This is a guest post from Heather of Upside Down Homeschooling.
The single biggest drain to our budget is eating out.
Seriously, one month I calculated we spent over $800 a month eating out. For a family of four who simply doesn’t have an extra $800/month to be blowing, that’s a problem. One would think well you at least you weren’t spending much money at the grocery store. Nope, not true. We were still spending the same amount on groceries. We just weren’t eating them. They were sitting in the pantry or refrigerator going bad while we were blowing money at restaurants.
In my eyes, this is a sin. It’s something God has really been putting heavily on my heart the past few months. It became all too real one day when I felt God telling me “by choosing to let the food in your refrigerator go bad while you use money that you don’t have to be eating out, it’s like you’re telling me what I’ve provided you with isn’t good enough.”
Ouch. That hurt. Bad.
So I’ve started looking into the reasons we were eating out so much. Many times it was due to poor planning.
- We would rush out the door and not eat before we left the house which means we would “just grab something quick while we’re out.”.
- I would get home from work, hungry, with no plan for dinner so we would go out and get something.
- My husband would offer to fix dinner and we would have a ton of food, but would inevitably be missing needed ingredients, so we would order take-out.
Being tired of this repetitive, expensive cycle, I decided to make a monthly meal plan. It seemed like when we would fix dinner, we ended up having the same meals over and over and we were all getting bored with them. So I sat down and made a list of the meals we would typically make for dinner. Do you know I ended up with a list of over 50 meals! I also have a shelf full of cook books that are never used, so I pulled them out and started making a list of meals I would like to try.
I printed a blank monthly calendar off the internet and went to work. {You can also find free weekly and monthly meal plan calendars here.) Each week I pulled five meals off our go-to meals list, one meal off the new recipes list and left one evening for leftovers.
We grocery shop every two weeks according to my paydays. It’s very critical for us to make sure we get all necessary ingredients for our two week meal plan at one time. If we forget something for a meal and realize it the evening that the meal is scheduled, the temptation to order take-out is too great and we are setting ourselves up for failure.
We’ve also started making sure we all eat before we leave the house. No more running through drive thru because we didn’t eat. If by some chance we do find ourselves hungry while out, I have a small tote in the car with Nutri-grain bars, granola bars and juice boxes for quick snack to hold us over until we get home.
Just some simple planning has been saving our family at least $800/month.
Do you spend too much money eating out? Has meal planning saved your family budget? I would love to hear your success stories!
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Have you tried freezer meals? I think they might be a good option for you on busy nights. I have a freezer meals tag in my blog. You can make a large batch of tomato sauce or pesto when the ingredients are in season and then freeze it. There are tons of other freezer meals that freeze well. http://www.creatingnirvanatoday.blogspot.com/search/label/freezer%20recipe
100% accurate with my family as well. I spend about $300/month eating out. It’s ridiculous!
We just did an overhaul with this same issue. The only difference was my motivation was health. I love the website Pepperplate. It’s awesome! You can save recipes you find online, I get them off of Pinterest a lot, or you can manually enter your favorite. Then you can create menus for special events, use their calendar to plan meals, create a grocery list which you can edit, and a host of other options. I use it endlessly, and the best part is that it’s FREE.
I, too, find the key to eating at home is planning. Best of luck on your new venture.
You are so right. We take sandwiches with us or breakfast bars. It has been saving us a ton of money.