Saving Money on Food While Traveling

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Last month, we went to an intense 3-day workshop in Atlanta that we knew would have long hours. We were also trying to continue eating reasonably healthy and trying to save money at the same time. So what did we do you ask?

Breakfast

Well, before we left home we were drinking green smoothies every morning for breakfast anyway, so I just made a few extra batches of smoothies and put each serving into a quart-sized zip-top freezer bag and put them into the freezer flat to freeze with the name of the smoothie and calories on the label. These did a dual purpose because they also acted as ice packs in the cooler on our way to Atlanta. They were only partially thawed, so when we got to our room, I left the next day’s smoothie in the refrigerator and put the rest in the freezer. Each morning we added a straw and drank our smoothie then pulled the ones for the next day out so they could thaw. That is how we dealt with breakfast, and it worked out very well.

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Lunch

Lunch was not much harder. We use a lot of the Ole Xtreme Wellness High-Fiber Low-Carb Wraps in place of bread in our house, so we threw a pack of those in along with cheese sticks and sliced turkey lunchmeat for wraps. We tossed in the avocado we had in the refrig so we could use it up. We also prewashed and bagged baby carrots, cherries, and pretzels in individual servings. This meant each morning all we had to do to pack our lunches was make our sandwich/wrap and bag it, then grab the additional things we wanted to have to round out our lunch that day. We also had a small selection of Clif Bars and some prebagged Orchard Valley Harvest Snack Packs Trail Mix. We had a couple of single serving sized bottles that we could fill with our own water or iced tea each morning to add to our lunch bag. Everything fit nicely in my Thirty-One Lunch Break Thermal bag and was enough to feed both of us.

This particular event offered lunch tickets for $20 a person to go through a buffet and fill a styrofoam carryout container to bring back and eat in the meeting room. Nobody really wanted to drive somewhere to get fast food because once you were parked you didn’t want to have to give up your parking space for the day as they really had a shortage of parking at this particular event center. Needless to say, Hubby and I were thrilled that we had been cheap and planned to pack our lunches and thus avoided the additional $120 it would have cost us to eat that buffet lunch for the three days of the conference. I’m not going to even pretend we didn’t think of that as a huge win!

Dinner

We got into town Thursday night just in time to pre-register at the conference from 7 to 8 pm. After that, we just wanted to grab something to go and get back to the room to do some additional prep work for the weekend ahead. We found a great little place that was new to us called Willy’s Mexicana Grill and got a burrito bowl for me and a burrito for Hubby along with chips and salsa for just under $16. We were off to a great start since we had eaten our planned and packed breakfast and lunch on the road during the nine-hour drive.

We had a couple of hours free on Friday night to go back to our room or out to dinner. We chose to go back to our room and eat the bagged salads we brought along because we wanted the extra time to focus on our homework and talk about the things we had learned during the day. These were salad kits we had gotten before we left for 2/$5 so still easy on the budget and relatively healthy too. This worked out very well.

Saturday night, we were done with the conference by about 7:30 pm and Hubby wanted to run to WalMart to find some sneakers since the pair he had brought for driving were needing to be replaced. We decided to run in and get the shoes and then find someplace to eat afterward but ended up with a pre-packaged foot-long sub sandwich and a box of peanut M&Ms to share for a cost of just under $6, another win for the team. We rounded this out by splitting one of the bagged slaw kits bought on sale before we left at 3/$5 that we brought with us.

Sunday, the event ended at 4 pm and we planned to get on the road and drive at least part of the way home before stopping for the night. We found a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store to eat a nice but still reasonably healthy dinner to celebrate the end of the conference, we spent less than $30 including the tip for the two of us.

Hotel with FREE Breakfast

We even found a hotel room about $25 less for the night that we usually budget and it was everything we needed it to be and even included a free breakfast, so we skipped our last packed smoothie and ate for free instead. The smoothie would keep for another day. We ate so much more than we were used to for breakfast that we were too full to eat lunch. By the time we got home and got everything unloaded and put away properly, chips and salsa sounded like a reasonable way to handle dinner.

Now, lest you think we always travel on the cheap like this, let me set you straight. This was a first for us. We really have never packed so many meals to eat on a road trip before, not even when the kids were little. We rarely pay for anything to drink when we eat out, choosing instead to drink ice water because it is free and better for us.

Eat In

We have gone on trips where we stayed in a condo for a week where we had a full kitchen at our disposal and even an outdoor grill we could cook on. During those vacations, we made a trip to the grocery and bought food for most of the meals for the week planning to cover all but one or two meals and use up most of the food so we wouldn’t waste it or need to cart it back home with us. Those kinds of trips can be fun and easy on the budget too.

Traveling doesn't have to be expensive. Click To Tweet

Traveling doesn’t have to be expensive. In many cases, the food costs about the same as eating at home during a regular work week would. It is mostly about your mindset going into the trip. If cooking together or eating normal food is something that makes you feel deprived instead of eating out for three meals a day, then it will feel like torture. Having time to grocery shop and cook together is a treat for us because that rarely happens while we are at home. We often eat alone during the work week because one or both of us have some sort of meeting in the evening or one of us is working late on any given night. The nice thing about this sort of vacation trip is that while you are still cooking and cleaning up after each meal, there are very few other chores to be done in a vacation place until checkout time, so you don’t mind spending a little time putzing around the kitchen prepping good food to share together.

Two Meals instead of Three

What are your tips for saving money on food while traveling? Do you eat a big breakfast and an early dinner and skip the mid-day meal like we do on occasion? Have you ever packed food to take along in the car? That was common in the 1970s, but maybe not so much these days. We didn’t mind at all and it really worked out well for us this last trip, so we will likely do it more often. Please share your tips and tricks below as I am always looking for new ways to save money.

Safe travels!

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