TripHip - Travel Tips and Advice for Traveling on a Budget

While traveling, one of the biggest expenditures is food. Food can be pricey on the road or at a destination. There are many ways to save on food while traveling. Following the tips below will save you a bundle during your vacation time.

1) Pack a cooler- This is a great way to save money. Buy hot dogs, soda, water, juice, hamburger meat, lunch meat, and condiments. Pack them in a cooler and bring some bread and chips along. You can stop along the way and have picnic meals. Or eat while you drive.

2) When stopping at fast food restaurants, pick items from the value menu and buy cans of soda at the store. Since you can usually get a can of soda for around $0.65(as compared to $1.50 or more for the fountain sodas at the drive-thru), you save a bit of money. Everyone can get a $1 chicken sandwich or burger and a fry. Each meal then only costs about $2.65 per person.

3) If you plan on staying at a hotel, you could take a hot plate and cook your own meals. Purchase food at a local grocery store and enjoy home cooked food. This also works at vacation properties. They often come with full kitchens in which you can cook your own meals.

Traveling can be costly as it is. You can reduce the amount you spend on food quite a bit by instituting these ideas. Use them for most of your vacation, but always set aside at least one meal to enjoy local cuisine.

When you are on a trip, you can end up spending lots of money on food when you eat three meals a day at restaurants.

One way to cut down on food bills is to simply buy your food from a grocery store and prepare it yourself. You can buy bread and sandwich fixings and easily throw together a lunch. For breakfast, you can buy croissants and fruit.

Most hotel rooms in the US have a small fridge and a microwave. Take advantage of this by buying foods that you can keep in the fridge and heat in the microwave.

Extended-stay hotels offer kitchenettes in their rooms, so if you are staying in one place for at least a week, consider staying at an extended-stay hotel for this benefit. You'll save a ton of money by not having to dine out every night!

It's a good idea to bring your own snacks onto airplanes. That way, if you get the munchies, you're not at the mercy of the flight attendants (who often only have pretzels on hand for hungry fliers).

Everyone has heard that you shouldn't drink the water when you are traveling outside the country. While this is certainly true, that isn't where your safety concerns should end.

If the water in an area is especially suspect, don't even eat any raw fruit or vegetables unless its something that you peel the skin before eating. All food should be well cooked, so try to avoid rare or raw meats.

Some places in developing countries may try to sell you "bottled water" that is actually filled with tap water. If your water has a broken safety seal, don't trust it. For the best security, buy carbonated water. Bubbles mean it hasn't been opened.

Don't forget ice cubes. No sense drinking bottled water if you are going to drop a few tap-water ice cubes in your drink. That includes any drinks ordered in a restaurant.

Fast food restaurants are under attack these days, for providing fatty foods to their clientele. I pay no attention to the campaign against them. Good things come to those who eat in moderation, and do not consume milkshakes.

However, if you're in a car and travelling on a budget, the last thing you want to do is spend $20 on a meal for two or three at a restaurant, when you can fix yourself P&J sandwiches, or deli-meat sandwiches, for a fraction of the cost.

Bring a cooler with you, and stock it up with ice. You can of course restock it at every motel you stay in. Purchase a variety of lunch meats, fruits, milk and so on, and store them in the cooler.

Depending on where you stay, there will be a microwave and refrigerator in your room. If this is the case, go out to a local superstore and pick up a few $1.00 TV dinners. For less than half the price of a hamburger from a fast food restaurant, you can get a meat, vegetable, and desert portion in a TV dinner.

Try to purchase your food at a large grocery store or at a superstore (the Walmarts, the Kmarts, the Targets), rather than at small convenience stores - because they of course have to charge a high markup in order to stay in business.

When booking a flight, you can almost always choose your meal at the same time. If you can't, log into the travel site or airline site and do it before you leave. Give them a call if you need to.

These days, airlines offer all kinds of meal choices, such as vegetarian, kosher, low calorie, etc. But these meals are usually not available if you just ask for it on the plane - you need to request and reserve the special meal in advance.

Another bonus to this is that usually the flight attendants will bring out these reserved meals in advance, so that they don't mix them up with the other meals. So you'll get your food before everyone else on the plane.

So we’ve covered the basics of getting there-planning a route and not cramming the car, but there are so many more car travel tips to discuss. Keeping the kids occupied, what to pack, when to get gas, and so many other topics are also important when traveling by car.

When my family and I traveled cross-country from Cleveland, Ohio to Grand Canyon, Arizona, we discovered a wealth of helpful information. Luggage carriers that go on top of your vehicle help save space. We were able to fit a cooler, all of our clothing, a small grill, our blankets and pillows, a three-room tent, and more in ours. In hindsight, it makes sense to keep the cooler in the car. It was too difficult to undo everything to get the cooler during our trip.

Speaking of coolers, packing one is a great way to save time and money. Rather than stopping every time someone in the group is hungry, packing a cooler allows for eating as you go. Pack lunch meats, bread, hot dogs, hamburgers, soda, water, chips, and other snacks. You won’t have to stop as much and you won’t be spending a fortune on fast food. Do the math; if you spend $20 on fast food, three times a day, on a three day trip, you have spent $180. If you pack a cooler to last the same amount of time, you can spend as low as $60.

You can bring a charcoal grill, but you don’t have too. Many road stops along the way will have grills. If you plan on using this method of cooking, bring charcoal and lighter fluid. I recommend using a small camping grill that uses propane. Small propane canisters only cost a few dollars at Home Depot and the grill is compact. Easier still, just pack food items that don’t need cooked. In addition to lunch meat, you can pack rotisserie chicken, which is already cooked, Vienna sausages, spam, tuna, and numerous other options.

Anyone with food allergies knows that they need to be careful when ordering meals in a restaurant. It can be even more risky if you are eating away from home, and possibly in a restaurant where no one speaks English.

If your allergies are more annoying than life threatening, you could get by with learning some words in the local language so you can ask if your trigger foods are in any dish.

For a more severe allergy that you can't risk, you will have to stick to major restaurants where the menus are in English and the staff speak it as well.