Since I am on vacay this week with my crazy family, I hope you won’t mind me sharing a post I wrote last year full of tips on how to Save Money on Vacation Food…
It’s amazing how the moolah starts flying out your pockets the second vacation starts, right?
I think it’s our vacation state of mind.
You know what I mean… “It’s vacation and I want 5 new shirts. I’m supposed to feel good and do what I want on vacation, right?”
At least, that’s what inevitably happens to the hubster and I.
I think it helps to do what you can ahead of time to save some of that cash you’re otherwise going to end up shelling out for all that food splurging!
…….. Saving Money on Vacation Food {originally posted March 2012} ……..
I love to travel. love it.
Thankfully the hubs loves it too, and for most of our marriage he has been blessed to work for companies who give several weeks of vacation time to enable this super fun hobby of ours. :)
We’ve been doing the travel thang since the beginning. It was Cancun for our honeymoon, Vegas Baby for our fifth anniversary, Bahamas Cruise for our Tenth, and a host of places in between.
I think we’ve gone on a trip almost every year for our anniversary, and this year we are celebrating at a semi-new destination… Williamsburg, VA!
In honor of our trip and our love for travel, I thought I would share some tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way… especially saving money on all the FOOD!
I know it’s hard to do. Especially if you are like me and you get in ‘vacation mode’ aka ‘spending mode’ where you are feeling carefree and the money just starts flying out of your husband’s wallet. :)
We go through our ups and downs with maintaining a careful budget, but right now we are on an “UP” so I’ve done a lot of planning before our trip and we’re deciding what we are going to spend our budgeted money on.
If I’m on a budget, I’d rather spend more of my budgeted moolah on activities then on eating every meal out.
Plus, there are plenty of times when it is actually MORE convenient to eat IN than OUT. When you are traveling with small children, for instance, you are often challenged with keeping everyone fed and napped and happy. It is so much easier and faster when you are bringing the kids in from a morning at the pool or the beach and everyone’s hungry to whip up that sustenance quickly and get it on the table.
And really I can’t be the only parent who doesn’t really enjoy taking our three kids out to eat, right?
We’ll be staying in a condo with a full kitchen, which we REALLY love! If you don’t have a kitchen, that does limits what you can do to save money, but I’ve heard of people that use coolers and crockpots in their hotel rooms and make out great!
And really, sometimes you can find great, affordable deals on condos or houses to rent online using sites like travelocity or priceline or vrbo.com especially if you’ll be traveling with friends or family and you can split the costs!
Tip #1… Make and Eat Breakfast IN! You do NOT want to have to wait on everyone {ahem, usually we’re waiting on me, sad to say} to get completely ready in order to EAT. Don’t you find that you get crabby when you are hungry?? Save some sanity and create some instant peace by filling up your belly with some yummy goodness before you have a chance to bite your beloved’s head off.
Breakfast is easy to make special, and is so much cheaper to make your own than to buy breakfast for everyone too. I plan to prep and take this Baked French Toast from Pioneer Woman that Laine tweaked and healthified.
I’ve made this one several times, and it has been a H-I-T! I have had trouble with the milk mixture spilling out of the pan during our travel, but freezing it ahead of time seems to do the trick.
Another tip… write the baking instructions clearly on the pan. That way if someone else is up earlier than you and decides to be helpful, they’ll know how to prepare it!
I’ve also done this Sausage and Egg Breakfast Casserole, but I haven’t managed to come out with something amazingly delicious, although I fully realize there could be user error involved. :)
After enjoying something similar but much yummier at Sunday School, I begged for the recipe, and I’m hoping I can recreate the goodness. I’m thinking maybe I need to put the bottom layer in the oven to bake for a few minutes by itself before adding the rest of the ingredients on top since the top seems to burn before the bottom gets done. :(
We’ll also be having normal breakfasty things like simple Eggs & Bacon and Biscuits & Gravy!
Tip #2… Save money on your vacation grocery budget by bringing items from your stockpile with you. If you bought mayo for 50¢ or less, you really don’t want to have to pay $3 for it on your vacation grocery trip do you? Make your menu plan and delegate which items you’ll be bringing with you and which things you’ll wait to purchase when you get there… bread, eggs, and ice cream are three no brainers that are better to buy when you get there.
Don’t be crazy about it, and take into account vehicle space and your spouses irritation when you point to 5 boxes and bags of groceries he has to whittle out a spot for.
Not that I know anything about that, of course. Ahem!
Tip #3… Prep your meals ahead of time and bring them with you! I alluded to this already, but it really is SUCH a lifesaver! I’ve done this SEVERAL times for trips since I started doing my weekly prep a year ago, and it has worked awesomely! We are saving SO much money and TIME by eating IN, but I still feel like I’m on vacation since I’m not having to stand around spending time in the kitchen fixing our meals. It’s definitely the biggest WIN WIN of all.
Prepping meals ahead of time is such a foreign concept to most people, so here’s the gist of it. I am not cooking the meal ahead of time. I am only doing the first several steps of the meal prep. I’m prepping it to be ready to go in the oven or crockpot or stove, which means that all my meals will still be amazingly FRESH and fabulous.
If you choose, you can even freeze your prepped meals to make traveling with them even easier {as I mentioned above}. This way you don’t have to worry about how long they’ll be good in the cooler. Just pack them all in your cooler and put some ice in {or not, depending on how long your drive is} and you’re good to go.
Tip #4… Pick meals that are fun and worthy of vacation. I think of this like the meals I try to plan for the weekend especially early in our quest for meal planning. We were used to eating out every weekend, so in an effort to curb this, I tried to plan more fun type meals so we wouldn’t feel like we were being deprived. Things like Cheeseburger Sliders, Chicken Fingers, Ham & Cheese Sliders to name a few!
{via Serious Eats } {via Living Unbound}
Remember this is vacation. It’s about having fun and spending time with each other, so make it a priority to think about everyone’s likes and dislikes. Chris would just as soon eat every meal OUT except for breakfast, but I try to convince him to eat in by offering him meal ideas that appeal to his vacation mindset!
Out of our six night stay, we’ll be eating IN two nights and eating OUT four nights.
We’re having Asian Chicken Wings and Crockpot French Dip subs for our vacation “in” meals!
Don’t forget to bring foil and ziploc bags as well, to ensure your leftovers don’t go to waste.
For our meals out, I logged onto restaurant.com and searched the city we’ll be staying in and found three $25 gift certificates for only $3 each!
They make it sound really awesome, but really these are more of a COUPON than a certificate since there are MANY restrictions and minimum purchases. If the minimum purchase amount is $35, than you can think of it like paying $3 for a coupon to get a $25 off a $35 meal. Which isn’t too bad!
Tip #5… Prepare portioned snacks beforehand. Nothing can make grouchy kiddos perk up faster than a a quickly served snack at the needed moment.
Having bags of pretzels, popcorn, or fruit ready to dish out means you won’t be veering off the fun path to try to find some over priced sustenance to keep the cherubs from driving you batty.
One last freebie… Remember that you’re there to have fun. If you are the Frugal Expert, don’t get carried away and make how much money you can save become your purpose.
If you have the funds available, there is no better occasion to splurge than on vacation! Sometimes being willing to splurge on your family… happily… can be a very powerful way to show them your love!
Especially if they know how frugally obsessed you may be. :)
Check out this great post from Beauty & Bedlam and this one from Annie’s Eats for even more tips on saving $$ on Vacation Food…
I’d love to know your favorite Vacation Tips! Please share!
Bringing your own groceries instead of dining out every day is a great way to save money on your getaway.