Our 2010 Vacation: How We Saved On Food

So we are still on vacation and having wonderful (highly needed) family time.

We have been on vacation since the 23rd, and so with a vacation that long – the food bill could be outrageous, especially for a family of 6.

Since we are The Thrifty Couple, we would like to share what we have done to trim the vacation food bill this round.  There are many, many ideas, but here’s specifically what we did for this trip.

First and most important to us for our personal vacation food budget is being able to grab that condo for a deal.  Why was this important? Well not only does it save sanity, more relaxing for us and more – it actually saves potentially hundreds in food over a several day vacation.  And it can also provide ways to eat healthier as well!

With that out of the way, here’s what we did:

For the first several days, we were just in our condo on the beach and enjoyed the local sites and sounds.  This allowed for us to eat in at the condo.  We had breakfast, lunch and dinner here when we could.  We went to Walmart and Albertson’s when we got here in Southern California and took our coupon binder with us and shopped the food for the week.  Although we spent about double our weekly grocery budget (as we are buying the things we need now, not just grabbing the great deals and stocking up and eating from our stock-pile like we normally do), it saved us hundreds for the week, plus even more with the coupons we were able to use!

Our meals we were able to eat inside the condo included:

• Lots of fresh fruit and veggies
• Fresh salad and our favorite dressings
• Stuff for our Christmas morning breakfast casserole
• Christmas dinner of steaks, garlic bread, steamed veggies and salad
• Stuff for Lasagna dinner
• Stuff for Pizza dinner
• Breads and sandwich fixings

For the days that we went to Disneyland and Sea World:

• Breakfast: While we were shopping at Walmart and Albertsons, we picked up items for what we call “breakfast in a bag” that we usually make on Sunday mornings.  As we leave for church at 8:30 am (which is a challenge for a family of 6), breakfast in a bag is the lifesaver those mornings. So we decided to do the same thing for those early morning theme park days.  Kids get dressed and we hand them a bag and stick them in the car – which means we are ready to go and have well fed kiddos! Our breakfasts in a bag this week included: clementines, bananas, yogurt, Nutri-grain bars and breakfast cookies.
• Snacks: We purchased snack crackers and other snack foods for while we are in the parks to help us not spend money on the many snacks that toddlers and little kids need (ok – mom and dad too ) Most of these were crackers, clementines, rice krispy treats, and homemade organic fruit leather that we made and brought from home.
• Lunches: Similar to the lunches on the days we stayed-in, sandwiches and more packed lunches. Since we had the condo with a full-size fridge and freezer, it was easy to make and pack lunches from the condo to take with us and refreeze our reusable ice packs we brought from home.
• Dinners: For the dinners at the theme parks, we did a couple of things.  We first looked up restaurants in the Disney area or Disney property and discovered that House of Blues in Downtown Disney was on Restaurant.com! We waited for a clearance sale and purchased $25 gift certificates for $2! We did read the fine print and we could only use one every thirty days, but this took care of one meal for us and we didn’t even have to leave the Disney grounds.  Second, we were following the Disney Blog for about a month before we left and mid-month, they posted these 30% off coupons to use in the park at a handful of restaurants.  We printed a couple of these to eat at the park the other two Disney nights.  We chose to do this instead of trying to leave the grounds and eating outside of the park due to the high amount of people in the park! We wanted to maximize our time in the park since we would have longer wait lines.
• Drinks: Probably the biggest money saver of all for inside of the parks was taking our own water! at $3 a bottle, this can add up VERY quickly! Honestly, our kids will down an entire bottle in one setting when they are working – they drink a ton of water, and we literally packed in a 24-pack of water into the park in the bottom of our stroller every day.  The 24-packs of water cost us $2.59 each day vs. the $3.00 a bottle each water break.  We calculate that this is over a $70 savings each day. So if you are to do anything to save money at theme parks, taking your own water (although heavy and irritating!) will save you LOADS of money! We also had some special character Tummy Ticklers apple juices that we got on clearance for .33 a bottle, normally $1.50.   This was a fun treat to pull-out for the kids as they were Disney themed and looked like mini versions of the souvenir cups you buy for $8-$10!

For the Road Trip:

• By the time our trip is over, we will have spent 4 days on the road.  Even just those 4-days of buying food for the family can put a huge gash in your budget! So we packed snacks in our cooler for the driving munchies.  We grabbed these snacks from our stockpile at home, we did not make a special buying trip. This meant that they were SUPER cheap and some were probably FREE. We also made a few pans of homemade organic fruit leather that we snacked on throughout the vacation. We also had our coupon binder where we used the restaurant section to find the fast food coupons to use along the road.  If you remember our post from a couple of weeks ago, we even had FREE Wendy’s French Fry coupons! We would buy a sandwich and maybe fries, but fill-in the rest of the meal with our drinks we packed and fresh veggies and fruits.   For the breakfasts, we did stay at hotels that offered FREE breakfast (see our previous post on our hotel at $58 a night - this included the breakfast that we forgot to mention there!).

These are a few tricks we did this time. There are many, many ideas and ways to save on food while on vacation.  Even when eating out, just little tricks like ordering water and having the kids split an adult entree will save loads of money without coupons or pre-planning involved!

The picture above is us at our Christmas morning breakfast table in our vacation condo with breakfast casserole.  No showers and beauty here, just the real-life family enjoying a yummy Christmas breakfast!

As we are nearing the end of our vacation and enjoying Sea World today – we also wanted to remind you to enter the giveaway for the $100 Amazon gift card! Each person can enter each day. Head to the official giveaway post for the details and to enter!

Next we will share how we saved on Theme Park tickets!