Don’t let our upcoming epic trip to Guatemala mislead you. Road trips are our normal vacation style. As a frugal family of eight, we get a lot more bang for our buck when we take road trips than any other kind of vacation. We get to see so many hidden treasures throughout our country and we love it!
Just by their nature, road trips are cheaper than most other vacations, but in this post, I’m going to give you some tips that will help you make them even more economical! I’ll show you how you can save money on gas, food, entertainment, and accommodations.
I’ve spent tens of thousands of miles in the car on road trips. I grew up about two thousand miles away from any extended family. Every couple of years my family would make the long trek across the country to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. I went to college nearly two thousand miles away from home and made the trip back and forth many times. Long weekends and time between semesters were perfect for taking road trips to explore other parts of the country.
Now as parents of six who still love to travel, Mike and I have mastered the art of dragging our kids all over the country (and enjoying it). We learned all the tricks to traveling frugally so that even while we were paying off six figures of student loan debt, we kept road trips as a family tradition.
Here are some of our best tips to save money on road trips:
Saving Money on Gas for Road Trips
Some people might shy away from taking road trips because of the price of gas, but when compared with other means of travel, it’s usually the most frugal way to go! Driving might not be cheaper if you’re going alone, but the more people you put in your car, the more economical your trip will be. With our family of eight, flying anywhere would easily cost us over two thousand dollars, but driving would cost a fraction of that.
Here are some tips to save on gas:
- Use the GasBuddy app or GasBuddy.com to plan out where to get gas. Use the app or website before your trip to get an idea of the best places to get gas (gas prices can vary greatly from town to town). During your trip, the app can help you find the exact station that’s the cheapest.
- Make sure your tires are fully inflated. Inflated tires make less friction, and less friction means better gas mileage (and better wear on your tires!).
- Avoid rush hour traffic in big cities. Sitting idle (or crawling) in bad traffic is a great way to waste gas (not to mention time and patience). You’ll save money and have a much more pleasant trip if you avoid heavy traffic times in big cities.
- Use cruise control. Driving at a constant speed is more fuel efficient. Cruise control will also keep the lead-footed from getting a ticket (assuming you’re cruising at or below the speed limit), saving even more money.
If you’re looking for ideas to save money on your everyday gas expenses, here are some great tips.
Saving Money on Food for Road Trips
Another big expense on a road trip is food. If you typically eat out when you’re travelling, whether it’s at sit-down restaurants or fast food, then you have lots of room for saving money on your road trip.
The best way to save money on food when you’re travelling is to bring your own. In addition to saving money, you’ll also save time waiting in drive through lines or stopping to visit restaurants. You’ll also have more healthy options available.
Here are some tips for saving on food for your road trip:
- Prepare the first few meals for your trip at home. We usually make a bunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Having something pre-made is really convenient when little mouths are more hungry than patient.
- Leftovers are also a great road trip option. If you’re going to be gone for a while, it will help prevent wasting food, too! When we went camping the day after Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, we brought leftover turkey, rolls, and cranberry sauce with us. It was a fun change from our normal road trip food. Pancakes or French toast make good leftovers for road trips too.
- Bring the fixin’s with you. Even though we bring along pre-made PB&J sandwiches, we also bring along the peanut butter and jelly and a knife. Then on our return trip (or a few days down the road), we can just stop by the store and buy a loaf of bread to make sandwiches.
- Bring a variety of snacks. If you’re in the car for a long time with only salty snacks, you’ll be really tempted every time you drive by a sweets shop. And vice versa. Having a good variety of snacks (sweet, salty, crunchy, chewy, etc.) will help you (and your kids) to not tire of the snacks you bring.
- Make your own individually packaged snacks. To save even more money, I buy snack sized zip-top baggies and make our own grab-and-go type snacks. Pretzels, crackers, cookies, and even cold cereal are great munchies for kids and grown-ups alike. Dividing them up into portions ahead of time saves mess and hassle in the car and is cheaper than buying individually packaged items.
