Posts Tagged saving money
Eating at Home Progress Report: Two Weeks Later
Posted by Sonny in Personal Finance on June 11th, 2009
Two weeks ago I made the painful decision to stop eating out. After months of spending at least $400 a month on fast food and restaurant meals, I realized I couldn’t afford to keep doing it. I decided to go cold turkey and eat exclusively at home. At first, my only goal was to save money but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with a few other benefits. Likewise, there have also been a few drawbacks that I didn’t consider when I made the decision initially. Both positive and negative considered, I’m feeling pretty good about my progress. I must confess my girlfriend and I ate out over the weekend. We were at the mall and got a slice of pizza. We spent about $10 and it was a actually a fun change of pace, so I don’t feel too bad for it.
One benefit of eating at home is that I feel healthier. My clothes fit a little better and I just don’t feel so weighed down and tired anymore. Now I opt for a piece of fruit instead of fries. That’s not to say I’m becoming a health freak but I am eating healthier now. Another benefit has been learning to enjoy going out and doing other things with my girlfriend. This weekend we had a great time just hanging out at the mall. The most important benefit has been the money I’ve saved eating at home. I’ve estimated I was spending $5 per person (my girlfriend and me), per day on eating out. After 11 days of eating at home, I’ve saved about $100.
A few drawbacks: meal planning, more money for groceries, cooking, and cleaning. Now that my girlfriend and I eat at home, we plan our meals out to save money and time. Personally, I find menu-planning a little boring but it only takes us about an hour to decide what were having for the week. It definitely makes grocery shopping easier. Even though I’m spending more on groceries now, it is still cheaper than eating out. When it comes to the cooking, I used to prefer the convenience of modern technology (i.e. the microwave or toaster oven) to breaking out the old pots and pans. Luckily, my girlfriend enjoys cooking so we developed a system we both appreciate: she cooks, I do the dishes. On occasion I’ll help with the chopping or slicing of something but usually there are other things I would rather be doing. Again, not something I would say is a positive but I don’t completely hate it either like I expected I would.
Overall, eating at home has improved my life, and bank account, in more ways than expected. I’m confident that it was a great decision and am looking forward to the new adventures it brings.
Website and No Eating Out Plan Update!
Here are some general admin issues that I wanted to talk about.
The Site: I am still working on the site. I am not close to being happy with how the site looks. I like my content but I know the site needs work. All I can do is implore you to please keep checking the site out to see what it looks like next!
No Eating Out Update: This week was the start of the No Eating Out Plan, that I outlined in my previous post How to Stop Eating Out! I am really enjoying not eating out for the first few days I have tried it. I know I am in the “honeymoon” period (just like when everyone loves there new diet when they start) but so far so good. I have a couple land mines that could hurt my progress coming up. Work and School are getting super stressful. 50 page papers will do that to you! On top of that, I have birthday coming up and normally we would go out to eat; not sure what we are going to do this year. Also some family friends are visiting in the Summer which could be trouble. Maybe I could say I’m on diet and can’t go! Please stay tuned to see what happens next.
How to Stop Eating Out!
Posted by Sonny in Personal Finance on May 27th, 2009
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!
