Spending too much on eating out

[JanetRose]

We've been eating out a lot to include carry-out since we are not good at cooking.

Do you have a schedule where it's sandwiches one night a week, left-overs another night, etc.?

How do you save money if/when you eat out?

 

[DisneyOma]

Food portions are way too big for me, so I end up getting 1-2 meals for later out of the "doggy bag" when we eat out. We also limit dining out/takeout to 1-2 times a week, use the leftovers for another meal, then pick less expensive meat (chicken) and have a meatless night (pasta and sauce) for another night. We limit what we buy for takeout as well. Want pizza and a salad? We order the pizza, I make the salad.

 

[slo]

We don’t eat out very often, but when we do, we order water to drink, no appetizers and try to go somewhere I have a coupon for.

OP….don’t give up on cooking.
Learning how to cook is a process with lots of fails before you get to a lot of successes. Enjoy the process - celebrate the victories of a yummy meal, and learn from the failures (even laugh at the failures - I tried a new recipe yesterday and it was a flop - we laughed it off and I’ll never make it again). Once you start having more victories than failures you won’t want to eat out as much. Good luck!

 

[HeatherC]

Dh and I love to go out to eat now that our kids are grown and in and out all the time. We just make it part of our budget. What I do, however, for those nights you just don’t want to cook is to keep something easy in the freezer like frozen pizza or dumplings that fry up quickly.

I am also a big fan of cook once and eat many times. For example if you make things like baked ziti, chili, soup, chicken pot pie, etc., just make two and freeze the other one for an easy home cooked meal later in the month. Each one usually has enough for leftovers or dinner for two nights and then you already have another to go in the freezer.
I find we save a ton by doing this because you really don’t have to double the ingredients most times. Just add a little extra and stretch things out to make two.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

We don't eat out often. When we do it's usually pizza or chinese food and there's always leftovers for another lunch or dinner. When I grocery shop, I meal plan. I try to plan meals at least one week at a time and I follow the weekly ads from my local grocery stores (Kroger and Publix). I meal plan around the sale items and Publix's BOGO's which are excellent. When meat is on sale, I freeze in individual portions to have at the ready exactly what I need. Sign up for your grocery store App, they usually have digital coupons and bonus for frequent customers. My Mom taught me...know your prices. If I'm looking for a new recipe, I always google "easy" in it. Like, easy chicken stir fry. Two good recipe sites are Taste of Home and AllRecipes.

 

[luvnwdwgal]

We rarely eat out. I cook a 3 course meal every night. We always eat leftovers because any night I don’t have to cook is a treat. We occasionally wil order a pizza and that’s a real treat too although probably only once every couple of months.

 

[crazymomof4]

OP….don’t give up on cooking.
Learning how to cook is a process with lots of fails before you get to a lot of successes. Enjoy the process

I lived at home through college. Mom cooked. I never even helped in the kitchen aside from doing dishes and putting away leftovers. I married right out of college with zero cooking experience or knowledge. My mom told me, "If you can read, you can cook". She had married in the same situation as me and relied on cookbooks. Eventually both of us became excellent cooks (that's what people say, anyway LOL)
Now the novice cook has so much more available to help them, than just cookbooks! You can enter ingredients you have at home and google will find recipes for you. Like "Pasta, chicken breast, red peppers". Boom! you'll get hundreds of recipes. The step by step videos of how to make a recipe are great!!. (I like Tasty on youtube) Search specifically for easy recipes. If you start off with easy things, you'll succeed and it'll build your confidence!! Try semi homemade cooking with Sandra Lee. Then you can move to more complex meals once you've mastered the basics.

 

[QueenIsabella]

We save by not eating out. We're a family of 6--it costs $100 just to say "hello" at most restaurants.

OP, don't give up on cooking. Find yourself a good, basic cookbook and try a few things. I recommend "Cheap, Fast, Good", for its simple recipes that also taste delicious. Rachael Ray's cookbooks are also good--they walk you through every step, and her stuff uses regular ingredients--sometimes she takes supermarket shortcuts, like picking up pre-sliced veggies from the store salad bar. The websites the PP recommended are also good for fairly easy, basic recipes to get you started. Beware of Pinterest--I've had complete flops from there, as well as great recipes, but it's not vetted by anyone, so it's a crap-shoot as to what you get.

I will also be the first to tell you that every dish is NOT a homerun. Some that I've made have been less than stellar. You learn and move on--sometimes it's the recipe, sometimes it's the cook!

 

[TwoMisfits]

We save by not eating out. We're a family of 6--it costs $100 just to say "hello" at most restaurants.

OP, don't give up on cooking. Find yourself a good, basic cookbook and try a few things. I recommend "Cheap, Fast, Good", for its simple recipes that also taste delicious. Rachael Ray's cookbooks are also good--they walk you through every step, and her stuff uses regular ingredients--sometimes she takes supermarket shortcuts, like picking up pre-sliced veggies from the store salad bar. The websites the PP recommended are also good for fairly easy, basic recipes to get you started. Beware of Pinterest--I've had complete flops from there, as well as great recipes, but it's not vetted by anyone, so it's a crap-shoot as to what you get.

