Unnecessary Expenses: Part 5 (Merrick)

I’ve blogged about it before, but I’ll blog about it again. Eating out is an unnecessary expense.

Unless you’re only eating off the $.99 menu at McDonalds or Wendy’s, chances are you’re dropping a significant amount of money for your meal and a tip every time you go out to eat. It is obviously a luxury to eat out once or twice a week, and if you’re looking for place to cut back, this is a good one. And I don’t know about you, but half the time I go out to eat, I end up ordering something only sub-par and I walk away thinking, “too bad I just spent $15.00 on that meal that I didn’t really LOVE.”

I’ve been reading The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook, and have recently started integrating her meals into my weekly menus. She breaks down the cost of each item in each meal, including side dishes, and every meal costs less than $5 (and each makes enough for a family of five). After I’ve finished this book, I’ll blog about it a little more in-depth, but for now, suffice it to say that feeding your entire family for $5 is pretty great compared to the $50 or more you would spend taking them all out to eat. That means you could feed your family for one and a half weeks for the same price as one meal at a restaurant!

So although eating out can be fun and a good break for us wives who cook on a nightly basis for their families, it is obviously an unnecessary expense. Huge amounts of money can be saved if you limit your eating out to once or twice a month and instead eat at home, using recipes that can feed the whole family for only a few dollars.