Reducing Our Eating Out Budget: Week 1

Our goal for June is to reduce how much money we spend on dining out.  We're not targeting a specific amount of money; we're targeting a number of times to go out.  After a few months of this, I think we'll be able to determine a new budget.

Over the past 6 months, we've averaged spending 9% of our monthly income on going out.  For us, we felt like that was too much.  Our new goal is to go out once a week for lunch and once a week for dinner.

Let's see how week 1 went:

Overall, I think we did very well this week.  We each went to lunch once during the work week, and we had one date-night dinner.  Thursday night, I had a work dinner but met up with Drew at a birthday dinner later that night.  So his meal came out of our budget, while mine was made for by my employer.  Sunday, I had a moment of weakness.  It was one of those days that I just did. not. feel like cooking; so we grabbed Mexican for lunch.  Don't worry.   We followed it up with a 14-mile bike ride to burn off some of the calories.  :)

This upcoming week will be an interesting one for our new goal.  I'm in a wedding Saturday, so we'll be out of town Friday night and most of the day Saturday.  Then Dew's parents are joining us for church Sunday morning, followed by co-hosting a bridal shower for some friends that afternoon.  It'll be a busy weekend, but I'm positive we can do it!