I will also be the first to tell you that every dish is NOT a homerun. Some that I've made have been less than stellar. You learn and move on--sometimes it's the recipe, sometimes it's the cook!

Yeah, that is SO true...we're now 3/x out per month (vs 1/x every week) b/c the bills are so painful (but I do let the kids pick their favorite).

As for OP, you listed options you can execute without cooking. That's a good place to start.
A salad night and a sandwich night are two good "no-cooking" ideas. For salad night, grab a rotisserie chicken for the protein, so you really are just chopping veg (and use bottled dressing)...or grab a bag of precooked hardboiled eggs for the same (yes, you could do this yourself, but it's more important to work up to more cooking once you have a habit of more dinners at home)...

 

[DVC-Don]

We maybe only get take out or eat out once or twice a month.

 

[CdnCarrie]

We only eat out twice a month on average unless on vacation. Way too expensive for a family a 4 with teenagers to eat out that often!

We sit down and meal plan once a week. Choose one or two easy meals for nights where you are time limited or tired.

we never do sandwiches for supper unless it’s like hot roast beef Sandwiches in the winter. Most of the family take sandwiches in their lunch bags. We don’t buy lunches out either.

 

[spiders]

We go out once a week as a family. I also go out to lunch with the wife at least once if not twice a week. I cook once a week on one of my days off and the wife takes care of the other 5 dinners.

 

[ronandannette]

We've been eating out a lot to include carry-out since we are not good at cooking.

Do you have a schedule where it's sandwiches one night a week, left-overs another night, etc.?

How do you save money if/when you eat out?

What is your family size and make-up? It’s tougher if you have children and are responsible for their nutrition and a decent meal-time routine. We’re a small household of three adults so it’s easy to declare a few nights a week where everybody just fends for themselves - sandwiches or cereal or cheese and crackers and a piece of fruit.

For us it’s not on a schedule, more just how much or little energy I have after working all day and whether I’ve gotten groceries recently. Nobody starves but we also don’t have high expectations of an excellent meal every night. I’m a great cook but mostly only roll it out on weekends or for company.

You’ve gotten some good advice here but the common thread is organization and planning. Put that work in on the front end to decide what you’re doing in advance and have all the things you need. Scrambling around to figure something out at the end of the day is probably what causes a lot of eating out/fast food just by default.

 

[design_mom]

I agree with others. Don't give up on learning to cook.

I don't love to cook, and I'm not one of those people who can just look in the refrigerator and "whip something up" from the ingredients I have on hand. But I can follow a recipe and I can make a grocery list so I buy the right ingredients. Once you find enough stuff that your family likes, you can experiment to adjust to taste... and cooking something a second (or twentieth) time is a lot less daunting than doing it the first time.

 

[mrodgers]

I married right out of college with zero cooking experience or knowledge.

Walked into the control room at work and Bob looks at me, "Hey, how do you make tacos?" He was divorced many years eating at bars and his live-in now young girlfriend barely in her 20's and he said they wanted to start cooking at home.

Just then the door opens and my boss, from Mexico, comes in. "There's the guy you want to ask!"

So I'm sitting next to boss man and he's on his phone. I glance down and give him a light bump in the shin, "He wants to make an Ortega taco kit." I'm laughing as Mexico boss man has video of a Mexican lady grinding corn on a stone to make tortillas to show Bob.

 

[crazymomof4]

but once you find enough stuff that your family likes, you can experiment to adjust to taste... and cooking something a second (or twentieth) time is a lot less daunting than doing it the first time.

This is sooo true!! Even after 36 years of cooking, if I'm following a recipe for the first time it seems to be challenging. Like "no one talk to me, I'm concentrating!". But the next time it's so much easier!

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

We're 2 people in our household.

Freezer meals..things you make then freeze. It's good for when you have motivation to make them and good for when you don't have motivation to cook (because they are already made lol and don't usually need much after the fact). Depending on the item it may need defrosting in the fridge for a day or two but otherwise works well. We'll be making more and relying more on those as the weather turns.

We just ate frozen gumbo in the crockpot (although we just made it with andouille sausage) we made back in late July. 1 recipe's worth was split into 2 gallon sized freezer bags. Each freezer bag for 2 people lasted 2 nights. We made rice to go with it and got a baguette of bread from the store.

Then there was stir fry chicken primavera (mostly 1 night's worth plus a small lunch), we just made tex-mex burger and froze them, there's a chicken pesto tortelli recipe we like to make too (that recipe is split into 2 8x8 pans and each pan is 1 night's worth).

Most of the recipes we make you really don't need to be a good cook especially the dump in a bag and freeze ones. Pinterest, Food Network, Pillsbury's website are all good places to get recipes. I have a 3 ring binder full of recipes printed out (or taken from a magazine). There is an advantage to cooking yourself in that you can find recipes that are considered healthier, you can control the sodium content more, etc. Some things we'll get is like low-sodium chicken broth, low sodium canned chicken, 1/3 less fat cream cheese, one of the recipes we make is a lighten up philly cheese casserole that uses neufchatel cheese which is a hit or miss these days in being able to find that, etc.

