spend less money eating out

I have not gone out to eat in several weeks. I can’t count how far back, but I’d saw at least 3 weeks.

So I’ve changed my goal to:spend less money eating out. This makes more sense for me right now. So here we go. I’m going to start by giving myself $10 each week to eat out. I can spend it however I want, but that’s it. Let’s see how this goes.

This is not going very well.
Somehow, I think this is the wrong goal. I think my original goal is to spend less at meals and eat out less, but once a month is too little.

I’m having such a hard time doing this. There is ALWAYS a reason to celebrate and eat out. It’s hard to say no to people to celebrate. I know I don’t always have to order a lot, but even just an appetizer, drink, or dessert can still cost $10 with tax and tip.

I have to discover new methods to spend less when I eat out. I asked my boyfriend if he would be willing to share a plate and he agreed. From now as as part of my goal to drink water, I can only order water as a drink with my meals. I may also eat before I go out and only share a dessert or appetizer when I go out.

The other option is to cook dinner for people which would be fun, cheaper, and a great skill to develop. Let’s see how it goes.

I eat out alot, well not alot in comparison, but eating out is the activity I spend the most on. I don’t do a lot of movies, dates, clubbing or that sort of outing. I love to eat. So this has been difficult. I may have to limit this activity to once a week or once every other week instead of once a month. I’ll need to build on this. Or say only dinner and only when planned. I went to Chipotle the other day and last night I went to Mario’s Peruvian food.
So far this month, sadly it isn’t even the first week!
For fun
To celebrate an aunt’s leaving.

I think maybe I just need to find new ways to celebrate.

So This month I ate out 4x:
My anniversary
My job raise
My boyfriend’s 5k completion celebration
Baby-sitting payment.

The gist of us not going out to eat was to SAVE money, not to eat out less. So I think we’ve saved some money. This month, we were able to try 2 new restaurants. In order of occasion: Roy’s Hawaiian fusion with a bill of $120. Spicy Stix for $11. Islands for $25 and In-N-Out for $11. So we spent about $170 this month. Luckily, my boyfriend allotted for our anniversary dinner, which was good. It wasn’t like we were spending $120 more than we should have, rather it was using our savings for it’s designated purpose. The baby-sitting payment covered our In-N-Out expense and some gas. Without the major expense it would be about $50, which is better than our normal $200/month. I think I’ve done really well with this goal, but I can’t erase it quite yet. Perhaps in October 2008 I will focus on celebrating in different ways and eating out 1x/month. I don’t foresee any celebrations this month, I am not a halloween person, so October should be great. I’ve also allotted myself a certain amount for food and if I spend it, I can’t eat!

I think maybe I just need to find new ways to celebrate.

We managed to go another week without eating out! We went to a museum and ate at home. It was great that we did because we had a great lunch! I liked that the money we saved in eating out, was instead used for a museum visit. It was good.

I love to eat out. I love to try new things, so I think this goal for me is really to cook my own things.

The trick is to buy food at the grocery store. If it is in the house and I have ideas for stuff to cook, then I will. The problem is when I get lazy and don’t keep food in the house.

I go to the deli for dinner cause I work late shift, but instead of going to the cheap place, I go to the place nearby where they sell food by weight. OMG it is soo expensive. I gotta stop doing that!