My biggest spending problem is dinning out. I love eating out because I don’t have to prepare for anything, just get in my car with some money and I’m all set. For me, buying groceries is a gigantic hassle. I have to set aside an hour of my life to walk through the aisles of some supermarket in search of food. If the store is crowded that’s even worse! My girlfriend likes to study everything in each aisle while I just want to get out. Then once we drag the food to our apartment and put everything away, we have to cook something that is worth eating. After dealing with that mess, a drive-thru seems so much more appealing.
Not only does the whole grocery shopping experience bore me to no end but my lifestyle also plays a part. I work a 9 to 5 job and then I take classes night. When I get to class, I am usually starving. Typically, I will head out before class to get something to eat or on the way home pick up something close by my apartment. On top of all this, I use food as a reward. My girlfriend and I like to go out when we have done something worth celebrating. All of these factors go into how I eat. Besides gaining weight which sadly I have, this is killing my bank account. If you estimate that we roughly spend about 5 dollars a meal out * 2 people * 30 days in a month roughly = $300. Then if you add eating out at a nicer restaurant for $50 every Saturday night, let’s say, that equals to about $200. This gives us a grand total of about $500 dollars a month. That may seem unrealistic but I have been hitting pretty close to that and it’s got to stop especially since I am losing my rental income this month. Here are my real numbers which are quite disappointing:
While my overall spending on eating out has decreased, it looks to be on an upward surge recently! I have to stop eating out, so I devised a solution to control this situation.
My Eat At Home Solution
1. Make a plan – To do anything in life it is best to start off with some kind of plan. I need to figure out what I want to eat and when. I will write down what meals I want for each day of the week. I am going to try doing this one week at a time at first. Then after creating my creating a menu of meals, I need to convert that menu into a shopping list to buy those foods.
2. Going cold turkey – I was thinking about maybe allowing us to eat out 1 time a week but I don’t think this will work for us (or at least me). I think we should go cold turkey for a while.
3. Figure out how to make this positive – My girlfriend enjoys grocery shopping and I don’t. For whatever reason we wanted to both go together, maybe to be romantic? Now we decided it’s best if I don’t go anymore. This makes it a more positive buying experience for her and its positive for me as I don’t have to go! This won’t work if you are single but maybe you could go to the store more frequently, buying a few things at a time to make the experience less daunting. Unless of course you like to shop.
4. Buying some prepared food – this is more expensive than buying ingredients separately and making it yourself, however, I am going from eating out a lot to eating exclusively at home and I need something that makes it easier on me.
5. Make food on the weekends then freeze it – this may seem obvious but for someone who likes the drive thru this is going to be important, in order to break my habit. I simply don’t have a lot of time to cook on the week days. That means my girlfriend and I will have to make our food ahead of time and reheat it during the week. I am going to use glad containers to individually package my meals for lunch. This will make it easier to take to work for lunch.
6. The reward – normally if I did something deserving of a reward, I would go out to eat. Clearly can’t do that anymore! If I bought myself something that would be nice but the whole point of this exercise to is save money. So I think what I will do is look at what I have saved from the month by not eating out. I will take half of that and put it into a savings account. The other half I will have earmarked for a new TV that me and my girlfriend need. This should keep me motivated to keep off of the fast-food and stick with the plan.
I’ll post an updates to see how this strategy works!
#1 by devil on May 27th, 2009
Sounds like a good plan. Good luck and do, please, keep us posted.
I HATE to cook so, when I do, it has to be a large recipe that can be frozen (in individual serving Gladware). Leftovers are fabulous when you’re in a hurry.
I also hate to grocery shop, so I just do it on auto-pilot at the same store at the same time on the same day each week. If I have to go more than once per week, I get stabby. And I use a list so it’s even more mindless (I check the sale ad ahead of time). Oh, I also pay cash so there’s no annoying swiping of cards or check-writing. The simpler I can make it, the less I’ll hate it.
#2 by Funny about Money on May 30th, 2009
This is easy: send Girlfriend to the grocery store and let her do the noxious shopping. The only time you should go with her is when the shopping is to be done in some upscale venue like Whole Foods, which is more like a trip to Disneyland than to the grocer. If she likes to do it, why not let her do it and not be a drag on her fun?
SDXB (Semi-Demi-Exboyfriend) is a past master of the grocery shop. I hate, loathe, and detest grocery shopping. He is very good at it, because for him it’s a kind of game. When we lived together, we never wanted for food, most of it purchased on the cheap.
These days, I have a freezer and a bunch of shelves, both of which I use for stockpiling food. I try not to attend grocery stores or Costco or Target more than once a month. To my delight, I’ve discovered that canny stockpile shopping can keep one out of the hated supermarket as long as six weeks! It is, in short, an excellent strategy. I don’t eat out much because I cook one helluva lot better than all than the most pricey restaurants can do…it’s mighty nice to have all the ingredients at hand with a minimal grocery trips.
#3 by Missy on June 3rd, 2009
Eating out is a tough thing to give up. I love it, not so much for the food but for the experience. I think you and your girlfriend should definitely reward yourselves when you’ve gone a week or two without eating out by going to the movies or getting a dessert somewhere. You still get the experience and get to relax (not having to do dishes after a meal is FANTASTIC) but it doesn’t cost as much as a full meal would. Good luck to you and your girlfriend! I’ll keep reading to find out how it’s going. Keep us updated.