__________
As far as eating out and saving costs some of that is going to depend on the frequency, some will depend on where you're going and some will depend on what you're ordering. We don't tend to get apps or dessert so that saves money there (unless it's part of a deal like a 2 for $20 type thing), every now and then we'll get alcohol but we'll look for happy hour type deals too, just by our own personalities we tend to not order high dollar items.

Back in late spring my husband was saying looking over spending food was getting up there in costs but in discussion a lot of the actual overages compared to the past was him eating out for lunch at work so sandwiches, chips and salsa, applesauce, sweet and salty nutty bars, etc are things he started packing more for lunch. Sometimes you just spend more than you think you are so a good looking at the costs every so often might help.

 

[Schneewittchen37]

We're a family of 4. I do most of the cooking, though DH does grill a lot. With kids activities, we have to have a lot of quick and easy options, and kind of have a set schedule for carry out, cooking and dining out. I also only go grocery shopping once a week (Saturday or Sunday morning), so I plan all the meals out in advance generally. I will buy meat in bulk at Costco for the good quality, but that takes a lot of storage space. I only do elaborate meals about once a week, usually for Sunday dinner. Otherwise I stick to the boring formula I grew up with 1 protein, 1 starch, 1 or 2 vegetables..... or the dreaded casserole with a salad.

PPs have mentioned giving cooking another try. I have to agree. My mother was a wretched cook. I learned the hard way that being a decent cook is all about following directions. For learning the basic techniques, I recommend the Betty Crocker cookbook (2000 edition) and Joy of Cooking (1975 and 1997 editions - I'm not wild about the 2019 edition). For grilling, Weber kettle cook books tend to cover the basics. And if you want to get really basic - try getting a copy of "The Best of Cooking with 3 Ingredients" by Ruthie Wornall. It's literally a cookbook written by a woman who got married and didn't know how to cook. Anyway, start simple. And if you aren't dealing with a lot of dietary restrictions, there are tons of inexpensive, easy to prepare options. The McCormick seasoning packets are a good starting place - just follow the directions. Shake n Bake or Hamburger Helper is your friend.

We tend to do sandwiches, soups and salads for lunch. When we get extra bored of that I tend to do large yield casseroles to reheat for either lunch or dinner (I cut it up into serving sizes and freeze it too. Or ramen with a protein like a fried egg, boiled egg, canned chicken, frozen chicken puck/patty and a salad.

Anyway, we have a home cooked dinner on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday always.
Thursday is carry out night - always pizza or Chinese - and we order enough so DH and I can have the leftovers for lunch on Friday.
Friday night is usually our dinner out night.
Saturday is frequently a more involved grilling dinner night.

In hot weather, we do a lot of this formula:
1. grilled boneless chicken thigh (in store bought marinade) / grilled italian or german sausage / grilled steak (in store bought rub) / grilled fish / baked breaded chicken tenderloins / panfried ham steak / ground beef tacos / baked breaded turkey cutlets
2. plain rice cooker white rice / boxed quick cooking rice pilaf / couscous / pastaroni / pierogies / instant mashed or au gratin potatoes / baked potatoes / canned seasoned or baked beans
3. fresh or frozen green beans / squash / broccoli / carrots / brussels sprouts / corn / green salad / cole slaw

In cooler weather, I do more casseroles or large batch items I can stew in the instant pot: beef stew using McCormick seasoning and biscuits, chili with cornbread, beefaroni, lasagne, baked ziti, homemade macaroni and cheese with ham cubes, chicken ala king over rice, chicken bot boi, goulash with egg noodles, etc. Frequently serve these with a bagged/boxed salad on the side.

 

[morgan98]

Like many who have replied before me, we don't go out to eat often at all. And when we do, it is to certain places or to eat food I don't cook at home. It is also expensive because since we go out so often it is usually to a more upscale place and we do drink alcohol usually which drives up the bill.

I know you say you are not good at cooking, which I guess I can understand. However, there has got to be a few simple meals that you can cook at home that you do like.

For example, do you have a grill? Grilling chicken, or burgers, or salmon really is simple once you do it once or twice. Baking meat and vegetables in the oven or making a salad is also not too hard to learn. At first it seems hard, but once you try it will get easier, I promise.

Maybe sit down and list some things you like to eat and start from there.

 

[aprilgail]

I used to eat out way more than I do now- my friends are nurses and with covid numbers surging they are all working long hours again so no one to eat out with! I do get a meal kit subscription every week from everyplate.com cost me like 38.00 and get 6 meals out of it- so I have it for dinner one night then lunch the next- pretty cheap and I have tried every meal kit place there is like blueapron.com, sunbasket.com, dinnerly.com, gobble.com etc but found I liked the food at everyplate.com best.