If you took a look a our budget breakdown in Current Situation….. you will notice that I don’t budget very much for eating out. If you didn’t catch it, check out our budget below – if you click it will get bigger :-)
For August, I budgeted $100, but in previous months I would normally budget $50, so I doubled our budget for eating out in August! I just think that while we both enjoy eating out, it is usually not worth the money. For much less money I can cook a meal at home that is better for us and better for a budget.
But, we actually spent $164 on eating out in August! What is wrong with us? To be fair, part of it is probably because I am pregnant, do not feel like cooking, and The Big Guy doesn’t cook….well, he cooks, but I don’t particularly want to eat it :-)
Still, if we spend $164 per month on eating out, that is $1,968.00 per year. To put it another way, I make $17 and hour, and not factoring in taxes, I worked almost 10 hours each month to pay for eating out. Each year, I worked 116 hours to pay for our eating out! Doesn’t seem worth it, does it?
So, we need to defy our budget leak. How are we going to do this? We are not going to eat out at all this month.
What is our game plan?
1) The Big Guy is going to cook more – scary, I know :-), but he can cook some things like grilled sandwiches, mac and cheese, and he can grill, so he is going to cook some of those things more.
2) I am going to put less pressure on myself to have a full-blown meal at every turn, allowing myself some leniency. Bagel pizzas are ok for dinner, right?
3) We will encourage each other. Usually when we are out and about, and one of us wants to grab something at a restaurant, the other doesn’t. We are going to speak up to each other, and listen. We are in this together!
We have a couple other budget leaks, but this one is driving me crazy! Do you have any budget leaks like this? What did you do to to stop them?
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I use Mint.com to track my budget, and then I set alerts to let me know if I’m over budget (I think you can also set alerts for specific amounts so for example in your case you can set an alert if you hit $50). For me, it definitely helps!
Mint is one of my favorite financial tools! It was actually how I found out about our “leak”. The first couple of months I wrote it off, blaming pregnancy, but 3 months in a row don’t lie! Way to go taking advantage of an awesome – and FREE :-) – tool!
I get ya, eating out can also eat into your money really fast! It’s awesome that you caught the leak in time to make changes and patch it up. Who knows how many more hours you would’ve worked if you didn’t break it down? Thanks for the great read!
Thanks for the support! Hopefully we caught it in time :-)
I’m impressed that you’re getting your guy to cook more. Mr PoP is convinced if he shows any aptitude at cooking in the kitchen it will become his duty forever so swears he doesn’t know how to do anything but reheat leftovers and make PB&J. =)
Haha! I can totally see that! Good luck :-)
Actually, I have to admit that we have that same leak. We spend WAY too much on “dining and entertainment.” Both of us enjoy eating out but I have to agree with you that often the food isn’t as good as we make at home. Even if you eat at a more expensive place…go figure!
I love the way you two are working together to achieve your goals. That’s awesome!
Ree
Thanks! It was hard for us to admit, and even harder to work together. Thanks for the support!