Eating out can be a hard habit to break. At the beginning of the year, I made a commitment to cut our grocery bill, but then our eating out bill went through the roof. And much of it was laziness. Hey, we just finished swim lessons, let's stop. Oh, let's go get ice cream. Hey, there's a fundraiser for the school. Let's meet at the burger place for fun!
So I made a commitment about 3 weeks ago that we wouldn't eat out until our vacation in late March. (With a few exceptions: if someone else is paying-work lunch, if we already paid for it-gift card or once a week school lunch, and for my son's birthday party.)
It has been incredibly hard. Invited out for several things - girl's night, toddler group at the burger place. Today we are having layoffs at work and people went out for tacos. I've been out a couple of times for pre-paid events, and we went out for beer last night because of the looming layoffs (someone else paid though). Depending on your group of friends, avoiding meals out is a challenge.
My husband was traveling this week and obviously ate out a lot. I pieced together a random selection of food for lunch today. But he decided to go out because there really wasn't anything for him to take that didn't require a lot of prep.
Three weeks down and three more to go.