If you’re are looking to save money consider this: if you go out to eat, don’t order beverages. Get tap water instead. According to Jeff Yeager’s Book “The Cheapskate Next Door” the average American family spends about $4,000 annually on eating out. If you don’t order drinks, you’ll save about $800 bucks per year.
We don’t go out to eat often but we order water. There is no way we can justify almost $3 for a glass of pop. If we want wine or beverages we’ll stop by the LCBO and pick up what we want and drink to our hearts content at home for a fraction of the cost. I did a post earlier in 2012 which was an eating out vs eating in comparison… ya… you can imagine what was much better to do.
To the other extent, we now try to go out for drinks and not a whole meal. We are really healthy eaters and found it wasn’t affordable for us to have meals out and get enough food to leave feeling full. For the most part we only dine out to socialize and try to arrange to meet friends for happy hour (where you can get drinks and food for 2 people for less than $20 here in Portland) or breakfast (which tends to have large portions for great prices). This summer we have gone out for frozen yogurt a lot as well ($10max for 2 people) which has been a nice treat as well. This has allowed us to scale back our dining out budget to $80/mo which has been a big savings.