How much do you spend eating out vs HHI?

[Anonymous]

We are a family of 4 and love to eat out. Even our younger one (4) will ask to go out to a restaurant. Sometimes, she doesn't even care which one, she just wants to go out. We cook pretty healthy at home so I think they love the heavily flavored food and the experience of eating somewhere other than home. That being said, as we all know, it is expensive! We try to stay under $100/week which is about $5k/yr! That's a lot of money but we love it and save in other areas. Our HHI is also pretty good, although probably not by this board's standards, at $250K.

I wanted to get a sense how much do people generally spend on eating out vs HHI? Are we in-line with most or high?

[Anonymous]

We've been cutting back on this, for financial and health reasons. I'd estimate we spend $350 per month. HHI is about $250k earned.

[Anonymous]

About the same - I hate cooking and groceries are expensive. We go to cheaper places and rarely spend more than $25, usually less.

[Anonymous]

Well we have a "dating" budget of $400/month and like 90% of that probably goes to eating out, rest movies, maybe a concert or show every once in a while. No kids. HHI, $210k

[Anonymous]

Depends. On average $200/wk for a family of 4.

[Anonymous]

I'm vegan (buzzkill) and have come to not enjoy eating out, whereas it used to be my life! We eat out once on the weekend and might order pizza on Friday - spend less than $75 a week. Still seems a lot!

[Anonymous]

$100 per week of eating out. Hhi is $120k. My 3 & 6 yrs old ask to eat out all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$100 per week of eating out. Hhi is $120k. My 3 & 6 yrs old ask to eat out all the time.

How is this possible? 4 people eating out on $100?

[Anonymous]

Family of 5, 3 teenagers. We are fortunate financially (HHI $500k) and love to eat too so we probably average $250-300/wk. That varies quite bit week to week though as we could spend $100 one week with pizza, etc or with the 5 of us we could spend $250 for just one birthday splurge meal.

[Anonymous]

I don't even want to add it up...

[Anonymous]

I track expenses by category, so I can answer this exactly.

I make about $100K, plus some child support. I spent $4,500 last year on restaurant food and takeout food, not including alcohol. This year I dialed it back so I'm on track to spend more like $2,500. We're a two-person (1 adult, 1 child) household.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$100 per week of eating out. Hhi is $120k. My 3 & 6 yrs old ask to eat out all the time.

How is this possible? 4 people eating out on $100?

What are you talking about?

[Anonymous]

HHI of 265K and we're on track for $200 per month for eating out. 3 kids. We've cut way way back on eating out, we make our lunches and eat at home mainly. Last night, though, we went out - IHOP Kids Eat Free, lol. So that was $25 (tip included) for our restaurant budget. That may be our new standard for a while, until we get past our budget debt-free priorities!

[Anonymous]

$350k HHI, about $400 mo eating out.

[Anonymous]

Really it varies. We order pizza on Fridays - $18. We often go out to lunch on Sat - between $40 and $50 for our family of 4 (2 teen boys). Sometimes I let the kids get subs during the week - $20. If not subs then fast food at roughly the same cost.

So on a typical week $88. But sometimes less or more than that (some weeks we don't go out at all, sometimes we go out to a nice restaurant and that costs us around $100).