Recently, I talked about our bad eating out habit on our sister blog, Blogging Away Debt. After we sat down and did the math, we figured out that we were spending about $1,000 per month eating out (ON TOP of our grocery budget). That’s insane. There are a few reasons this was happening and we’ve nailed down some ways to improve our spending habits.
Why Were We Eating Out So Much?
There were a number of reasons we wound up eating out a ton. After I gave birth to our daughter, balancing work and life has been difficult. Of course, we want to spend all of our extra time with our little one. We don’t necessarily want to spend it on meal planning and prepping (which I hate anyway). When we are able to leave our desks at the end of the day, the last thing we want to do is head into the kitchen and cook.
On top of that, I’ve been dealing with a number of health issues. As the person in our home that usually cooks the meals, standing up for a long time or having to be active at all has been difficult, if not nearly impossible. So, when I’m feeling really bad, my husband usually pops out and grabs us some food.
The main problem was that we’d be spending anywhere from $30 to $100 per day that we wound up eating out. As I said, when we actually sat down and did the math, it equated to about $1,000 monthly in fast food and restaurant tickets.
What We Are Doing To Turn It Around
We did the math at the end of April and decided we needed to make a change. This month, we’ve cut back considerably. We went from spending $1,000 to about $300 this month on eating out. We’d still like to shave that down by half ($150 per month), but we are getting there!
The biggest things we’ve done that have made this successful is cutting up the responsibilities. So, if I cook, my husband cleans (and vice versa). This helps me not get so tired and sick feeling while preparing a meal. We’ve also added in some meals that are quick and easy for the nights we still don’t really feel like it (i.e. frozen lasagnas, pre-cooked freezer meals, sandwiches).
I won’t lie, the largest motivator behind continuing to cut back on eating out is definitely the savings. We’ve already saved $700 by making these changes for one month. I can only imagine the savings over several months’ time. We’ll be snowballing our debt with this “extra money” as well as setting some aside for our emergency fund, which has been depleted after several medical emergencies recently.
Readers, what is something your family struggles with when it comes to spending? How do you try to control it? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Read More
Leave a Reply