Eating Out

[Hotstreak]

I think the whole thing is stupid. I generally find eating out to be overpriced, unhealthy, inferior to homemade food, and an overall hassle.

This is exactly my feeling.  It confuses me how so many make this a regular event in life.

Different strokes. I enjoy eating out and cooking. It sounds like maybe y'all should try better restaurants. I work as a cook and there are things i can do at work that are just hard to replicate in a home kitchen. I guess I eat out a lot if you count cooking for myself in the restaurant kitchen 4-5 days per week.  :)

Yes!  This is especially true of trying new foods.  I don't want to go through the trial and error process each time I am interested in a new dish - I want to try them at restaurants so that I can decide which (if any) I am going to learn to cook at home.

[aspiringnomad]

We (mostly my wife, tbh) cook dinner at home 3-4 days a week, but only eat out at a full-service sit-down restaurant about twice a month. With the Chipotle-style fast casual boom in US cities, eating out is cheaper and healthier than ever before. Still not quite Mustachian perhaps, but we like the diversity of food and flexibility in our schedule that fast casual places provide. Where I am, there is a chain for pretty much every kind of cuisine allowing you to build carb-light salads or bowls of fresh, healthy deliciousness. To see meaningful savings from cooking at home vs. a fancy $9 customized salad or bowl from a fast casual joint, you need to make large batches of food and eat leftovers over the course of a week. My wife is an amazing cook and enjoys tweaking recipes to our tastes, but it still costs anywhere from $10-20 for a dinner for two depending on the protein she uses.

[ptobest]

I enjoy eating out but get sick of it if I do it too much. Since I've started tracking my spending & become more aware of when/how I spend, I'm down to eating out around about twice a week, and those fall into the following categories:

1.) Eating at places to try/understand new dishes - I really enjoy cooking, and trying something I've never heard of at a new place gives me ideas for other dishes I can make at home. It's also good for confirming that I'm doing something correctly. For example, I'm getting more into Ethiopian cooking, and were it not for eating at restaurants I would have no idea if I'm making the recipes correctly. I also recently tried Singapore noodles at a Chinese restaurant for the first time, and am looking forward to trying to recreate it's deliciousness at home.

2.) Eating with friends - I try to make this also fit into #1, but sometimes they just gotta go to Red Robin or wherever so I suck it up and enjoy their friendship while paying too much for a burger and fries I could make for significantly cheaper at home.

3.) Impulse/treat eating - the cheapest, as it usually involves grabbing a slice of pizza, or pastry, or similar. I recently found out there is a Mexican bakery near me that has $.75 pastry made from scratch, rated high on Yelp too, sooo that will be happening soon.

[horsepoor]

I think the whole thing is stupid. I generally find eating out to be overpriced, unhealthy, inferior to homemade food, and an overall hassle.

This is exactly my feeling.  It confuses me how so many make this a regular event in life.

Different strokes. I enjoy eating out and cooking. It sounds like maybe y'all should try better restaurants. I work as a cook and there are things i can do at work that are just hard to replicate in a home kitchen. I guess I eat out a lot if you count cooking for myself in the restaurant kitchen 4-5 days per week.  :)

What sorts of things do you use the commercial kitchen for?

I've tried plenty of better restaurants, and generally we're closing in on the $100/meal price point before it feels worthwhile to go out, unless it's for pizza slices or a $4 burrito.

[VoteCthulu]

Ok, I'll be the lone dissenter for the thread.

I eat out about 80% of my meals. I don't enjoy cooking, and I'm bad at it. When I do eat at home, it's generally out of a can or box. Perhaps when I'm retired I'll learn to enjoy cooking and improve enough to avoid poisoning myself, but I'm budgeting to remain at about $2000/yr in restaurant expenses.

Care to share your secret on eating out for $2.31 per meal??

• 90 meals in a 30-day month, you eat out 80% of them = 72 "out" meals a month
• 72 "out" meals a month x 12 months = 864 "out" meals a year
• $2,000 per year / 864 "out" meals = $2.31 per "out" meal

Seems QUITE cheap.
FJ

That's because I don't eat 3 meals per day. Breakfast is usually a glass of orange juice.

