There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that fast food, restaurants, and coffee shops are BY FAR our biggest downfall.  We have zero cooking passion and we are lazy (you know, stereotypical millennial over here).  It’s a bad combo, fatal for our bank account.

$30 for a family of 4 at McDonalds here, or $8 for coffees and hot chocolates for everyone there doesn’t seem like much but holy moly does it ever add up fast.  So here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned that I’m going to employ to accomplish our goal of cutting our take out expenditure in half.

  1. Grocery shop weekly, right on pay day.  I tend to procrastinate grocery shopping and we usually find ourselves eating all meals via takeout of some sort for days on end.  If I can force myself to grocery shop as soon as I should then that will alleviate a big chunk of it.  We used to always do massive grocery shops all at once.  That led to huge grocery bills and running out of food like mid-week 3 weeks later.  Instead, we’ve started buying what we need for that week and shopping eveweekly-meal-planningry week.
  2. Meal Planning! I know, easier said than done.  We’ve tried having a schedule of what we will eat and on what night but that didn’t work because we’d usually decide last minute we didn’t feel like having what was planned for that night.  So, instead we plan 7 dinners and shop for those 7 dinners and just pick what we want to have out of those 7 meals each day.  Shopping only for what you need that week instead of just a bunch of stuff you have run out of will DRASTICALLY reduce your grocery bill.  When we meal plan we can usually do our family of 4 for $150 a week (in Canada shopping at cheapy grocery stores like Wal-Mart and Freshco but without coupons/price matching and that includes laundry stuff, hygiene etc).  The times we don’t meal plan and just grab things as we walk up and down the aisle, or even off a list of things we are out of, our bill is easily $200-230.
  3. Eat anything. Far too often, I think our meals need to be these grand, home-cooked meals.  Of course these are the meals I hate cooking and the meals my kids hate eating.  When I planned our weekly meals in the past I never would throw in a Kraft Dinner night or a ‘breakfast for dinner’ night.  Sure, they aren’t the most nutritious meals, but neither are our typical pizza or fast food choices. If I throw those options into our meal plan it covers the nights I don’t feel like cooking and fighting with my kids to eat said cooking.  And the added bonus? Those are usually the amazingly cheap meals which further keeps that grocery bill down!  Pancakes for dinner? Boom!  Only cost me $3 for the whole family! /cheer
  4. Keep your clean-up minimal. There’s no easier way to convince my husband to get take-out than to remind him of the clean up of cooking and eating at home.  There’s the dishes you use to make the meal, then the dishes you eat the meal off, and then the dishes you store the leftovers 220px-BigMacComboin.  I know trash is a big no-no in our day and age but I defend myself by pointing out that if we get takeout there’s a lot of trash from soda cups, burger wrappers, fry boxes, napkins, bags the food comes in etc.  Keep some disposable plates, cups and silverware for those days you can pop a pre-made lasagna in one of those foil tins in the oven and voila – no dishes!
  5. Calculate the cost of eating out vs eating at home.  When we eat at home I like to add up in my head how much this meal cost us and then compare it to what a meal like this would have cost us to eat out.  There’s no better way to make you feel better about your choice than to realize in that very moment how much money you saved.  Further to this, at the end of the month look at your budget to see how much you spent on fast food.  It is rather going to be a reality check of “Wow, those few times out really added up” or “Look how much money we saved by staying on or under budget!”