Estimate how many meals you will eat per day. For most people, this might be three meals per day.
Separate the meals by broad types of restaurants. As an example, you might decide to trim costs by bringing your own breakfast bars, fruits or eating an included breakfast at your hotel. For lunch, you might choose to eat fast food, but for dinner you may want a fine meal.
Estimate how much each of these might cost. Your budget breakfast might only cost you $2 per meal on average. Fast food is reasonably cheap, so maybe you decide $8 per meal for lunch. Your fine dining will cost more, so maybe you figure $50.
Add all the costs per meal. As as example, if you kept the same routine for a seven day vacation, you would spend approximately $60 for meals per day. Multiply that by seven days, and your cost is $420.
Hedge the figure a little to factor in differences in costs, "on the move" drinks or an increased food consumption, since you will probably be moving around and burning more calories. You might decide to increase the cost by 10 percent. Therefore, multiply the figure by 1.10, which gives you a total of $462.
Subtract the grocery money you will be saving, since you won't need to buy groceries during vacation. If you normally spend $100 on groceries every week, then you can subtract this from the total. Therefore, your total meal expense is actually $362.