Lunch is my main meal, which is at a restaurant 5+ days a week. It could be a $5 pizza, a coupon for a fast food burger, or a regular $8-$15 meal or buffet. Over the last year it's been pretty steady at about $170/month.

At night I might have some potato chips, almonds, or graham crackers, but not what I consider a meal.

Weekends I'll make canned soup, or boxed rice or pasta if I'm not out doing something (which is rare in the summer).

[LindseyC]

My SO (we don't live together) loves to eat out because he has the income and is also quite busy with school and work. I got into the habit of eating out a lot too and also found myself stopping often for ridiculous things like a tea ($2) or a cookie or whatever.

This year I am trying to pay down debt accumulated from being sick for a few years and the easiest way to save some money was to stop eating out and really economize on any costly socializing. After an expensive weekend wedding I had to go to at the beginning of January, I did exactly that and it has been going really well. I have actually lost some weight, feel better fed, and recognize now that I was spending WAY to much.

While I like eating out when it is going to a place where I can't easily replicate the meal (some ethnic foods that require a serious spice investment or techniques I haven't mastered)  I think for a year or two I can really limit those types of meals to special events. As for the lazy eating out, it is just gone for good. I will never buy a tea or a cookie or something silly like that again unless I am on a vacation. Even then I plan to always bring drinks and snacks to cut back on any temptations.

I have noticed my groceries have gone up (when I was trying to cut back on them) but I also recognize I am experimenting a bit more cooking wise to develop a broader menu and some quick options for when I am feeling lazy. I am 100% confident by March I will be back down to my grocery budget goal and may even drop below it.

[Reynold]

How often were you eating freezer meals?  If you have 10 different options, and you're only choosing from them 1-2 times per week, that's less than once per month for any given meal.  Can someone really get tired of a food that they eat that infrequently?  I mean, obviously they can, because you said she did, but that just baffles me.  Doesn't it get just as repetitive for people ordering pizza once a week?  I don't mean to sound rude, this sort of thing just honestly confuses me.

My DW is the same way; she does all the cooking, as she is a much better cook and actually cares about the taste and quality of what she eats, but she likes a REALLY wide variety of food.  We go out maybe once a week, for things she can't/won't make at home, like sushi.  Sushi is the only example we might actually repeat in a month, and that is because at the all-you-can-eat place we go, we can order different things each time.  Cooking at home, she only repeats a few times a year.   Even something like steak, which we make at home because it is cheaper than the restaurant (the secret is to only buy cuts on sale), gets a different sauce or marinade on different occasions.  Which means we have an enormous stock of spices, sauces, etc. . .

Definitely budgeting for some eating out money in retirement, DW would love to eat out every meal, providing she could get healthy, novel, fresh, interesting tastes for a reasonable amount of money each time.  Which won't happen, so she'll continue to make most of our food. :)

[rtrnow]

I think the whole thing is stupid. I generally find eating out to be overpriced, unhealthy, inferior to homemade food, and an overall hassle.

This is exactly my feeling.  It confuses me how so many make this a regular event in life.

Different strokes. I enjoy eating out and cooking. It sounds like maybe y'all should try better restaurants. I work as a cook and there are things i can do at work that are just hard to replicate in a home kitchen. I guess I eat out a lot if you count cooking for myself in the restaurant kitchen 4-5 days per week.  :)

What sorts of things do you use the commercial kitchen for?

I've tried plenty of better restaurants, and generally we're closing in on the $100/meal price point before it feels worthwhile to go out, unless it's for pizza slices or a $4 burrito.

A lot of it is that the equipment is just better. A commercial convection oven browns and puts a crust on things that home (even convection) ovens can't. Commercial vac sealers make it easy to seal products in a liquid that creates an infusion that's more intensely flavored and can be produced in a short amount of time. I have a wood fired grill at work that's always going and used for lots of meats and veggies. Fish cooked over wood and brushed with a gremolata is awesome, or sous vide a steak to a perfect med-rare and then sear over the fire. I actually just ate a cold bean salad made with grilled beans. While I try not to deep fry often, it's great for little garnishes or on occasion I want a good piece of fried chicken. Commercial fryers maintain temp really well and produce a nice product. Frying at home is just a pain in general. Where I am now we dry age a lot of meat in house. That's hard to do safely at home for longer than 7-10 days.

