Eating out all of the time can be pretty expensive, even if you are only eating at McDonalds. Grabbing a small snack here and there can add up, too, such as $4 here for coffee, $3 there for ice cream, etc. Going cold turkey when it comes to eating out is a great idea, but it is one goal that I have never been able to achieve. So, the trick for us is to use some money saving strategies that will at least reduce the cost of eating out.
Compare
Compare the prices of your local food. You may find a big discrepancy. Here is an example. A local place near our home will give you a good-sized hand dipped scoop of ice cream for $1. At the local Dairy Queen, the same thing is almost $3! For a family of five, the expense ads up to $15 instead of just $5.
Orchestrate the meal
Take a few moments to figure out the best bang for your buck. Previously, I spoke about techniques for splitting restaurant meals, which is a great way to go. But there are other strategies that you can use depending on your location, likes and dislikes. For example, when we were away in Lancaster, we decided to stop at Cici’s, which is a pizza buffet. For less than the cost of a while pizza elsewhere, we could eat our fill of different kinds of pizza, salad, pasta, breadsticks and desert. We opted to skip the coke products and get ice water (free at Cici’s) to cut down the expense even more.
Snack right
Keeping snacks and even your own bottled water in the car will be a lot less money than having to stop early for a mean instead of getting home for a meal, or stopping to buy snacks. Snacks are generally easy to bring along. We keep a canvas bag in our hall closet. We can fill it and grab it on the way out of the door.
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
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