, divided by the number of days (7) which is an extra 0.15 per meal (not per person). Plus the huge time it saves you not having to create a shopping list. The $5 Meal Plan gives you a complete grocery shopping list which makes buying groceries so much quicker and easier.

Why do you need the $5 Meal Plan?

Because it helps you save time and money. Even if you only use the recipes as a base to spin your own creations – at least it gives you a direction like pasta or rice? Creamy sauce or stir fry veggies? Mexican or Italian? Let the $5 Meal Plan, or shall I say, Erin, take care of meal decision-making so you have one less thing to worry about.

Just choose the recipes that take your fancy and add them to your weekly bucket. I am already excited about next week and the new meal plan. Happy meal planning!

Was this helpful and have you signed up for your free trial yet? What is the most annoying thing for you about meal planning?