Confession time:
I love to eat out. Thai food and sushi are particularly tempting. There are at least 15 restaurants within a two mile radius of my home, I kid you not!
So, without proper planning and a stocked freezer/pantry, it is all too easy to grab a pizza or take out on busy week nights. Since our frugal journey began, we have drastically cut back on meals out (and Starbucks), but I know there is always room for improvement.
The other day, I did an impromptu poll on my Facebook Fan page.
“How often do you eat out?”
I received a few revealing responses, but I decided to pose this question to all my readers because I’m nosy like that for some important bloggy research.
I think it is a topic worth exploring. If I struggle with this budget-buster, surely many of you do too, right? So perhaps we can inspire each other to do better. To cook more. To plan more. To save more.
But first, a poll:
(If you are reading via email or RSS reader, you may need to click over to see the poll)
I will reveal the results in an upcoming post!
Once or twice a week gets pretty pricey for a family of eight, but eating out is our one vice. 🙁
.-= Christine´s last blog ..Family Movie Night Is Back With Secrets of the Mountain =-.
I eat out too much!
We eat out once or twice a week – usually on the weekend. I’ve definitely found that the more I meal plan and have stuff in the freezer, the less we eat out.
At the same time, though, I’m a stay at home mom and my husband works from home, so sometimes we eat out just to get out of the house.
Also, we have a few restaurants that we’ve got a cheap yummy meal down to a science. We even eat at Texas Roadhouse for less than 20 (including tip) for a family of 5!
Of course, do do splurge on occasion as well…
Can’t wait to see the results of the poll.
.-= Kat @ Inspired To Action´s last blog ..GIVEAWAY! – Motivation Monday: Why Mothers Need To Retreat =-.
We do the “quick grab” not dine out in a restaurant. Yes, this does add up. I try to keep it down to once or twice week.
We eat out a couple tmes a month. Usually we have pizza delivered. But once in a while we go to a sit down dinner. It is usually under $30 for our family of 5.
we got through phases. so for LONG stretches of time we hardly EVER eat out. but then for some reason we wil go through a few weeks where we are eating out or having food delivered once a week. drives me nuts when i actually sit down and figure out just how much the pizza place is making off us! since i used to MANAGE ONE, i know exactly too much on how much they are making! LOL
I wish monthly were a poll answer option! We budget to eat out once a month, which I consider more often than the “rarely” option. We do also eat out a few extra times over our budget, thanks to gifts from friends and family, travel and special occassions. (For example, my husband just completed an 8-hour ordination exam so we went out to celebrate! That was off-budget.)
We eat out once, on Sundays. We go to Subway & our bill is $12.90 for 4!
Honey, Treat yourself!
We are a family of 5 so we tend to decide around payday what our treat will be. Girls usually want to see a movie but us parents would like to eat out. So we end up dropping girls off at the theatre while we enjoy a nice meal alone. One treat night like that usually cost us about $50 but we only do that once or twice a month, depending on overtime or not! I can buy advance movie tickets from Sam’s Club and we catch the deals/specials at restaurants. I agree, it is difficult with 15+ restaurants within walking distance of home!
rarely, but restaurants skeeve me out..lol
We eat out probably about 1-2 times a week, which I think is too much. We usually justify it because we 25 minutes from where we do most of our church/work/shopping. But I think we could plan better to have sandwiches already made, or something waiting in the crockpot. I am sooooooo thankful for our church’s Wednesday night meals. They cut them out for a while and we would go eat ($20-30) out. Now we get a “home-cooked” meal and it’s much cheaper ($10)! And that’s one less time we’re eating out.
While we are at home we never eat out. (At least not yet.) We live in a town in the Congo with one restaurant and I haven’t been brave enough to try it yet. I will eventually, though. We do eat out when we travel.
.-= Anna´s last blog ..A Typical Morning =-.
We eat out way more than we should. The lame excuse is that now that the kids are out of the house and it is just two of us, it is harder to cook for just 2. The reality of it is cooking for 2 is no more difficult, probably easier, you always have leftovers that can save you on a night when your are crunched for time.
