Cutting Down on Eating Out

Though we're pretty good about not blowing money on things we don't need, Robert and I both have a bad habit of eating out more often than we should. Working in areas of Portland that are heavily saturated with restaurants doesn't make resistance easy. We like to support the local businesses we love and enjoy having the opportunity to sit down and relax while someone else does the cooking.

I wouldn't want to give up eating out all-together. Why live in a city like Portland if you're not going to enjoy what it has to offer? We definitely need to cut down, though.

We have no savings. Literally none. Of course I'm not making much money right now and we have a lot of expenses (my student loans,Robert's tuition, credit card payments, a car payment, health insurance, medical bills, etc) but we could be saving a chunk each month if we were more disciplined about little things.

Our lease is up in July and we are hoping to get out of this house, which needs a lot of work that the property managers seemingly aren't willing or able to deal with. After doing a little research we determined that buying a modest house with an FHA loan (Robert's been pre-approved) is plausible and probably makes more sense than moving into another rental. Robert's mom is willing to help us with a down payment, but we will need to come up with about two thousand dollars, by our estimates.

After looking at a house and crunching some numbers we agreed that we would eat out no more than once a week and keep track of all our purchases. Having just looked at my debit card statements for March and April I can say that this will definitely make a significant difference. It's amazing how much a few meals and a couple of cups of coffee each week add up.

Yesterday I spent $20.50 on a week's worth of Trimet passes. Robert spent a couple bucks on coffee so that he could study for a test at a coffee shop after work (he gets distracted too easily at home). He packed his lunch the last two days. I got free pizza for lunch at work yesterday and ate at home today. I made a big batch of quinoa and lentils with tomatoes, spinach, onion, fennel, and garlic, which should provide us with leftovers for at least a couple of days.

This is going to take some planning and a lot of discipline, but I think it will be good for us. In addition to saving money, I know this will be better for our health and will also create less waste.