The Pledge: No More Eating Out

Sigh.

The whole wide world seems to hurt right now. Economically everything sucks, pardon my language. I'm pretty fortunate because I have lots of practice being on the poorer side and even more practice making do and living within my means.

But last night, my daughter's dancing studio called and my dental bills tumbled in with the daily mail. And it just didn't seem possible that we could pay everything and still maintain our debt free lives. The only debt we have is our house. Which we would make a nice little profit on if we sold, even now. In this horrible market.

My daughter has advanced from the one hour to the ninety minute dance classes. And I can't afford the tuition. It's a significant jump. Plus registration fees and shoes, I have one week to gather $200. Could I-- yes. But that would mean more dipping into savings when what's left in the savings account won't even cover repairs to my teeth. If I don't have the money to get my mouth fixed, I certainly won't spend money on tap and ballet.

We talked to the child about it and she shrugged and didn't seem that disappointed. She's a good kid. Yet something still bothers me about asking her to make a sacrifice when as parents we haven't.

I look at our monthly budget and I cringe. When we applied for our mortgage, I remember hearing that 29% of your income should go toward housing. Now this was also at a time when 3 months salary was considered an adequate safety net in savings. (We have almost 2 months today. Several years ago we had six months.) Anyway, today we spend about 27% of our income on our mortgage, which includes our property and school taxes.

I mention all this to offer hope to everyone else who's struggling... There is always room to tighten the belt. I turn to my budget. Where do we already save money?

1. We have one car, that's 12 years old and has no car payments
2. We have no debt (except the house), even student loans are paid off
3. no cable
4. no internet
5. no land line phone in house
6. We spend about $250-300 month on groceries
7. We don't go to the movies, rent them, or use Netflix
8. We borrow materials from the library
9. We don't eat much meat
10. We garden and cook from scratch, now I can add canning to the list if I ever get that right
11. We use vinegar, baking soda, isopropyl alcohol, etc., instead of cleaning chemicals
12. We walk whenever we can
13. We have only used the air conditioner four days this summer

So, how do you cut more?

The key is to balance your desire to save money with the potential to deprive yourself. Deprivation will make you unhappy.

I came up with two suggestions:
1. Replace our New England Coffee with generic Aldi store-brand coffee (That could easily save $20 a month)
2. And this is the HARD one: NO eating out. At all.

In the past I've tried lowering the eating out budget, but I never stick to that. So I'm going drastic. Instead of eating out, we are going to stop at the grocery store and find what we want there. Even if it's frozen pizza or TV dinners.

It is a drastic move, but it's our main expenditure, pleasure and splurge as a family. We spend, on average, 10% of our income on eating out. Lately, it's been closer to 20%. That's why we're going to try this. For reference, we spent the same percentage on groceries that we do on eating out.