Eating out is killing us

[Anonymous]

We eat out every weekend, including lunches. We probably spend $1000/mo on restaurants/take out/work lunches. Family of 4.

Agree w: everyone to scrap meal service. Figure out how much you meant to spend on eating out and stick to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So.... $1600 - $400 (meal delivery) - $150 (pizza) = 1050 / 4 Saturday's = $250 for dinner every Saturday.

Is that what you are saying?

OP here

This is close to what went on. Unfortunately, we were eating weekend lunches out (Sandwiches)...sometimes one breakfast too (diner or pancake house). Assume at least one boozy dinner out with friends at a nice restaurant.

The good news is that this isn't a typical month, over the past few months we just got more and more carried away. It needs to come to an abrupt halt though.

Getting our house project done is more important than eating out so much.

[Anonymous]

It doesn't sound like meal service is the problem. It sounds like eating out multiple times a day on the weekend, at fancy places with lots of alcohol, is the problem.

[Anonymous]

This is exactly how people end up broke or never really get ahead. Don't you want to have money? Pay attention to what you spend - control your money - don't let your money control you.

[Anonymous]

Stop ordering pizza out. Either make it at home, you can buy premade crust and sauce if you want, or go with frozen. There are decent frozen pizzas.

When we wanted to cut down on eating, the first thing we did was stock our freezer with easy meals. Like you, we were finding ourselves run ragged and sometimes just couldn't bear the thought of cooking a meal. Having a freezer stocked with frozen food helped us over that hump. Initially, it was premade frozen stuff. Frozen pizzas, burritos, lasagnas, frozen veggies, pasta, anything and everything in kit form. We limited ourselves to eating out once a week, and my husband continued eating lunches out because it was his get away from the office sanity time.

Over time, we got better at cooking double meals and freezing half of them for later. That replaced a lot of the premade freezer stuff. We tried some crockpot meals, but because we have a split household (vegetarian and omnivores) we had a really hard time coming up with recipes that worked for all of us. When a recipe was a hit, we saved it. The goal was to end up with 2 - 4 weeks of recipes we knew we liked so we could meal plan. Eventually, I hope to end up with a book of related recipes so if we're making something that uses an ingredient, I can make sure that it's followed by recipes that also use that ingredient. Someday!

I recommend small steps because it sounds like you've been through a lot and are working on re-establishing better habits. That halfway step with premade freezer meals was really invaluable for us.

[Anonymous]

Nothing fancy here; tracking your expenses for eating out is easy with some credit cards because they automatically summarize your spending into categories.

Eating out is great. If you can afford it, enjoy!

[Anonymous]

Regarding pizza, the Domino's app has coupons (and some good ones) which may help save some cost. In addition, if you can, drive and pick up the pizza. You are saving on tip and delivery fee.

I agree with the PP that said to get frozen pizzas. Safeway seems to offer at least one brand every week on sale, in some cases, $4 each. That is about as cheap as it gets.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't a meal service cost at least $10 in fees, and that isn't including a tip?

[Anonymous]

I'm still stuck on why you are ordering salads on Friday pizza nights and two lunches through the delivery service.
Make the salad at home. That's easy and far less than ordering it out.
We do Friday pizza but always pick it up like pp said to avoid delivery fee and tip, and make a salad at home.

Try peapod if going grocery shopping is difficult. That alone could be your big hurdle with full time work and two young kids- actually GETTING to the store. Peapod or similar service gets you over that first hump.

[Anonymous]

You mentioned that your spouse gets home too late to grill dinner - think about shifting how you conceive of cooking dinner.

We often do our main meal/dinner cooking after the kids are in bed and then eat it together that night and serve the leftovers to the kids (or all eat leftovers together) the following night. It means that "making dinner" at 5:30 or 6 pm is much more about composing what we've already got prepared than cooking from scratch.

[Anonymous]

Agree that peapod is the way to go with two full time working parents. We have a standing order from 7-9am every Saturday.

Even if DH isn't home in time to make or assemble dinner, maybe he can make breakfast? Do the dishes/empty the dishwasher? Make meals on the weekends? Don't fall into the trap that he can only grill. Real men cook dinner and do t expect to be waited in there.

Does he do any other chores? Laundry, etc? If it's all n you, no wonder you're exhausted.

Plus your kids are still young (2 under 5 years old.). It does get better I promise. ?

[Anonymous]

Last year my DH took a job that involved a decent pay cut. We had to WAY trim our budget, and eating out was the first to go.

Get frozen pizzas and bagged salad for Friday nights instead. We order pizza maybe every other month, but we still do pizza/salad on Fridays. It's just low brow pizza. Buy an extra cucumber or pepper to put in the salad and call it done.

We started bringing our lunches. This was a huge shift for my DH, but the money wasn't there to spend $50 a week ($200 a MONTH!) on buying lunch out. If we both did that, it was $400 just on lunch. So we started making big batches of chicken salad, or tuna salad and taking that on bread or with crackers. Buying lots of fruit, cheese sticks and almonds for snacks. We'd also just buy a ton of lunch meat to make sandwiches. They key is that we'd take turns making all the lunches for the week. So on Sunday, I'd make 8 sandwiches for the week. So we'd each have 4 that we could just grab and go. The next Sunday, he'd make the sandwiches. Having it be an alternating chore helped a lot. But just being able to grab the stuff in the morning is much easier than trying to make a sandwich each morning.

It takes some discipline, and now that he's back to making more money, we each buy our lunch once a week or so. But it's not that hard once you adjust.

[Anonymous]

$1600 is close to what I net per month!

[Anonymous]

We had the same problem. If you want to make yourself feel better we were probably spending closer to 3-4K each month eating out.

In order to get things under control we started taking cash out of the atm on a weekly basis. Once it was gone we couldn't go out to eat anymore.
We also try to pregame at home. It seems like the big evenings out are what kill you. Not the occasional salad or pizza, which I'm not sure you could really make that much cheaper at home. Salad ingredients really add up.

I would recommend doing blue apron (60 dollars) each Monday. Try and cook this the three nights you're supposed to. Then also spend around 100 dollars on lunch, breakfast and one other evening of food. Bring your lunch to work.

[Anonymous]

we spent 800 last month on eating out. I'm so annoyed with our decisions. But, I'm going the all cash route as a fix. 40 a week.

Also, Costco pizzas are huge and I love the pepperoni.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Last year my DH took a job that involved a decent pay cut. We had to WAY trim our budget, and eating out was the first to go.

Get frozen pizzas and bagged salad for Friday nights instead. We order pizza maybe every other month, but we still do pizza/salad on Fridays. It's just low brow pizza. Buy an extra cucumber or pepper to put in the salad and call it done.

We started bringing our lunches. This was a huge shift for my DH, but the money wasn't there to spend $50 a week ($200 a MONTH!) on buying lunch out. If we both did that, it was $400 just on lunch. So we started making big batches of chicken salad, or tuna salad and taking that on bread or with crackers. Buying lots of fruit, cheese sticks and almonds for snacks. We'd also just buy a ton of lunch meat to make sandwiches. They key is that we'd take turns making all the lunches for the week. So on Sunday, I'd make 8 sandwiches for the week. So we'd each have 4 that we could just grab and go. The next Sunday, he'd make the sandwiches. Having it be an alternating chore helped a lot. But just being able to grab the stuff in the morning is much easier than trying to make a sandwich each morning.

It takes some discipline, and now that he's back to making more money, we each buy our lunch once a week or so. But it's not that hard once you adjust.

+1 We went through the same thing. Eating out was the first to go. We are healthier and happier now that we don' have this expense and don't eat out.