How I’m Cutting Food Costs in San Diego.

I leave tomorrow morning at 4am for San Diego!

This trip is going to be a blast-but it isn’t going to be cheap. I want to admit up front that I will not be doing everything in the most frugal way possible. There are three other grown women on this trip, and although none of them are spendthrifts, none of them is quite as frugal as I am either. Sometimes in a group compromises must be made-and that means that we may be eating out more frequently or in more expensive places than I would always wish-or that we may go to attractions or use more expensive methods of transportation than I would if I were with the family.

I’m OK with that. This is a vacation, Yankee Bill and I have discussed how much money it is reasonable to spend, and I’ll make my decisions based on that.

But on to the food issues. A person has to eat every day, and on vacation your choices are much more expensive than cooking from scratch at home. It is also much more caloric-I don’t want to come home from vacation weighing more than I already do! So thinking about food is a good way to start thinking about making this trip a bit more frugal.

Food is probably one of the easiest ways to overspend on a trip-but also the easiest one to mitigate with some forethought.

Normally I would recommend using lunch for our big sit down meal, as lunch menus are usually much cheaper for the same amounts and types of food. Then for dinner we could grab something cheap and light. That classic strategy isn’t going to work in this instance, as Doc is in conference during the days-so she would miss out on the big meal. Since she is paying for the hotel room, it would be nice to have her eat a nice sitdown meal too.

We will most likely be eating dinner out most nights. Another classic strategy would be to eat lunch in our room instead. We could buy a loaf of bread and some PB & J (or lunch meat if you have a fridge). Even at expensive metro grocery store prices, this would be much cheaper than eating out for lunch. We will most likely not be in or near the rooms at lunchtime most days-and I don’t think I could convince the other ladies to lug a PB&J sandwich along in their purses. I guess that I could, and then sit there and watch them eat lunch. . . .but I’m not sure if I have enough willpower for that.

So here is the strategy I came up with:

Airports-Eat my granola bars, drink tap water or buy coffee (yes, I’ll pay starbucks style prices for coffee in the airport-hey, I’ll be getting up at 3 am, and the travel mug of coffee I’ll slurp on the way to Syracuse will be long gone. . . .) We will be landing in San Diego around lunchtime-but that’s west coast lunchtime, so it will feel like 3 hours after lunch for me! If I can’t sustain myself on granola bars, and everyone else is eating lunch, I will go for the cheap stuff. If we wind up in a sit down place I’ll order only an appetizer or soup. After all-why waste money on airport food? I’ve got a whole vacation to eat.

Breakfast-No need to waste money here. If I eat in a restaurant, I will overeat (trust me on this) and spend way too much. There is a coffee pot in the room (no free continental b-fast here, instead there are 4 restaurants at the hotel), so that is taken care of. Each of us decided to buy some granola/breakfast/meal replacement bars here at home and pack them along in our suitcases for breakfasts and snacks. That should get us going and keep us till lunch.

Lunch-Mostly inexpensive street vendor type food. Lunch specials, Fish Tacos etc. The intent is to tote along some extra granola type bars in our purses to sustain us-that way we won’t have to get desperately hungry and settle for something more expensive just because it’s near where we are at that particular moment. Oh, and we’ll also buy some bottled water early on and refill it an take it along on our daytrips. I, as usual, will order tap water with all meals.

Dinner-Our big, sitdown type of meal for the day. We are unlikely to ever really go to a 5 star type establishment, but this will be much more expensive than we are used to simply because it is a metro area. We will of course look for coupon books at the visitors center and such, and also look for advertised specials. Many time some of the best food comes from little local places-and I’m sure that we can get excellent Mexican just about anywhere without paying a fortune. I probably will order a beer with dinner, but skip dessert.

Going Out-At least a couple of nights we will head over to the Gaslight District to check out the nightlife. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been in a club and gone dancing (having kids does that to you!). Luckily (ha!) for me, drinking too much alcohol dehydrates me, which triggers off my migraines. This negative conditioning has taught me not to drink very much-so it will be much easier to be kind to my wallet and only have a couple of beers or such, interspersed with lots of tap water.

On days that Doc is out and about with us at lunchtime, we will of course reverse things and make lunch this our big meal of the day, and dinner less expensive.

So that’s the plan. Maybe nothing too earth shattering, but I have at least thought about it and made some plans. At Weight Watchers (way back when) I learned that doing a mental rehearsal of what you want to do really helps you to follow through on that plan when the time comes. So giving this thought ahead of time should make it easier for me to stick with it.