Does anyone give daily food allowance?

[TheGecko]

My family is pretty reserved when it comes to the amount of food they eat, and rarely has waste so this has never been a factor in rationing the daily food budget. It is also the reason we usually skip the dining plans. Too much money and waste for the amount we eat.

We only go on vacation a couple times a year, so figure might as well enjoy ourselves to the fullest.

 

[Hotvwchick]

I put my 2 teenage daughters on a budget and it saved me a fortune! They are average eaters with one preferring pasta and the other one isn't picky. Upon arrival, I gave them each an envelope with $160($40 x 4 days) to cover food and souvenirs. We were staying at Saratoga Springs in a studio. I had brought breakfast fixing and some snacks. They whined it wasn't enough. I told them that everything they needed for breakfast was here so that was one meal not to worry about. We had a check-in issue with our room and ended up with $100 account credit. The girls wanted to go to T Rex restaurant so I told them they could spent up $25 each($25x3+tax+tip=$100 account credit). Another meal not to worry about. I also paid for a special meal at Prime Time Diner. They found out that they could get a $25 credit each(and free ice cream) if they went to a DVC presentation and pestered me to go. Too funny! They found the meals too big for one so they shared meals and treats. My 16 year old had $110 at the end of our visit and my 14 year old had $90. They bought souvenirs with their $25 DVC credit. They took their leftover funds to the mall and bought brand name winter clothing on clearance. As we are from Canada, they were thrilled with all the brands we can't normally get and most stuff was 70-90% off. I spent $480+$70(Prime Time Diner)=$550 total for 3 people for 4 days at Disney World!
We are going again in January, and they are begging to budget again. It was a great life lesson that taught them communication, choices, budgeting, and how to get creative with limited funds all while having fun at Disneyworld. They are even planning a DVC presentation for next January!

 

[tzolkin]

Are you planning to split up most of the trip?

We have been doing mobile ordering at most of the counter service restaurants because it was much quicker. That would definitely not work with an envelope/individual system. You just place one order for the entire group and then charge it to a credit card saved in your app.

My kids are teens through 20 so we will do gift cards or cash (similar to what you're thinking of with the envelope system), but that's only used when they go off by themselves. I like that I don't have to worry about them not being able to eat and they have the freedom to spend the money however they want.

For me, it would be too much of a hassle to have everyone pay separately when we are eating together. Even when the kids go off without us, they still tend to just pay together (ex. one kid buys ice cream for the others, then another kid buys meals to share, etc)

 

[DisLiss]

As kids my grandparents always gave us our daily allowance for food and we usually had money leftover but we got to spend/eat how we wanted. They even had it divided up in little envelopes . That seems a little much to me but I wonder if doing something similar would help us stick to a budget.

We've never done that for food on a Disney trip before, but we have used a similar idea on trips in other similar ways.

We like The Amazing Race, so if we're using cash or gift cards we'll put them in an envelope and mark it with our destination(s) for the day and hand them out saying they're for "this leg of the race". Sometimes we do it just for the kids' spending money, but other times we've had just one envelope for the entire family's daily spending, and we'd deduct from it as the day went on.

For us it's sometimes about staying on a budget or keeping souvenirs to a sane quantity, but sometimes it's to try to show the kids that vacations cost a decent amount of money and to just be aware of what things cost. And it helps them make choices sometimes. If we 100 bucks left after dinner---do they want to spend it on an activity or some sort of special late evening snack, or save it to add to tomorrow's envelope, etc.


It's always interesting when we use the daily envelopes just for the kids'souvenir spending to see how they handle that. One year our oldest son had saved and saved and on our last day he went crazy, while the other son spent a bit each day, but managed to bring some home.

 

[DisLiss]

I will say that for Food & Wine this year I plan on getting those wrist gift cards for the kids so they can kind of go crazy, but with some sort of limit. Because my one kid will buy 20 things, try one bite of each, and toss them all, and that's so wasteful. So I figure the gift card will rein him in a bit.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

We only go once every 2-3 years so there's no allowance. My card is on the MB and my kids have access to charge on their MB. It's pretty much a free for all but my kids are very reasonable and know their limits. They also ask before they charge something that may seem excessive.

I do have a budget in mind and plan our meals accordingly so I know we stay within budget. We basically eat what we want when we want but everything is within reason. We mix it up with TS, QS, a signature or two, lounges, etc.

Last trip we did BOG dinner, HDDR, HBD lounge x 2, BOG lunch, MM, Y&Y, YM, ESPN, VN and B&C along with plenty of QS. When I pick these meals (only two were prebooked, everything else was same day ADRs) I know how much damage can be done and I can guesstimate pretty well how much I'll spend at each meal. If we're at YM I let DD get the filet but I know most of the other places she won't be ordering a $50 filet because it's not on the menu so I let her splurge.

Also for as many times as we have gone I know we eat pretty well the first 3 days or so and then it starts to slow down. We can't eat that heavily for too many days in a row without starting to feel sluggish and just yucky. So the first 3 days we may be at 1K between food and souvenirs (DD always finds some expensive spirit jersey or something she wants on day one) but after that the amount we spend daily goes down dramatically.

 

[Asnell]

When our kids were small, one of the things that drove me crazy at theme parks (or frankly any vacation) was the constant begging for treats. We could be on our way to lunch and they would be distracted by all of the options for sweets and snacks along the way. It wasn't a matter of hunger, but of the appeal of the junk food. Not only did the cost add up, but of course it would ruin their appetite for the actual meals where I wanted them to get a bit of nutrition, and often resulted in a lot of wasted food.

What my husband and I decided in response was on vacation we would have "snack time" at a dedicated time each day, usually 3pm. We explained to our kids that at that time they could choose whatever snack they wanted. So anything they saw before that, they would file away as a possibility. Instead of saying no or responding to whining, we got to respond positively: "That looks yummy! It would be a fun idea for your snack time treat." The kids got on board with this very quickly, to the extent that at ages 17 and 19 they still plan their own days this way when vacationing, "At snack time, I'm going to come back here and get that funnel cake."

We don't budget too hard on meals themselves, but we do ask our kids to only order what they will eat, and we as a family do consider when sharing items will make us happy. And as the kids have gotten bigger, we've also adopted the practice that if anyone doesn't want dessert at dinner, they can choose an evening snack later when they're hungrier (that we'll pay for). If our kids want to junk it up beyond that at this age, they have their own money from their part-time jobs, so they can buy themselves as many Mickey Bars as they like if they really want -- but they seldom do.