- Choose a grocery store instead of fast food, if you have to stop. When it’s summertime and the kids (and I) are craving something cold and sweet, we’ll stop by a grocery store and buy a box of ice cream sandwiches or popsicles for a couple of dollars, what it would cost for just one milkshake. When my husband and I traveled a lot before the kids, we would stop by a grocery store and buy a loaf or two of French bread and a tub of Country Crock. We’d informally tear off pieces of bread and dip them in the butter. Along with a fruit or veggie, it was our road trip go-to.
- Bring frozen water bottles. Having frozen water bottles serves two purposes. We never have to put ice in our cooler because our frozen water bottles keep our food cold. As the water thaws, it’s a nice refreshing drink. When we’re on the road for several days, we will also bring milk frozen in water bottles to drink at breakfast or put on cereal.
Saving Money on Entertainment on Road Trips
Being in the car for hours on end can get old for kids (and grown-ups). Having some entertainment along the way will save everyone’s sanity and make the trip much more pleasant. When everyone is in a good mood, you are much more likely to stick to your budget and not slip into emergency I’ll-pay-anything-to-keep-these-grumpy-kids-content mode.
- Get some new-to-them treasures. Stop by the dollar store or thrift store to find some exciting new books or toys. Some parents wrap them up and let them open something every so often. I usually just pull out new things as random surprises. It’s amazing how exciting a brand new coloring book with new crayons can be. Books they’ve never read (from thrift stores or yard sales) are also a big hit with my little ones. For a few dollars you can get hours of on-the-road entertainment.
- Play classic road trip games. Kids who are used to just watching DVDs in the car might not know all the classic car trip games that we played as kids. Play the alphabet game or the license plate game. Print out car bingo before you leave home or have a scavenger hunt along the way. Play “I spy,” twenty questions, or take turns asking trivia questions. My elementary school kids love it when I’ll ask them spelling words or math problems while we travel.
- Get out and move at rest stops. At some point you’ll have to stop for a potty break. Having a ball or frisbee with you can make the stop fun and help to get the wiggles out. Even without any “extras,” taking five or ten minutes to run around and stretch your legs makes a big difference.
- Find interesting sites, historical markers, and vistas along the way. Do a little research ahead of time to see if you’ll be passing by some free entertainment on your route. Will there be some beautiful views or historical markers with pull-outs? If they fit the ages and interests of your family, they can provide free entertainment and a short break from being buckled up.
Saving Money on Accommodations on Road Trips
When I was a kid, my dad was a marathon driver and would power through the night. Sometimes he would stop at a rest stop and sleep for 3 or 4 hours in the car, stretching out in the aisle of our Ford conversion van. I can only remember getting a motel a few times on our 36 hour trips to Grandma’s, and it was usually because of a blizzard.
For most people, you’ll probably need to find some overnight accommodations if you’re taking a longer trip or driving cross country.
Here are some ways to save on accommodations for your road trip.
- Bring along a tent and camp. We are avid outdoors people, so camping is normal and low-stress for us, even when we’re traveling with kids. Sometimes we have to pay for a campsite, but more often we stop where we can camp for free. You can pitch a tent in most national forests for free. There are lots of other public lands (state parks, BLM land, etc.) where you can camp for free if you don’t mind not having facilities. In the high-use areas with designated campsites, you’ll have to pay, though it’s probably significantly cheaper than a hotel. I wrote a whole post on How to Camp for Free that will tell you everything you need to know.
- Stay with family or friends. We have good friends spread throughout the country and love having the chance to see them. When we are driving cross country, we try to plan our schedule so we’ll be near friends or family at the end of the day. when our family was smaller we would contact the friends or family ahead of time and let them know we’ll be in their area on our upcoming trip and that we’d love to get together and maybe even crash on their floor. We have great memories of these visits. Now that there are eight(!) of us, we don’t impose like this very often, but if someone offers (and we feel like they are really up for all of our… energy), then we’ll take them up on it
- Find unique accommodations on Airbnb. Have you tried Airbnb? You can get one-of-a-kind accommodations all over the world. You can search by location and narrow it down by price range. since our family size requires two hotel rooms, we often find it cheaper to rent a house on Airbnb. Airbnb is a great option for saving money on accommodations when you reach your destination too. I have a whole post on how to save even more money with Airbnb.
Where is your next road trip?
