I am SUPER Excited to share this new 2 Week Meal Plan with you because I have gotten so many questions about meal planning and How to Make a Meal Plan. This is something I’m passionate about because I really believe Planning your meals is one of the Quickest ways to save money! It doesn’t matter what your budget is, if you have a plan going into the store then sticking to your shopping list is so much easier and you’ll avoid all those extra impulse purchases.
Today I am sharing a Full 2 week Meal Plan for Dinners with you, this is the plan I made for my family about a week ago and I tracked all my prices (At Walmart) for you and created a Shopping list along with all the recipes you will need so you have a complete 2 week plan!
How to Create Your Own 2 Week Meal Plan:
If you are new to meal planning make sure you check out How to Make a Meal Plan & our Free Printable Meal Plan!
These are great resources for creating your own Menu Plan and Shopping list from your favorite recipes! You can use this as a guide and the free printable worksheets to create your own if you’d like to make your own menu plan and shopping list. (TIP: If you create 2-3 of these you could easily save and reuse the menus and shopping lists)
Here’s how to use this 2 Week Meal Plan:
1. Download & Print the Menu, Shopping List and Recipes!
2. Go Shopping! All my prices are based on Walmart’s Shelf Price – I actually used some coupons, shopped at Aldi’s too and more so my actual cost was less than is shown, but even without coupons you can get what you need for around $85 for 2 full weeks (Including side dishes, etc.)
3. Follow the recipes. All my recipes are Kid Approved, I have a 6 year old and a 4 year old so there aren’t many fancy dishes :) Just simple things my family loves that I hope you will love as well!
That’s it! Super Simple, all the work is done for you!
A Few Notes:
I thought I would go ahead and give you a few things to pay attention to, hopefully this helps answer some of your questions:
Assumed Ingredients – There’s a short list of Assumed Ingredients under the Shopping List if you don’t have any of these things on hand then you may need to buy them but I figured these were items most people already have.
Pre-Cooking – One of the things that makes my life SO MUCH Easier is Prepping my meals. I always cook my hamburger meat when I first get it home from the store, then divide it into 6 Small bags. Each Bag will be for 1 recipe. Typically I get about 2 cups in each bag so that’s what each recipe calls for. I also freeze my meat in the quantities I need so that I can pull out one bag each morning to thaw! This makes Cooking so much easier!
Shared Items – I always try to make the best use of my time and ingredients! You’ll notice that some recipes call for similar ingredients, or for you to save part of the recipe for another meal. It’s a great way to utilize items completely and save money at the same time! All of these are noted at the bottom of each recipe.
Meals – I’m not going to lie, these are not all the most healthy recipes, and my kids don’t have any allergies so this is what works for us, this is a typical week in the life of our family so I’m just sharing what has worked for us with you, I know it won’t work for everyone but hopefully it gives you an idea of how you can use items multiple times to save money and how meal planning in general will save you money.
Prices – I live in Northwest Arkansas, All the prices are current prices at my Walmart or Aldi if you walked into the store to purchase the ingredients. I had Most of the Items already on hand that I had purchased with coupons, things like Taco Shells, Taco Seasoning, Pasta, Pasta Sauce, etc. all go on sale all the time, I always stockpile these items so if you’re using coupons and stockpiling you’ll be able to accomplish this menu for even less. My goal was to provide a resource that people just starting out could use to save money and learn to love menu planning. Please keep in mind that prices will vary by location so your actual cost may be higher or lower.
Number of Meals – My family doesn’t typically eat at home every night of the week. We have about 1 night a week we eat out and one night we eat with Family since all our family lives locally. So this menu and plan will last us closer to 3 weeks. I didn’t place meals on days of the week for that reason! If you don’t eat at home every night that’s completely OK you can adjust this to a 15 day plan (5 meals per week for 3 weeks) by doubling one of the recipes really fast!
Make sure you check out our Saving Money Blog and also our How to Coupon Page for more tips, tricks and videos on saving money and using coupons.
Make sure you Follow Me on Pinterest!
I’m excited to try this! I received 3 other meal plans, but not the 2 weeks for $85 meal plan. How can I get that?
Hi Megan, right under the photo there is a teal box that says “Download Now.” Try to click that and then you should be able to enter your email address to get them. Let me know if you can’t get it to work.
Love this simple plan! Is the chicken for the chicken and rice precooked or does it cook while in the oven? I got a little mixed up with the enchilada note since that recipe calls for cooked and shredded chicken. Thanks!
The rice and chicken are uncooked for the Chicken and Rice recipe.
ENTER YOUR COMMENT HEREhow do you pre cook your chicken?
