This is a financial blog, yet I frequently forget to even mention finances! I reviewed my Ynab data from last month. We typically spend a lot on eating out... a little embarrassing, but I budgeted like $300/month on it. Most nights we ate at home, but on the weekends I guess we made up for it. And there are so many great ethnic restaurants around here, eating out became entertainment. I tried in the past to lower my eating out expenses, but never succeeded. Last month, though, I tried something different.
My girls are always watching these Youtubers who put themselves through "challenges" for a month (like drink nothing but water, or go to sleep at 8pm every night, or anything else just for the heck of it). So I asked my kids to join me in a challenge to stay under "x" amount of money eating out each month. First of all they were shocked that eating out cost that much per month. So it's cool that their eyes were opened to what was actually spent on eating out for an entire month. When you look at the spending on just a meal, it doesn't sound like much, until you add it all up.
The girls were great keeping me on track. If I felt extra tired and started to waver on the challenge, one of them would suggest something easy we could make from our menu. Before we ordered any food, one of the girls would ask, "how much have we spent already?".
Now, DW did come down for Thanksgiving and that meal out was taken out of her funds, but besides that weekend, the rest of the eating out was accounted for in Ynab. The grand total for November was $149! We still enjoyed our weekends out and trying new foods, we just were more careful about it, and turned down some of the opportunities we had to eat out. Proud of my kids and proud of myself, now that I know we can do it, I can budget a lower amount for dining out and put that extra cash elsewhere!
Forgot to include financial updates!
December 5th, 2016 at 01:52 am
December 5th, 2016 at 02:42 am 1480905743
December 5th, 2016 at 12:31 pm 1480941074
December 5th, 2016 at 02:00 pm 1480946454
December 6th, 2016 at 03:01 am 1480993319