Oh, we eat out so very rarely… every 3 months or so, maybe. It’s not that I don’t like it, but it’s expensive and just not in the budget at this stage in our lives. That frequency goes up to once or twice a month when I’m pregnant. But that’s about it for us! 🙂
.-= JessieLeigh´s last blog ..Chocolate Blueberry Muffins =-.
We eat out every Sunday. We have a group of friends that we go out to eat with after Church every week. We budget for it and we only eat at inexpensive places( like Subway and Wendy’s). We use coupons whenever we can (even buy them on e-bay!) Once a month we do pot-luck at some one’s house. This time has become is very important to us as a family. I guard the money in our budget. Sometimes we sacrifice other things to save the money for Sunday Lunch with our friends!
Every since we started Financial Peace University, we rarely eat out. When we have road trip to visit family, I now pack a picnic instead of stoppng for a quick drive through. I’d rather go to a nice restaraunt twice a year than fast food weekly. It doesn’t pamper me, and that is what I’m really after when I go out to eat!
I Love Dave Ramsey!!! The only reason we make the sacrifice to eat out each week is because of the great fellowship. We have a group of 5-8 families that join us each week. We don’t get to see friends very often during the rest of the week, so we really enjoy our time together. We always go somewhere that we can pull the tables together and kids sit at one table and adults at one. Sometimes we are at the restaurant for a couple of hours.
We eat out a few times a week, typically when my oldest two boys are having visitation with their father. Yes, it is an “unnecessary” expense, but it is truly one of the things we enjoy doing. In part, it is why I am so frugal in other areas of our life. I would rather save elsewhere to have the means to do what we truly enjoy. For some, that is going to a movie, or a show… For me and my Hubby, it’s going out to a sit-down dinner and enjoying good food. It’s not one of the things we are willing to “give up” just yet.
We eat out once or twice a week now that the weather is nice and we want to get out more. I’m almost 7 months pregnant and have a 2 year old, so it will probably be less than that once the baby arrives and we don’t want to get out much! 🙂
I forgot to mention that we follow Dave Ramsey and are debt free, so it’s once of the few treats in the budget! I still refuse to pay for cable enough though there is plenty of room in the budget for it! 😉
We rarely eat out. I enjoy the food and atmosphere more at home. Once a friend and I were taking our kids to the opera (dress rehearsal night = free show) and decided to splurge and take the kids out to dinner. When I told my kids that we were going to eat out, my son said, “are you going to take us to a sit down and WAIT restaraunt?” So it helps that we have children who are not excited about eating out. However, the fact that we eat out so rarely allows me to devote more money to the vacation/fun budget. When we went to Sea World we dined with the dolphins which was very expensive for the amount/type of food, but my kids had the best time ever! I felt that I could justify that indulgence since we rarely eat out.
we have all but stopped going out to real restuarants for dinner, especially now that we have two kids. But we still have a tendency to grab a quick lunch out. especially on the way home from church on sundays. We live half an hour from church so by the time we are done chatting and get in the car and get home it is already 1pm and we are starved and dont want to start cooking at that point. This week we grabbed taco bell and three of us ate for under $6 so I dont feel too bad…hehe.
.-= Amanda Monroe´s last blog ..More Free Kindle Downloads =-.
We eat out with a group of friends every Friday night, then usually grab something out at least one meal Saturday… and then I eat out with my sister once a week.
Wow, didn’t realize how much until I just wrote it out. Hmm, now I know where some of my money goes. 😉
.-= Amanda´s last blog ..Free Milk Bone Essentials Dog Treats =-.
This is definitely my vice as far as budgetting is concerned. For us it comes out of our “fun” money though. So, it’s still accounted for. Like someone else said, I am a stay at home mom and sometimes I eat out just to get out of the house. And, it’s funny because I LOVE to cook. But, I also love the eating out experience. SO, for now, it’s staying around. We pack a picnic a lot of times as well and when our “fun” money is gone it’s gone, but we still use a lot of it on eating out just because we enjoy it.
.-= Crystal Brothers´s last blog ..All You magazine Deals. =-.
