5 Tips for Cheap and Easy Meals When Traveling With Kids
Stress less about what’s to eat and enjoy the trip with those you love
Traveling can be expensive.
When you have kids and multiple families vacationing together, eating out is usually not easy or cost-efficient.
Figuring out a plan for meals and groceries prior to leaving for your trip is smart to do. All it requires is a little planning.
Having vacationed with multiple families recently, you can use these tips to save some money and make meal-time easy.
Buy groceries in bulk
With 7 adults and 8 kids vacationing together, buying groceries in bulk saved us a lot of money.
Before our most recent trip, my sister-in-law and I went to a wholesale club store where we had memberships. We bought snacks, cereals, and items for the trip all in larger sizes at reduced costs than what you would find at regular grocery stores.
Because we were driving, we could take some groceries in coolers too which was helpful.
Seeing the higher prices of the same foods at local grocery stores where we were vacationing made us happy we bought in bulk prior to leaving. It took a little time to coordinate, but it was worth it.
Share the cost of all the snacks
With multiple kids, we knew offering the same snacks would eliminate arguments among kids and be more friendly to our budget.
Prior to leaving for the trip, we agreed upon a list of snacks that we knew all the kids liked and would be happy eating.
We had chocolate chip granola bars, veggie straws, pretzels, popcorn, and fruit.
It made it easy for trying to keep costs down and save time by purchasing the snacks ahead of time.
Keep breakfast and lunch simple
When traveling with kids, organizing meals and cleaning up can take more time away from relaxing and enjoying the trip.
We kept breakfast and lunch easy.
As much as a hot breakfast with bacon, eggs, and pancakes is delicious, we opted for the cold cereals and toast.
For lunch, we made sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly for the kids. There were always veggies and fruits to eat as well. These options were easy to pack in bags when we wanted to spend more time at the beach too.
Dinner time was enjoyable taking turns cooking
Planning meals can become stressful with large groups. On vacation, the last thing you want to stress about is what to make for dinner.
When going on a trip with multiple families, a great idea to consider is for each family to pick a night to make dinner for everyone.
On our recent trip, I kept it super simple. I made spaghetti and salad in addition to green beans. It was important to make a meal the kids would enjoy and want to eat.
On another night we had bbq grilled chicken and macaroni and cheese. On the third night, we did a taco night complete with all the toppings.
It was nice staying in and not stressing about getting kids ready after the beach to eat out. It was even better to have someone else cook on other nights too.
Use the last night on vacation to eat leftovers
Typically there is always food left over at the end of the week from cooking multiple meals. Eating what’s leftover just makes sense.
No one wants to haul extra food back home. Eating what you have saves you money and isn’t wasteful.
On our last night, we had a smorgasbord of everything left in the fridge and pantry.
If you wanted a bowl of cereal and a side of chips and salsa so be it.
You can always order pizza if you’re short on enough food for everyone. That’s what we ended up doing as well.
Traveling to your new destination with your kids needs to be as stress-free as possible.
Part of that is not overcomplicating what you are doing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Hopefully, you can use these tips on your next vacation with your family.
Do you have any others to add? Let me know in the comments.
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