I agree that I too prefer to eat out at the upper and lower end of the spectrum. A great diner or off the beaten path hole in the wall in my favorite. Otherwise I want the 100$+ fine dining experience.

[Retire-Canada]

Went out for Thai food last night since we were rolling around downtown on our bikes. Although I cook Thai curries at home mine are not nearly as good as the ones I get eating out. So I really enjoyed the meal.

Valentine's Day is tomorrow so I'm going to grab a couple steaks and BBQ dinner for the GF and I. Steaks are a treat and frankly eating out V-Day tends to be less fun than it sounds. So we avoid it.

[I'm a red panda]

We don't do it very much. My husband is an amazing cook. Except maybe Indian or Thai food, I'd much rather eat what he makes than a restaurant. And it is SO much cheaper.

Where I get caught occasionally is work. I go out as a way to break up the day and the boredom. But that's still only like once a quarter.

[golden1]

We usually eat out (or do take out) 1-2x a week.  We almost always do a Friday pizza (a tradition we carried on from my wife's parents) and often go out Saturday nights either as a couple or as a family.  We try to avoid going out during the week, but sometimes there are just too many events going on between school stuff, activities, someone's work schedule, whatever, and we end up stopping out because we're "on the road."  The worst for us is when we are away for the weekend and get back late on Sunday; usually we do all our planning/shopping/prep for the week on Sunday, but if we are away it all falls apart and we might end up with takeout a few nights that week.  Sucks, but when both people work 45+ hrs a week plus commuting plus having a kid, it happens.

This is where I am at.  I don't really eat out very much, just for birthdays and celebrations.  I find that it just takes too much time and hassle.  We end up doing take out more than I would like.  I eat out at work once a week as does my husband, and we end up getting take out for the kids once or twice a week due to a busy schedule.  I am trying to save more so I have been buying a few frozen or easy meals to eat on those nights so I don't eat out much myself, but I probably splurge once a week. 

[mm1970]

I think the whole thing is stupid. I generally find eating out to be overpriced, unhealthy, inferior to homemade food, and an overall hassle.

This is exactly my feeling.  It confuses me how so many make this a regular event in life.

I think it depends on where you are in life.  When I was young (20s), I ate out a LOT.  I mean a LOT.

From age 22-27 I lived in the DC area and was in the Navy.  I worked 45 hrs a week, took 2 classes a semester to get my master's, and played a lot of volleyball (league, tournaments, etc.)  Oh and I didn't know how to cook.

Anyway, after 2 years of spaghetti and sandwiches, I started eating out more.  It was a social thing.  Going home by myself at night was lonely.

When my husband and I bought our house, I found an old credit card statement from those days, and was horrified.  $1000 a month, most of it eating out.  There were days I ate out 3x a day.
Breakfast: bagel with ham, egg and cheese at the deli on the way to work
Lunch: veggie wrap or tuna sandwich at a different deli right next to work
Dinner: spicy chicken sandwich, fries, and beer after a volleyball game.

It's no wonder I had to work hard to meet the weight requirements, even working out 2x a day.

I ate out less when I started dating my husband, but then he moved cross country and I had 2 years solo with grad school and work. That's when it got REALLY bad.

[rebecca527]

I'm new to the forum and kind of glad to see that there *are* people here who enjoy eating out! We usually eat a meal out about once a week and have agreed to budget about $180/month for this (for two people). My husband really enjoys it, and honestly I do too - I work from home, so it's a really nice way to get out of the house when cabin fever starts to set in. We do offset this by keeping our grocery budget quite low (around $400/month).

[OthalaFehu]

So I am about to make some mustachers throw up. I spend about $10k a year eating out. It is our biggest waste of money. But I DON'T CARE. I like food, and being waited on. I feel like it is special time when my family goes out to eat. And I am redistributing some of the wealth because I am a good tipper. We both work and we find it hard to come home after work and THEN cook dinner.

