We gripe while sitting in line at McDonalds… because it takes forever. We gripe when we get home, only to find out our order was wrong. We gripe at the service when we visit Cheddars or Outback. We gripe when we pay 50$ for a meal that wasn’t worth 50 cents.
We gripe a lot.
That helped us to come to this decision about not eating out for a whole month. ONE. WHOLE. MONTH. No eating out, no fast food – just eating at home (or something from home) for each meal… for an entire month. We hope to track everything we are eating, see how much it costs when it all comes to the end. And see how much of our money goes to feed the monkey (that is buried in this belly of ours).
Now there has to be some rules… so let me lay those out before we get started. Obviously, if we have to go to someone else’s house a certain weekend and stay with them… then things might go out the window – as we cannot control what they decide to do. I don’t see something in the near future in which this might happen… but just in case. We have alerted our families that we have started this experiment and so they are well aware that if they want to eat with us.. they can come over to our house or vice versa. They were cool with it.
Beyond that… I think the rest is pretty simple. Eat something from home, every meal.
I’m sure some of you are reading this and thinking…
What does this have to do with me?
Well… nothing I guess. Unless you want to join in, or just watch us and root us on as we go about this experiment. We hope to show everyone that it is doable. That eating at home can be fun, healthy (at times) and CHEAP! We are in a recession people… everyone likes cheap right? We want to do this for the stats we will pull from it and hopefully you will learn from what we do and realize that we are throwing money away everyday… and hating it while doing so.
How can I participate?
Do it with us. We are starting today, but there is no reason you can’t start tomorrow (or today), Monday or anyday you please. Keep track of the money you spent, keep track of your meals… and see how it effects you and yours. If you have a blog (which Im’ sure you do), then blog about it… and link up with us. If you don’t have a blog, comment on ours and let us know how it is going. Maybe you just want to jump on board every couple of days at first… that is fine. Whatever you feel like you can do – that is fine with us.
What else can we expect?
Expect to see recipes, a lot of whining… maybe some tears and hopefully by the time it is over – so real stats to back up the fact that eating at home is better for you in the long run. We all know it is a no-brainer, but who knows… maybe we will all be surprised. If not, we will have fun while doing it.
So get your recipes ready, because by the end of this… I’m sure we will be tapped out of ours. We want this to be fun, but we also feel like blogging about this will hold us accountable and force us to keep going when it gets tough. So give us the support we need, and our plan is to blog daily about what we ate (unless it is sandwiches… I mean really, who wants our recipe for ham sandwiches?), how much it cost and how much it hurt our souls to turn down our friends/family for dinner.
Let’s get this thing started shall we?
PS- just for the record, last night I had corndogs & Shala had chicken nuggets. I doubt you will need the recipe for that. haha We went to the store last night and spent about 220$ on groceries. We will give you our menu we decided on beforehand and we will go from there.
That is pretty neat that you guys are going to do this. I am very curious on how much money you will save. Good luck to the both of you.
I think we will try this with you. We have been trying to so it for awhile, but always break after a week or so. If we could only not be lazy it would be all good. I think that’s what it boils down to, my own laziness and lack of motivation to make dinner.
But, f it. Count me in.
@Corey – we are ready to see the results too. Thanks for the well-wishing.
@Anita – It definitely has to be a movement, people motivating people… otherwise we will all fall victim to laziness. You are officially counted.
My husband and I used to eat out at least twice a week and now it’s more like twice a month, but I really never kept track of how much we were spending/saving because of it, so I’m interested in your results too!
One great thing about cooking at home is leftovers, IMO at least. My husband can’t hardly stand leftovers though, so it depends on the person, but I love knowing a little bit of effort in the kitchen can feed us supper and then I have a quick lunch for a couple more days.
Back in the days of steady income (lol), I tracked our expenses and the first couple months we found we were spending upwards of $500 a month just in eating out. Ouch. We cut it down to $100 and now we’re down to about $30 a month (that’s how much it costs at McD’s to feed the 6 of us) because we can’t afford more, but really, even $20 worth of McD’s is baaaaaad for the body. So good for you! Since I can’t cut much more out, I’ll just watch you guys =)