Afford Superb Dinners Out on a Budget

If you are a family that never ever eats out, not even fast food because it just isn’t in the budget right now, I understand. When I was a single mom, building my own company, I not only didn’t eat out, I barely ate! If you’re in that stage of life, keep working hard, it will get better, but this is not the article for you.

If you’re the family or couple that orders pizza delivery once a week. Or if you grab burgers out or stop by chain dinning like Chili’s or Ruby Tuesdays few times a month because life has gotten in the way of your energy or motivation to cook. If you love great food, maybe even getting dressed up to go out and wish you could afford excellent restaurants too, this is for you.

TIME Illusion. First, accept that these chain dine-in stops take more time than cooking. Fast food drive through is faster, but I always feel horrible after eating it and try to avoid them. Compared to the nutrition of fast food, you mine as well just have a PB&J sandwich and move on. Also, most fast food is loaded with sodium and additives that are addictive as hell, so maybe this next idea will be further motivation to eliminate those and lose a few pounds as a bonus!

There are tons of 20 minute meal websites and gurus out there and I will add some meal cheats in my “Meal Cheating” section if you want to check back soon. Most sit down restaurants take you 45 minutes. Second, is it really that good? I usually leave the food chains thinking “that was alright, but nothing I couldn’t have cooked at home.” We would often order a burger or something fried because once we were in the blah mood, going just for laziness or a “treat” night off cooking, we ended up choosing comfort “deserved” food. We aimed for that salad, but rarely actually chose it.

MONEY trick. Second, let’s say you’re more awesome than me, highly likely, and you do order the salad, ok now what? You just likely spent $8-15 on that one salad, even at Panera. Michael and I went out once to a little place and I tried to be good. I had a $6 glass of wine and he had a vodka then a beer. (Alcohol always raises your bill in a ridiculous way, but to us, it’s part of going out.) Neither of us were that hungry so he ordered some sliders and I ordered a salad, yay for me. Our bill was around $50! We always tip at least 20% so we just spent $60 for a few little burger sliders, a salad and a few drinks! I could have bought a bottle of wine, a bottle of vodka, made burgers and a salad and had left over cash, wine, vodka and FOOD!

That was the last straw and when we came up with this idea… no more last minute dinners in exchange for one amazing dinner a month! Michael loves researching different places and reading reviews, so he makes our reservations a month ahead. Yelp is a great place to start or even the Sunday paper if that’s your thing. Then, we haven’t spent $50-$75 a week ($200-$300 a month!) so when we go to an amazing expensive place and spend $150-175 we’ve still SAVED money AND had a much more memorable experience. I never remember those quick stop meals.

Life is ultimately about memories and experiences don’t you think?

If you need to save money, but still want the experience of beautiful dinners, go every other month. We Just needed to break even and not feel like we were wasting time and money.

Check out your lunch habits too. If you’re going to lunch for work only 3 times a week, you’re spending at least $60 a month and that’s only if you manage to eat for $5. Most meals are really more like $6.50-$8.50 which raises your crappy lunch burger/burrito, that’s effecting your health, to $78 – $102 a month!! Bring left overs, pack a sandwich and watch the pounds fall off while going to an amazing anniversary style dinner every other month and feeling like a million bucks!

You’ll have a luxurious time and feel super suave not having to worry about the price. Order whatever you want knowing you’re still saving money! We order whatever drinks we want. We have apps and save room for desserts. Oh yeah, we break any and all healthy eating rules we can! We went from sitting down to a dinner we didn’t even want and thinking “I’ll get the $10 salad because I just can’t buy another $15 burger” to “hell yeah, I’ll take that $30 short rib that tastes AMAZING!” It feels like such a treat that we get to look forward to all month! Then we get all dressed up and make a whole evening of it, feeling totally pampered all the while spending $150 a month instead of $250 or more.