[Retire-Canada]

So I am about to make some mustachers throw up. I spend about $10k a year eating out. It is our biggest waste of money. But I DON'T CARE. I like food, and being waited on. I feel like it is special time when my family goes out to eat. And I am redistributing some of the wealth because I am a good tipper. We both work and we find it hard to come home after work and THEN cook dinner.

I used to spend a lot eating out. So I can at least sympathize with where you are coming from. How much does your family save each year to put the eating out into perspective?

[OthalaFehu]

$50k automatically out of the checks and another $20k plowed back in when it is not spent somewhere else.

[Retire-Canada]

$50k automatically out of the checks and another $20k plowed back in when it is not spent somewhere else.

So you are saving a fair bit and if you are happy with your progress towards FIRE and want to spend $10K on eating out go nuts. :)

[Tabaxus]

I eat out way, way too often. Almost every day for lunch, and too frequently for dinner, on the way home.  Two years ago, I was really good about this for half a year, and lost 60 lbs in the process.  Lo and behold, I've gain all of that weight back, plus some, and it's largely because (a) I've regressed to eating out for lunch and dinner and (b) I've regressed on exercise, even though I walk two miles to work M-F.

So, all in all, it's a HORRIBLE habit.

[StacheyStache]

I love eating out, but get sick of it if I do it too much.  The website Budget Bytes was my savior in cooking the perfect trifecta of meals:  cheap, healthy, fast.  But we usually budget in a lunch out and a lazy takeout night each week (sit down dinners out are rarer and usually squished in when we have evening plans on a weekday night).  A lunch out might be hot dogs from the hot dog cart and eaten in the park near work (around 8 bucks for the two of us, with chips drink and two dogs for Mr. Stachey) or slightly pricier Vietnamese subs with five spice pork (completely worth it, I've made five spice pork before but it just doesn't compare).  Take out dinner is usually Chick Fil A or pizza. 

If those don't sound like the healthiest options, they're not.  I'm not paying 10 bucks for fancy lettuce.  The other meals are healthy and cooked at home with leftovers for lunch more often than not, but if I'm going out to eat it's to enjoy myself. 

[chasesfish]

I have to do it all the time for work, so rarely want to do it during my spare time.  My wife and I used to go out more when we were both working, but she's turned into a great cook with her spare time.

We will still go out 1-2 per month, but often revert to our somewhat thrifty Chick Fil A date nights...

The lack of enjoying eating out almost turns into a burden traveling, we now hate it when our hotel(s) don't have a kitchen for us to do our own work

[Tonyahu]

Ok, I'll be the lone dissenter for the thread.

I eat out about 80% of my meals. I don't enjoy cooking, and I'm bad at it. When I do eat at home, it's generally out of a can or box. Perhaps when I'm retired I'll learn to enjoy cooking and improve enough to avoid poisoning myself, but I'm budgeting to remain at about $2000/yr in restaurant expenses.

I really don't see how this is possible - what do you eat?

My monthly budget calls for around $100-$150 per month eating out, which equals to about 1-2x per week for myself (and possibly the girlfriend). This translates to $1500-$1800 per year.

How are you holding it down for $180 per month?

[lthenderson]

Ok, I'll be the lone dissenter for the thread.

I eat out about 80% of my meals. I don't enjoy cooking, and I'm bad at it. When I do eat at home, it's generally out of a can or box. Perhaps when I'm retired I'll learn to enjoy cooking and improve enough to avoid poisoning myself, but I'm budgeting to remain at about $2000/yr in restaurant expenses.

I really don't see how this is possible - what do you eat?

My monthly budget calls for around $100-$150 per month eating out, which equals to about 1-2x per week for myself (and possibly the girlfriend). This translates to $1500-$1800 per year.

How are you holding it down for $180 per month?

They answered in previous posts but essentially their first post was very misleading. They never eat breakfast, for supper only eats nuts and crackers and on weekends canned soup and boxed pasta.

[aprilchem]

We normally eat out for dinner on Friday/Saturday/Sunday, but we're in an unusual situation.  I am a college professor and can eat in our campus dining hall for ~$3 a meal.  We are a family of 5, but the dining center's policy on whether you have to pay for kids is pretty murky, so I'd say about 80% of the time we go they only charge us for me and my husband.  So it costs us $6 total for the 5 of us to eat out and it's good (and fairly healthy) food (they always have vegetarian/vegan/gluten free alternatives on hand, as well as low-fat and organic options).   Plus there is so much variety that everyone can always find something they're interested in eating.  For us it's a really affordable option.