Are you excited to plan your next road trip? Are you taking one this summer?
Your road trip can be as frugal as you make it. You can set and stick to a budget while you’re on vacation and still have loads of fun!
What other money saving road trip tips do you have?
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We do a lot of these and are avid campers – but doing long road trips in our prius (with a family of 4 – 2 adults and 2 teens) – packing what we need does not leave enough room for packing our camping gear too. A lot of your ideas we already implement and have been traveling this way for years, mainly due to our daughter’s life threatening dairy-protein allergy (too risky to eat at most places). We stop at a rest area or city park and eat. I bring a flask of coffee that I made before we left for my husband and myself for that caffeine boost. I always make my own meals to eat where we stop and snack bags – this way I know what is in the food and that it is safe (quicker too and cheaper). After the kids have eaten we make them run around for around 20 minutes to get their “wiggles out” – they can kick a ball, throw and catch a frisbee, etc.
For getting to our destination as we cannot camp we use the points my husband has racked up at hotels (through work) throughout the year and stay for free. We typically stay with family or friends at our final destination. We have only made 3 trips where we have had hotel stays as our final destination – but we have always used hotel points in that case – or paid less than $40/night (as my sister-in-law works at a hotel chain and gets us her discount)
We always gas up first thing in the morning and that tank of gas goes a whole lot further (esp in the Prius) than the subsequent fill up does. We are making a trip to Canada (from TX) this summer and our est gas costs for the trip there and back is around $215 with the Prius.
My kids have travel backpacks (that I have assembled prior to our trip) – and in those I have placed games & activities (that I have bought on clearance or at Dollar Tree throughout the year) that are travel friendly, coloring books (those adult doodling/manadala ones), a binder that I have assembled with activities and journal pages and a map of our trip – so they can see our starting point and final destination (we don’t get “Are we there yet” or “how much longer” as they can follow along on the map).
My mother-in-law always buys us a National Park pass each year at Christmas as the family gift & and TX State Park pass – she prefers to give us experiences and memories as a family. We buy a family pass each year to our local children’s museum that is part of the ASTC Travel Passport plan – so we get into science museums (not all science museums are part of this). It pays for itself within 2 visits/year. Last year we visited 12 of these museums around the country and saved ourselves around $700 (we paid $90 for a 15 month membership). Then we visit attractions that are free – rarely paying anything to visit a location whilst on our travels.
I wish I had read this BEFORE we took my kids on a 14 hour road trip! We definitely learned that it’s important to anticipate the kids getting grumpy. Trying to entertain them with a new toy once they were already cranky didn’t work at all! Now as soon as we’re in the car for a half hour or so I start handing out toys. Between that and taking frequent, shorter, breaks rather than one long break made our return home trip much faster, cheaper, and more pleasant!
These are great! We always pack our own food but I never think to prepackage them ahead of time; I do however bring ziploc bags so I can dole them out in the car.
Ten years ago, we found a cooler that had been put out for garbage because it had a broken handle. My husband fixed the handle and it turned out to be a model that you can plug into the cigarette lighter to keep cold (or hot if you switch the wires). It’s been a game changer for us. We travel every year to Mexico (3,200mi each way) and our hotel rooms don’t have fridges so we bought an inverter/adapter/whatever it’s called that plugs into an electrical outlet and has a cigarette lighter plug on the other end. Cold food for our 5-day drive and no fast food (or food poisoning)! Can’t beat the price either.
I grew up in Africa – and used to take many long distance road trips – my mom always did these. I have incorporated these too into our road trips.
We are about to embark on a 9000+ mile road trip this summer with a preteen and teen and 2 adults in a Prius.
We eat at Rest Stops with food that I have premade prior to leaving home, along with snacks, drinks etc. We make the rest stop a good 30 – 45 minutes each time and make the kids run. We bring a frisbee, soccer ball and another small ball game (space is critical in a Prius). We go at least 3 hrs between each rest stop – sometimes we can go 4-5 hrs before 3 of the 4 of us start crying for mercy. We are staying in hotels for only 7 nights – using points we have accumulated through the year (as a result of my husband’s business trips) and staying with family the other nights.
