Inexpensively

Helping you live your life, inexpensively.

  • Money Saving Ideas
    • Budgeting
      • Debt Management
      • Financial Planning
      • Taxes
    • Eating
      • Cooking
      • Dining
      • Gluten Free
      • Organic
    • Going Green
      • Living
      • Entertainment
      • Fashion
      • Health and Beauty
      • Holidays
      • Home and Garden
      • Travel
    • Sharing
      • Charity
      • Gift Giving
    • Shopping
      • Couponing
      • Free Stuff
      • Groceries
      • Rebates
      • Rewards
  • Deals
  • Coupon Codes
    • $ Off
    • % Off
    • Free Shipping

31 Day Budget (Day 14): Budget Dining Out

January 14, 2015 at 9:02 am 1 Comment  

31 Days to a Better Budget

Budget Dining Out

Each day of the series offers new tips, ideas and a challenge to start the year with a solid financial plan.


As long as we’re still on the subject of a food budget, let’s talk about dining out. This is actually an easier number to control—you can eliminate the expense altogether, if necessary. Your current dining expenses may be negligible or a significant portion of your monthly budget, depending on your lifestyle & location.

So, before you can make changes in the amount, you’ll have to decide where dining out fits into your life—think about why you spend money on dining. Do you end up at the drive-thru or order pizza in a panic when dinner isn’t planned? Meal planning, packing a lunch and keeping snacks on hand can all prevent you from making spur of the moment fast food runs.

Do you find yourself spending huge amounts of money on lunches with coworkers? Try reducing it to a more occasional once per month (or week) meal and packing a lunch the rest of the time. (A lunch co-op is also a great way to enjoy the experience of dining with work friends, while keeping the budget under control.)

If your receipts show a significant number of girls’ nights, consider a girls night in—just as much fun, at a fraction of the cost! When date nights add up to more than you can fit into your budget, explore a variety of free & frugal dates—same connection with your spouse, for a lot less.

Of course, if your dining expenses are the result of the fact that your family just enjoys dining out, you can still work within a budget. In this case, you just need to budget dining out into your current plans. Set an amount—and stick to it. Start by lowering the amount you’ve tracked earlier in the series and utilizing coupons, discount days and other tactics to keep dining expenses under control.

For today’s challenge, set an amount for this line item in your budget—as close to zero as possible—then work on tangible ways to save until you get there.


I’m not a financial planner or a budget expert. I’ll just be walking you through the steps I take each time my budget needs an adjustment. In fact, I’ll be participating myself!

Filed Under: Budgeting, Dining Tagged With: 31 Day Budget, Dining

About Heather Sokol

Heather Sokol is the founder of Inexpensively. She has been married to Spencer for many, many years. Together, they have five kids, fourteen pets, seven fish, and a web development company. What they lack is sanity.

More from Inexpensively

  • grocery shopping31 Day Budget (Day 13): Budget Grocery Shopping
  • monthly budget worksheet31 Day Budget (Day 6): Creating a Monthly Budget
  • DiningFine Dining on a Fast Food Budget
  • DiningHow to Make the Most of Kids Eat Free Dining

Comments

  1. James Fowlkes says

    January 14, 2011 at 7:12 pm

    An amazing amount of savings is to be had by cutting lunches out at work. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Cut it to once a month and watch your savings soar!!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2023 Inexpensively · Theme by Studio 27

Copyright © 2023 · Inexpensively on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in