One of the most important things in life to me is time with with my family.  I’m very much an experiences mom and love whenever we can plan a trip to make new memories and see new places.  Travel feels like a splurge, but it really doesn’t have to be!!  One of my best tips for saving when traveling is to create a vacation meal plan the same way we would at home.  You need to eat at home and on vacation, so with a meal plan your vacation food budget doesn’t have to be any more than you would have spent at home!

Most people hear “meal plan” and immediately feel like eating out and fun things were just taken away.  This doesn’t mean you can’t eat out; just plan when you will eat out and have a plan for every other meal so you aren’t tempted to eat out more. If you’re staying in a place with a full kitchen (which I highly recommend), then you can save a ton of money by cooking in. But that doesn’t mean you have to eat beans and rice all week. We splurge a little on vacation since we’re saving so much on not eating out for most meals.

Unlike other meal plans, I am truly just giving you a glimpse into our meal plan. I doubt it would work for you to totally copy mine, so I made you a template you can print out and fill in with your own meals, as well as a planning page to work through before you start filling in meals. Read on to see how to make a vacation meal plan (and find out what we’re eating!).

Creating A Vacation Meal Plan

To begin, here are the printables I made so you can work through the process of making a meal plan. The first printable is a planning page where you can jot down your family’s requests, any special meals you’re planning, activities that you plan to do, and then anything else you need that might not be part of a particular recipe.

Download and print the planning page!

The other printable is the actual meal plan. Here you can fill in the days in the first column (e.g. Day 1: Sunday) and then cross off any days or meals that aren’t part of your vacation.

Download and print the meal plan template!

Now I’ll share the step-by-step method to saving money on food by making a vacation meal plan.

Write out all the meal times you need to plan

I also like to plan the meal right before we leave on vacation through the meal we’ll have at home once we get back. This way we aren’t tempted to eat out because we’re coming home to an empty kitchen!

Note any times you won’t need to plan a meal

Note any times when you won’t be cooking – will you be eating out on the road? Will you do something one day and plan to pick up food while you’re out? Mark that down so you know you don’t have to worry about those days. This is where you can jot down planned activities on the meal plan page, too.

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