I like to cook it in a crockpot with some chicken broth, chicken stock, or water. You can also poach chicken breasts on the stove. There are many ways you can do this but these are my two favorite ways for meal planning. Slow cooker method is great when you plan ahead and have a larger amount to cook and poaching works if you’re in a time crunch. :)
Heather, I teared up when I read this. I work night shift for law enforcement. Winter break is coming up so the the child will be home. Husband doesn’t cook. I’m PMS’ing and I just finished writing in my journal that I needed to get a meal plan together for the next two weeks to try to alleviate some stress. Your printable meal plan was an answer to prayer. Thank you! Thank you! If I could hug you I would. Thank you!
As I approach my due date, I’ve been looking for meal plan ideas and I absolutely love this one!! It’s so simple and easy for my prego brain to comprehend.
How many people does the recipes feed?
Hi Taja, it just depends on the recipe. All of them will feed at least 4. Some feed more and it also depends on how big of eaters you have!
My husband and I were just trying to organize our finances: student loans, medical bills after having our first son last summer, budgeting for our planned travels this year, etc etc etc. This was one of the first meal plans we came across on Pinterest, and we ADORE it. The ingredients are SO basic, but are so delicious and so easy to put together. Even when we are crunched for time or tired, these recipes are so great. Even though some of the prices were a little undershot in the list, this plan is economic, time-friendly, energy-friendly, and TASTEBUD-friendly! We seriously, seriously, seriously LOVE everything about this plan and will come back to this, GUARANTEED. Currently seeing what else you guys have in store! Keep ’em coming!
Started the 14 day meal plan tonight and love it! Do you have anymore meal plans available. This is by far the best plan I have saw. Love that it includes the grocery list.
Hi Erin, here are two links to meal plans I have on my site:
https://www.passionforsavings.com/10-freezer-meal-bags-from-aldi/
https://www.passionforsavings.com/week-easy-freezer-meals-menu-shopping-list-recipes/
This is fantastic!!!! One of the best meal plans i have seen, seriously!!! after adding up how much i spent on groceries last month, i realized i have to get serious about meal planning!!! and this breaks it down so SIMPLY!!!!!!
my husband is not a big fan of chicken, but i will be able to make most of these meals. he will suck it up and eat it every now and then, LOL.
thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!
I cannot tell you what a godsend this was for me! As an adult I’ve never had to meal plan, or budget – I’m a huge impulse eater (meaning I don’t plan dinners I just eat what I feel like that night), I get take out a ton, and end up at the store 4 times a week! Recently my husband lost his job so we really wanted to budget and save some money, I hadn’t the slightest clue where to even start, and that’s when I found you! I ended up getting my groceries from Amazon, it helped seeing my bill with each added item, and since I’m a Prime member it was free shipping. There were some items I didn’t get because I already had, and several items I purchased double of in hopes this would last us a while. My total bill was $150! And now I don’t have to hem and haw over what to make, I just look at the list and pick off that.
Seriously, thank you for sharing this!
I’m so glad you found it helpful!
Trying this for the first time. We were able to knock off a few things we already had like spaghetti sauce and noodles and some vegs but we also added a few things like drinks and bread and eggs. A few of the things on the list we couldn’t find at the exact price and a bunch of things we found even cheaper so all together my groceries only cost $77 and we have everything on the list from Walmart. Hope this goes well!
I love this! thanks so much for sharing!
I menu plan as well and another thing that has also helped me save money is rearranging my shopping list. I usually shop at Walmart and almost always go to the same one (there are three or four about the same distance from my house), so I know the store pretty well. When I am making my shopping list, I write down everything I need, then rearrange it to be in the order of where the items are in the store. It keeps you from going down every aisle, which usually leads to spending more money.
Do you thaw the chicken for the oven fried legs? A couple of ours bled through the breading … Is that normal? Thanks!!
I did thaw the legs before frying them but I didn’t have any problems with bleeding through the breading, So sorry that happened! It might be the brand of chicken legs, but I just use the basic Walmart or Sams Brand.
Couple questions!! Everything has been great so far!!
I’m really excited about this! Finally a meal plan that Makes sense with my families picky taste! And I know prices vary across the country, but that’s still such a great budget amount! This is really going to help me through the holidays!
I love this idea.. i always plan in my head what i am going to eat for dinner but i never shop that way and end up eating out alot more then usual. This was a nice starter. and i love that you included a shopping list. I went shopping yesterday and took your list and only bought that and other assumed items i didnt have. I am in Ontario so my bill was $150. But there about 5 items i bought bulk that i never had before, like Panko, Flour, Bisquick, and Rice. I also bought more meat then needed because of an amazing deal and kept it separate for future use. so i would assume my bill would have been closer to 120. but still not bad. I cooked all my ground pork (instead of beef) and separted all my meat according to recipe just as you mentioned.. Easy Peasy! Tonight is Chili! Cant wait :)
I never realized you are from NWA. My in laws are there and we are only 3hrs north so we are always down there. My oldest goes to VBS at Bentonville Church of Christ. Small world.