How to Not Overspend on Eating Out

I should preface this article by saying that this is the thing that Tara and I struggle with the most: overspending on eating out. We feel like we’ve found a system that helps us the most and wanted to share with you our successes and some failures.

If you follow Dave Ramsey at all, you’ve probably heard him talk about avoiding eating out (“Beans and Rice” ring any bells?). He believes that it’s the most important thing to get rid of when trying to get out of debt. When we were trying to get out of debt, we had a really hard time with this, because we LOVE food and especially food we didn’t have to make ourselves. Although we didn’t eliminate eating out entirely during our debt free journey, we did minimize it as much as possible. We are big believers in Dave Ramsey’s principle to avoid eating out if you are trying to get out of debt and strongly believe you should budget a specific amount every month.

Tara and I have been trying to save more and more money every month for a variety of things. Because of this, we have put our budget under scrutiny over and over to see where we can get better. The “eating out” portion of our budget seems to be the biggest culprit for times we haven’t saved quite as much as we would have liked. To avoid going over budget, we’ve tried a few methods to pinch down on our expenses.

No-Spend Months

One of the best ways to avoid eating out all together is to go on a “no-spend month”. Tara and I have done this a few different times and have always had good results. I wrote an article that details this a little bit more in depth that you can read here.

Having “no-spend months” can be difficult and isn’t our preferred method, despite it’s benefits. To compromise, we came up with a plan to use cash every single time we ate out.

Use Cash

At the start of the month, Tara and I decide on a fixed amount of money that we want to spend on eating out. Once we have this figure in mind, we go to the bank or ATM and withdraw that exact amount. This money can be used at any point during the month, but should only be used for eating out. Once that money is gone, it’s gone and we can’t use any other money to eat out.

Dave Ramsey’s envelope method is very similar to this and has helped countless people. This has been the best method to help curb our overspending. We aren’t perfect at this, but it’s definitely been the best way to help us stick to our budget.

It’s simple tricks like these that sometimes can make the biggest difference to a budget. Eating out is definitely one of those things that can eat into your budget and wreck havoc.

What do you guys do to avoid overspending on eating out? Have you guys tried a similar method? What has or hasn’t worked for you? Leave a comment below. Thanks for reading!