America spends for 18 days

[boredboredandmorebored]

We're travelling round America for 18 days through Vegas and California and just have no idea how much spends to take. A lot of stuff we are doing is already paid for and we have a separate budget for food. Any ideas? Is there an amount we should aim to have daily? Was thinking around £200 a day which would give us £3600 but not sure if that would be enough

How many people is that for? Is it literally just food and for 3 meals a day?

From what I've heard California is notoriously expensive so £67 per day per meal for 1 or 2 might be ok but if there is more of you no chance that will be enough.

There is two of us. The spends of £200 a day is not for food but everything else. We're planning on taking 1k for food for us (hoping not to not need it all though)!

It's a bit of a how long is a piece of string question really.

What do you see this money for if you have prepaid a lot of stuff and doesn't include meals? Where in California are you going ?

We were there last year for 21 days.

We were about $150 a day for food, $100 a night for hotels which we booked as we went along.

We never managed 3 meals a day, portions are massive (not complaining!!)

We took $1500 cash, and a Post Office travel card with $2000.00 which you can easily load more onto as you need to.

Unless it's just you, you will need more than that for food I think, unless you plan to eat exceptionally frugally. And who'd want to do that in CA?! We have travelled in the states twice in the last year, and I've found food to be very expensive, more expensive than the UK. A pretty ordinary meal for our family of four tended to cost $100 ( if the kids ordered from the children's menu). Ordering breakfast from the hotel me I was $80 each day. We spent about £150-200 a day on food, for the four of us, eating one main meal in a mid range restaurant (trattoria or similar), a hotel breakfast and a snack.

It's the tipping as well not to forget. We went to NYC last month, 18% is the expected tip for ok service, less than that it is considered that you considered the service to be poor. We were with people who live there and so know this for fact.
In NYC we sent £1800 in one week on food and drink for 2 of us. We did go to some very nice places though!