(This is the Finance Friday article series on Twentythirtyfree.com, which highlight the many ways people can waste or save money outside the usual culprits of earnings and expenses. Each article will discuss a different idea in relation to how you can make the most of your money! This article is titled The Agony and Ecstasy of Going Out to Eat).
How Our Food Choices Mimic Our Income and Lifestyle.
Budgeting for food is one of the toughest expenses to get a handle on when you start living on your own. The one nice thing—if you can call it a nice thing—about rent is that it generally stays the same from month to month. The expectation is generally true for car payments and insurance premiums at fixed interest rates. The same is generally true for gas money and other transportation costs; once you know how much commuting to work is going to cost, you can expect a certain amount of money going out each week.
Food remains a softer science.
Food can be spoiled, burned, or ruined in a myriad of ways; this involves everything from purchasing ingredients, preparation in the kitchen, and storage after the initial portions are eaten. This of course, assumes you know how to make quick, healthy recipes on the fly or you’re able to preserve food properly without any trouble.
Furthermore, if you happen to live in a high-cost-of-living-area, food costs can be an exorbitant amount of your monthly budget. If certain recipes call for milk and eggs, a lower budget will force you to pick and choose from week-to-week. Balancing a grocery budget on a small income may result in not having the correct ingredients to make the recipes you want. If you are trying to balance both school and work, you may not have a lot of time to even make food.
You can try and get up at an early hour…
…or even cook late into the night.
The fact of the matter remains is that a high-stress/fast-paced lifestyle usually reconciles with food-on-demand.
Hence the agony and the ecstasy of eating out.
If you work crazy hours but make a high income, then eating out may not make much of a dent. It may not always be healthy but it doesn’t threaten to overdraft your accounts.
If you work or take classes at crazy hours but make a low-to-middling-income, the results can be disastrous.
The Agony.
In case you don’t get what the article is referencing, The Agony and the Ecstasy is a biographical work of the artist Michelangelo written by Irving Stone. First published in 1961, the novel’s success would earn itself a film adaptation four years later starring Charlton Heston as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II. The film focuses on the Pope commissioning Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, resulting in some of the most famous paintings and murals in Renaissance Art History.
In any case, the point I’m trying to make is that eating out is expensive, especially if you start doing it to the point where it’s expected. A developed country’s ability to sell prepared food is a stumbling block to both personal finance and healthy living. Although it’s great for entrepreneurs, restaurant managers, and people on their lunch break, it’s not good for you—the reader—trying to save money and eat healthy. Those who spend time preparing their meals have to make sure they eat them as well!
Let’s say you get a breakfast meal on the go at a fast-food-place. If you get a sandwich, side, and a drink, it’s probably going to even around at $6-$9 depending on where you live.
Three or four days of doing this? That’s $18-$36 a week.
Which means it could lead to $72-$144 a month.
A reminder: that’s just for breakfast. If you end up doing lunch or dinner at someplace where the entrees are $10-$15, then you’re throwing even more money down the drain. At this point, money is just soaking in the sink, waiting for you to hit the garbage-disposal-switch so it disappears forever.
There’s already research that indicates people with higher incomes tend to lead healthier lifestyles than those with lower incomes. However, you could probably put two and two together just by jumping from one logical branch to the next. If your annual income leaves you a large month-to-month surplus, you can afford to spend that money on not only healthier food…but also time as well.
If you aren’t working multiple jobs to with long hours to provide for you and your family, the money can go to services that will help make you healthier. Gym memberships, organic food, storage containers, cookware, and any ingredients you may need can all be used to keep a healthy weight.
Even if a high-income job warrants long hours, people can now buy time with services like Freshly, Sunbasket, and Blue Apron. These services ship healthy prepackaged foods or the necessary ingredients to make healthy delicious meals. Hours spent at the store searching for groceries are now hours you can dedicate to exercise, spending time with family, making more money…the list goes on and on.
By contrast, if you’re on a ‘poor-college-student’ or make a lower-income, each meal must be thought of and planned in advance; hopefully you can avoid over-drafting your debit card. You may not be able to buy certain ingredients, spices, or seasonings. You may only have a couple of hours a week at best to be able to plan and cook food.
Less money means more stress and more stress can lead to your cooking-plans falling apart. With this kind of lifestyle, it’s easier to go to the nearest fast-food-place and grab something, especially if you’re on the way to class, your job, your second job, pick up your kids, etc…the list continues to go on and on.
So, again, we must ask ourselves…
…is there any solution to the lure of restaurants promising fast—and sometimes delicious—food?
The Ecstasy.
Of course there is!
(But you knew that).
If you absolutely, positively must go out to eat—assuming you aren’t on a formal diet of any kind—it’s best to try and limit it to special occasions. The temptation to go out with your friends for drinks every weekend is tempting, especially when you’re still standing in line to get to 25. But, as we already established earlier, these costs can rack up exponentially if you’re not careful.
Since finances are a huge concern for those exiting high-school and starting off on their own, expenses still start to rack up even if you have family paying for a portion of university costs; if you live in a country that has free tuition, the risk to blow loads of money when you go out to eat still stands.
Special occasions can be limited to or defined as:
-Birthdays.
-Graduation.
-Engagements.
-Weddings.
Try to plan time and expenses out with friends before making the financial commitment.
By limiting the amount of times you’re willing to spend money on going out to eat, this cuts a huge chunk of monthly expenses out from your budget. Even if you and your friends have to try the trendy new restaurant that just opened, try to budget for the meal beforehand and carry only enough money for what you’re going to eat. I’ve ended up paying more than I thought I would because a slice of cheesecake told me to eat it. Believe me, I’ve fought these battles before.
Try and Stick to These Three Principles:
- Order Water: Most restaurants will have water for free and the three or four dollars you pay for a drink will add up in the long run. By ordering water, you’ll also end up drinking one of the healthier items on the menu, since soda or beer end up adding extra calories. \
- Avoid Dessert: Again, I know cheesecake is delicious. By avoiding dessert, you cut down on your sugar intake and end up saving anywhere between $6 or more (this is true for most chain restaurants in any case. Prices will be higher if you’re at a private, independently owned establishment).
- Share an Entree: If you’re at a place that serves entrees built for two, have you and a friend split the bill. You can end up paying less than what you might pay for a full entree and even try something you don’t normally get to try.
Even if you’re swimming in money—or have most of your costs paid for, another part of this Ecstasy is the health benefits gained from not indulging in the large food-portions restaurants are known for handing out. Controlling your portion intake is easier when the food isn’t brought out in front of you and you must make the food yourself. Combined with exercise, this will make it easier to maintain a healthy weight as you continue through your late teens and early adulthood.
Spending $25 is more digestible compared to $150 or even $200.
Conclusion.
“When will you make an end?”—Pope Julius II.
“When I am finished.”—Michelangelo.
–The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).
The two-sentence conversation between the Pope and the Artist in the aforementioned 1965 film is a representation of the drive it can take to stop a bad habit of going out to eat all the time. Although the original context is Julius II asking Michelangelo if he’s done painting the Chapel ceiling, it still applies to situations where you’re trying to shake a bad habit.
If you are in a position where you’re spending too much money on eating out, you simply have to start baby steps to get back on the track of providing your own meals. So if you’ve managed to not eat out for a whole week but slip up on the eighth day, simply have the same conversation with your body and mind when it asks you what went wrong:
“When will you make an end?”—Body.
“When I am finished.”—Brain.
If you do go out to eat, then go out to eat with purpose.
Eat, drink, and be merry…
…just don’t try and die tomorrow.
—
Let’s crush our dreams together,
SC.