[lentil]

We cut down on eating out pretty drastically this year (from 5-10 times per week to once or twice). Huge savings, much healthier. I'm actually kind of horrified by the immediate difference in spending...though not exactly surprised.

The funny thing is that I don't miss it, or feel like we're missing out on anything. I finally figured out meal planning (simpler than I thought!), and the food we eat at home is seriously delicious, plus thrifty. Since we're not doing the "oh crap, it's late and I'm too exhausted to deal with cooking" thing anymore, we're not eating fast food or chain restaurant meals anymore either. Which means that when we do eat out, it's only at our favorite local spots, usually taking advantage of their specials, and feels more like an actual treat.

[BFGirl]

I eat out mainly for socializing, date night and occasionally because I am too lazy to cook.  I used to eat out a lot more and ate out for lunch all the time.  I rarely eat lunch out anymore (maybe once a month).  But it is one of the luxuries I enjoy and I will keep working a little bit longer so that I can eat out without worrying about my budget.

[Cranky]

I don't find it to be good value, but we don't have a lot of interesting restaurants in my area, perhaps? And I like to cook, so pretty often I'm looking at a restaurant dinner thinking how I'd change it if I made it myself.

We mostly eat out when we are travelling. We do get take out pizza on Christmas Eve (family tradition) and Chinese food on birthdays, which is a pretty good value, I must say.

We went to the Indian buffet restaurant last month because we were out doing some stuff. I can cook much of that stuff at home, but I'll only make two things at a time, and it's pretty great to have a huge selection.

I don't get the appeal of buying coffee away from home, either.

[CanaDuh]

I eat out once or twice a month, sporadically.

Some months, I don't. Some, I do. My only rule is that it needs to be something that is either difficult to prepare at home, or unique enough that while I could prepare it, I don't want it in the quantities that economic home prep would require.

For example, I usually go to my favourite nearby gyro joint for my monthly splurge. I love gyros, but making them at home is not very economical for me, and most store bought variations are gross. Another is for desserts - I could buy a whole cake for the cost of a slice at a restaurant, but I don't -need- a whole cake.

I don't ever go out for sandwiches or burgers, and I'd never go out for pizza, homemade pizza is practically free if you buy the basics in bulk.

Sometimes, I crave things. And I figured out years ago that denying my food cravings makes my normal food (which I enjoy) seem less good. So, I indulge the unique cravings (gyros, slow roast bbq, korean bbq, etc) that are impractical for me to make for/by myself, and soldier through the rest. I have a $20 eating out budget that I simply use or don't use, as I see fit.

Regards,

[Digital Dogma]

Lately I've been limiting my eating out to places within walking distance, or the cash-only Chinese restaurant at my IGA.

In the past my SO and I would order food at 45 dollars per delivery and it would last for a few meals in a row, very expensive in the long run (or even twice), it was not sustainable. We've cut that back significantly by focusing on pickup-only, lower cost alternatives to appetizer dishes (such as a spring roll instead instead of fried whatevers).

Since we switched to walking-distance places for the most part, we save money by having a few drinks before we go out to our meal rather than ordering alcohol at the restaurant.

I've found that as we replaced many delivery food nights with home cooked meals we were using breakfast for dinner as a backup plan. We always keep some bacon, corned beef hash, eggs, and bagels for easy dinner solutions that hit that junk food craving and the after work laziness for meal prep just right.

[Felicity]

Yep, definitely costly (There are some annoying people who argue that eating out can be cheaper, but they either don't know how to math or are bad at grocery shopping) and often unhealthy - also definitely something we budget for on a regular basis, though.

2 adults, ~$100 a month. Before we started tracking our spending and working towards financial independence, it was more like $400 a month on Chipotle or the Thai place around the corner. Basically, it was $$$ and wasn't even bringing us much enjoyment. Now we go to one fancy or unusual place a month, spend 1/4 of what we used to, and definitely look forward to it.

Mindful spending for the win. :D