11 Easy Ways to Save Money on Road Trips

If you’re wondering how to save money on road trips, you’ve come to the right place!

We consider ourselves road trip experts, having been on countless road trips throughout the United States in our nearly 10 years of being together.

On all of these road trips, we’ve made it a goal to get really good at stretching our dollars, saving where we can without sacrificing our enjoyment.

And today, we’re going to share with you the 11 easy ways you can realistically save tons of money on road trips without feeling like you’re scraping by.

If you have any recommendations that we didn’t mention in this list, we would love for you to let us know in the comments! Our community is all about sharing travel tips that help us all travel better!

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1. Keep track of your expenses

We’re mentioning this one first because it sets the foundation for everything else on this list. On the trips where we’ve ‘winged it’ versus the trips where we’ve actually kept track of our expenses as we go, we’ve noticed a HUGE difference on how much money we spend.

Doing this can be super simple- you can use an app if you want, but we just use the notes app on our phones.

We start out the trip by putting how much total budget we have, then everytime spend money, we write it down and subtract it from our total. And we always round up a little when we keep track so we don’t think we have more money left than we actually do.

Here is an actual example of what this looked like after our recent Oregon coast road trip:

Actually keeping track of expenses will keep you from thinking you have more money to spend and then putting yourself overbudget. Your bank account doesn’t always update right away, so trusting it can be misleading.

And if you want to know how to make a budget the right way, this post is for you:
How to make a road trip budget you can actually keep

2. Bring your own snacks for the drive

A surprising amount of money can get spent on road trip snack stops. One way we’ve found to combat this is by heading to the grocery store before a trip and stocking up on what we’ll want. If you can bring a cooler with you, even better!

On our honeymoon road trip throughout the country, we even kept things like coffee & creamer with us so we wouldn’t have the expense of going out for coffee every morning. This saved us so much money and kept us from stopping as often.

Some of our favorite road trip snacks?

Mingua Beef Jerky, Albanese gummies, trail mix, and dried fruit!

3. Book a place with a kitchen and cook at least one meal/day

This has saved us a TON of money on our trips.

Instead of eating out for every meal, go to the grocery store on the first day you get to your destination and get some groceries that will let you cook at least one meal every day.

Most Airbnbs have at least a small kitchenette, which gives you options for cooking something each day. We usually opt to at least cook breakfast (usually eggs, sausage & toast), and we’ll get some ingredients for sandwiches or bento boxes so we can have picnics and easy lunches available too!

If you will be doing multiple stops on your road trip, we HIGHLY recommend bringing a cooler along with you. Then you can keep things like lunch meat, bread, and even condiments cold, or even bring things from home which can save even more money!

Our biggest tip for doing this (to save your sanity): Make your grocery list BEFORE your trip. Being on vacation, when you brain is trying to chill, and trying to come up with meal ideas is truly awful. Making a list beforehand so you can just pop in a store and get what you need is the best way to do this (trust us).

4. Take advantage of activity/entry passes.

Before your trip, scope out what deals you can get on the areas you’re going to.

City Attraction Passes

For example, if you’re going to be doing a lot of things in a particular city, see what type of passes they have that can get you into multiple attractions for a fraction of the price.

Most cities have something like a 1-day or even 7-day activity pass that can get you into things like museums, aquariums, etc. for one price instead of having to pay for each entrance individually.

National Park Passes

Another one we use for this that saves us a TON of money is the National Park Annual Pass. It waives the entrance fees at most national parks and BLM-owned sites, so if you’re visiting these types of places, this is definitely something you’ll want to check out.

We wrote a whole blog post about what these passes entail and how to figure out if it’s worth it for you to get one. You can read that here!

5. Save money by staying right outside of the popular areas

Popular areas tend to have more expensive lodging, because that’s where everyone wants to stay.

But we’ve found that even going a few miles outside of an area can significantly drop the price of lodging.

For example, if you’re driving through Indiana and you plan to stop in Indianapolis, look for lodging that is either a bit before or a bit after Indianapolis instead. The prices will likely be much cheaper, while still having plenty of options because of the proximity to the city.

6. Don’t sleep on loyalty programs (& save your points for your trip)

Pretty much every restaurant, store, and hotel has its own loyalty program now, and they can actually save you a ton of money!

And if you’re intentional with them and save your points for your trip, you can get a ton of stuff for free.

Programs like Marriott Bonvoy let you accumulate points for each stay, which you can eventually use for free rooms. We recently ended up needing to book a last minute hotel, and I had almost enough points for a free night, so I spent $35 dollars to get my last few points and ended up booking a very nice room with the points (all for only $35)!

Restaurant loyalty programs are also a game changer. We are regularly earning rewards from restaurants like Chick-fil-a and Jersey Mike’s, which means we get completely free meals that we can redeem on road trips.

Obviously the farther in advance you get these set up, the better, but even racking up points the few weeks before your trip can help out a ton!

7. Camping can save you so much money

If you don’t mind camping, this is a goldmine for saving money. Even camping one night of your trip can save you hundreds of dollars.

Places like state parks tend to have better bathrooms & showers and nicer camping sites, and some even offer cabins that you can rent for MUCH cheaper than the cost of a hotel.

If this is something you don’t mind to do, then booking one or two of these along your way will save you so much money.

8. Make sure your car is ready

If your vehicle breaks down on the road trip, that will obviously be a big expense. So the best thing you can do to prevent this is getting it checked over before you go.

We wrote a whole blog post on how to do this (which includes a checklist), that you can read here!

But also doing things like making sure your tires are aired up, going a speed that is good for gas mileage, and ensuring your car is packed in a way that doesn’t reduce gas mileage are simple things you can do!

9. Use your own car, or save money on a rental

We always use our own vehicle for road trips if we can, which saves us so much money. Rental cars can be pricey, that’s no secret.

But if you DO need to rent a car, there are ways to save money.

One way is by booking through your insurance company. We’ve previously saved hundreds of dollars on one rental by booking through insurance, who was able to access special discounts.

Some people also have success bundling flights & car rentals, so if you’re flying to a destination and then taking a road trip, see if you can get any special deals by bundling.

10. Pack what you need.

Uhhh…. duh, right?

Okay but hear me out- a lot of people skip things when they’re packing because they think “I can just get that if I need it on the road”.

But doing this can add extra expenses that you can easily avoid.

One of the best things about road trips is that we can pack a little bit more than we can when we’re flying. No bag weight limits or size requirements, which means you can probably afford to pack your knee brace or that extra type of medicine you might need.

Making sure you have what you need can help you avoid these redundant costs.

11. Save money on road trips by planning gas stops right

Gas is one of the main expenses of a road trip, so of course saving money here is important!

Our trick- scoping out where we can get gas for the cheapest price. There are a couple of ways we do this.

First, we make the most of our Costco membership and our Kroger gas points. Costco often has gas for a lot cheaper than other gas stations, so we try to scope out where the Costco locations are on our route and stop there when we can.

Kroger points also accrue from our grocery purchases and often save us roughly 30¢/gallon.

Second, we use the GasBuddy app to see what gas prices are around us. In a lot of situations, we can save a good amount of money by just driving an extra 10 miles down the road.

If you want to get all of our road trip tips & tricks, you can check those all out here!

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