Thanks for doing this poll Alyssa! I’m interested to see the results. This is my weakness, I enjoy eating out but we try to keep it to once every 7-10 days. Now that my boys eat enough to order adult meals vs. the kids meals our bill can get pricey. Although I think eating out 3-4 times a month is acceptable for us and we can afford it in our budget, it’s still hard to look at the budget and justify it. We budget $300 on groceries and $150 on dining out! That $150 we use to dine out could purchase another 2 weeks of food at least. I still struggle with this area of the budget!
.-= Natalie´s last blog ..Kitchen Curtains =-.
We got out a couple times a week usually…which is drastically cut back from before when we would go out even more!
We really need to cut back even more, but I feel like I am stuck at home all day everyday, it is nice to just get out of the house! And I run out of ideas for things to cook, or we have other projects and don’t feel like cooking…I could come up with a million excuses!
My husband and I take each of the kids out for supper for their birthday to the restaurant of their choice. We do go out for ice cream during the summer months. We might grab just a sandwich if we had to go to town over lunch time, but that is very rare. I usually pack food for us to take along. The only other time we eat out is on vacation or if it is a extra special night out to celebrate something. It’s not that we won’t love to eat out more.
I chose 1-2 times per week but we rarely dine in, usually its a quick drive through and I usually have coupons. If we do a sit down restaurant, more than likely it would be an occasional Sunday lunch, probably still with a coupon. I love to eat out, it’s one of the very few things we do—we only do sporadic vacations, no cable, yard sale/clearance racks for clothes, etc. My brother in law’s family eats out EVERY day. They have 5 kids living at home, one kid has grown up and moved out. They eat out sometimes 2x per day! It boggles my mind, even though they’ve been doing it for years. How do they stay in budget? They don’t have one and are consistently in financial trouble. Duh, get a clue.
I used to eat out a lot when I lived in a Miami, a big city where there is a fast food place on every corner. But when I tried to start saying money, this was one thing I cut out- I was so surprised how much money I saved. It does make a big difference, but it is nice to go out too 🙂
We’ve been eating out several times a week, but I was pregnant and obsessed with McDonalds and Chick Fil A for a while, so that was my excuse. Now that baby is here, I’m too tired to cook most nights (or unable to do so with 3, 3 and under running a muck.) So take out/drive through have become all too common around here. And if it’s not one of those, it’s frozen entrees (frozen tacos from Trader Joes…. yummy…) But I’m trying to get better!
We used to eat out too often. I picked very rarely although maybe once or twice a month would be more accurate. We tend to just get Papa Murphy’s take and bake when we’re in a pinch for time or food. Even that is probably too much, honestly, with our budget too tight. But six months ago we were eating out at least once a week plus buying coffee from the convenience store or Starbucks every single day. We’ve completely changed THAT. 🙂
.-= Erin´s last blog ..Slapdash Saturday, edition 3 =-.
Oh, I am heartbroken to read the apologies and guilt! There is nothing in the world wrong with eating out, and I think that if you’re going to do it, make it nice, make it pleasant, make it free of guilt.
If you need to think about it, consider how many people the restaurant industry keeps in work. But it’s also a very small thing we can do for ourselves and our families, just to step away from home and simply enjoy one another without obligation.
It’s really a small thing in the big picture….eat out, skip the fast food, sit down and enjoy!
I have to say that we either eat or og get take out way to often. I am working full time and my husband is laid off so he is at home with out very active 18 month old. There are days it is just easier to pick something up on the way home or go out so we don’t have to cook and do dishes later.
We go out to eat very rarely — maybe 1x a month but often less. I’m counting fast food with that count too.
Why? Well, I think I’ve sorta turned into a food snob of sorts. I don’t want to go to fast food places or low-end restaurants because I don’t trust the ingredients. I want to make sure the food is actually healthy and without a bunch of chemicals, ya know?
So we go to higher-end restaurants that use real food and are pretty healthy.
We used a Groupon last night for a nice, white tablecloth type place. Our bill was $75 with tip (but $35 after the Groupon!). I’d rather spend money more rarely on a good place, then a bunch of mediocre places.
.-= Kacie´s last blog ..A Keeper and $100 =-.
we eat out about once a week and pick up pizza or other take out twice a month i find it hard to save much then since we are picky and or favorite restaurants don’t have any offers tas run between $12 to $30