We also only allow them to have screen time (kindles/ movies and I-Pads) after lunch – as a reward for being great travelers in the morning. In the morning hrs, they love coloring in those grown-up mandala coloring books and doing various crafts, playing games & listening to an audio book and discussing each chapter after.
I compile a binder of various activities/games for them – empty pages for them to journal their trip and glue tickets/souvenirs onto the pages. I also print out a copy of the day’s trip – ie the map of the trip with our drive highlighted and directions printed below the map. They are learning map reading skills and also we do not get “are we there yet?” “how much longer?” etc.
Our kids are fantastic long-distance travelers – we have always adapted our travel to their age capabilities – which is probably why they love road-trips too.
Did you know that most gas stations will let you refill your water bottles for free? After running out of water a few too many times, I finally asked. Every time I have asked, they’ve said “sure”. We bring in our empty water bottles and fill with ice and water.
We only do this when we fill up the car, so that we are paying for the stop.
Any restaurant or gas station that is on the exit sign is required to provide bathrooms and drinking water to travelers – it is part of their agreement to get on the federally funded interstate signs!
What my husband and I was that we planned out our route to and from our vacation, how much we are going to spend (gas, hotels, food and trinkets). We stayed at hotels with free/continental breakfast and we made our own lunch. We stayed under budget all because of our planning.
Some of these I did not think of but will be doing next time. One thing in the area of accommodations is being a member of a hotel loyalty club. If you time it right, you can get a lot of mileage (no pun intended) out of it. For instance, sometimes Choice has “Stay 2 Separate Nights, Get 1 Free” promotions. (It also helps that my mom gets a senior citizen discount.) Also, everyone knows about AAA and AARP discounts, but sometimes college alumni programs have discounts too.
We use an electric cooler. It has an adaptor for the car and for household power.
that expands the options lunch meat leftovers milk yogurt. and cold food for the whole trip
Great post! We’re taking a road trip this summer and we plan on packing a cooler full of sandwiches, and snacks with frozen water bottles and create an activity center for our 3 year old with crayons and coloring books, flash cards, a magnet board and story books.
Thank you so very much. I have never heard of Airbnb. I looked it up and my MIND WAS BLOWN!!! Oh my goodness. I am so excited. I am very much a frugal person and save money all year round but I have to admit I splurge a little bit on vacations. It’s my treat to myself. Now I can do it the frugal way. Thank you!!!
Fun Diana! Yes, Airbnb has so many unique options at price levels all across the board. I hope you find something fun!
My friend jokes that she buys a big bag of candy before a road trip. Every time her little ones get into an arguement, she takes a piece and eats it. Pretty soon, they get the message.
We recently drove from Anaheim up to the Columbia River and back. The kids were champions; they didn’t complain once! I don’t think it was anything we did, we just have amazing kids. Initially we were going to fly. We live in Australia and wanted to take the kids to Disneyland and then go back to Oregon, where I grew up; and we figured it’d be cheaper and quicker to fly. After all the US is the home of cheap flights, right? Nope. It was at least $800 cheaper to drive, even factoring in food and hotels. There were no direct flights anyway, so flying would’ve taken a day (and a really boring day waiting in airports.) We had a great time. Driving allowed us to do lots of extra stuff too, like stop off at Crater Lake and the Redwoods. I still prefer flying . . . but that was a really fun road trip.
We love roadside rest stops and parks! We usually get a whole fried chicken from the grocery store before we leave and make that our first meal of the trip. Tasty and cheaper than fast food! Our kids are really little, so we have to take frequent breaks to stretch their legs. We also get audiobooks from the library to listen to along the way.
This post couldn’t have come at a more perfect time! We’re going on a road trip in a couple of weeks, so I will have to implement some of these tips! Frozen water bottles? Why didn’t I think of that? Thanks for the great tips Stephanie!
These are such great tips Stephanie! I used to love road trips because my mother would pack licorice (we didn’t have candy in the house). We also brought along a deck of cards and found a way to play poker in the back seat (this is before everyone wore seat belts in the back seat). When we take our kids on a trip, they each get a back pack filled with snacks, so there is no fighting and they have to make what’s in there last for the whole time we travel to and from. It does save a lot. Thanks for sharing 🙂