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Just about eighteen months ago we made some resolutions around here to eat out less. Partially because it was unhealthy and we wanted to introduce Olivia to better foods - and partially because we were spending more than more than a bi-weekly mortgage payment eating out at restaurants. It wasn’t very frugal and something that we needed to change
We’ve successfully reduced this to under two hundred dollars a month eating out in restaurants. How did we do it?
We Made Meal Plans
Meal planning helps me to avoid those last minute phone calls to Jamie telling him that he needs to pick up dinner on the way home because a. I don’t feel like cooking and b. I don’t want to take the kids to the store to pick up the ingredients for the last minute meal. Plus, it helped us to find recipes that we wanted to try.
We used Groupons
Planning ahead of time and checking out the daily deals I was able to find Groupons quite frequently for our favorite restaurants. Mongolie Grill and Creole Envie are two places that we’ve found Groupon deals for multiple times over the past year. Using these deals, we were able to save 50% off of the regular price of the food, meaning we saved 50% off of the price we would have spent.
We Bought Convenience Food
I was big against buying convenience food like frozen pizzas. Funny, because I thought nothing of heading out to a local restaurant and picking up a meal to bring home - so, we made the change and bought food that we could toss into the oven and eat in twenty minutes (think Costco frozen pizzas and chicken fingers) to avoid heading out and grabbing some take-out or going out to eat.
We Packed Snacks
Going out with the kids? Why not stop and grab some lunch? Bringing snacks from home saved the quick $20 meal out with the kids when we were doing things during the day. Plus, made for some fun picnics along the way. Same goes with juice boxes, we brought them along while running errands and shopping.
We Set a Limit
We still have bad weeks, where it’s busy and the kids are crazy and we eat out more than a couple of times but we’ve set limits to eat at restaurants once a week. This also helps to decrease the fast food, since the weekly dinner out is going to be wasted at a place like McDonalds.
Most of all, we wanted to make the change. That money would be better spent somewhere else in our budget and was literally being wasted every single month. It was a change that took a long time to make (eighteen months) but a change that has transitioned the way that we think about meals. I am glad to say that we are now considerably more frugal.