My husband and I love to eat out. It is our one true vice that keeps us from living as frugally as we would like. It is not unusual for us to spend $50 on dinner out.
I conducted a poll on my blog a few weeks ago and asked how much my readers averaged on dinner out for a family of four including tax and tip. The results showed that my husband and I are not alone. Forty-one people responded, and only 16% of them spent less than $30 when eating out. Forty percent spent between $31 and $50, and 41% spent $50 or more going out to eat. If eating out is a special treat, this is not that big of an expenditure, but for many Americans, eating out is something done at least weekly, if not more than that. This can take a huge chunk out of a family’s budget.
Clearly, with our decision for me to quit my job and become a stay-at-home mom, we cannot afford to continue eating out the way that we do. We considered not going out to eat at all, but neither of us really wanted to do that. Instead, we decided to set some ground rules—we can only go out to eat once a week, and we cannot spend more than $1300 on eating out for an entire year. (That averages out to $25/week for us and our two—soon to be three—children.) We want to still enjoy the experience of going out to eat but to be smarter about the way we use our money when eating out.
To document our eating out experiences and to share the ways we try to spend less than $25/week, I have created another blog, The Dining Out Challenge. Come join us there to learn tricks to save money eating out, to share your own experiences and to read our reviews of the restaurants we dine at.
We will try hard to avoid the typical fast food choices; we want to eat out like we used to at restaurants we enjoy without paying the high sticker price, so to speak. Hope to see you there!
6 comments:
Instead of ordering kids meals, my husband and I share our dinners with our children. We might also order a side dish for our kids instead of a kids meal - it's a lot cheaper!
Great idea. We never spend over $25for a family of 4. We try not to spend over $20 by using Gift cards I earn with survey sites. The best thing is sharing meals. Most meals are so large that they are easy to split between one adult & one child. Also using coupons helps tremendously.
That sounds interesting! I'll be sure to check it out.
Eating out is one of my biggest downfalls. I love sushi and all things Japanese. I taught myself to roll maki but sometimes I just want the whole experience. What is the food on the sushi plate? The pieces that look like cookies with a strip of seaweed??
Christy--Hi. The yellow ones with the strip of seaweed across are tamago--egg. They are slightly sweet; our 16 month old loves them. The other pieces were the shrimp tempura roll in the back and the tuna roll behind the tamago. The other long ones are crab.
Tamago...I should have known. The ones in my area are made smaller! thanks for letting me know!
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