Three Simple Tricks to Avoid Fast Food and Still Get Dinner on the Table Fast
Hey friends! Today, I’m excited to bring you a post I co-authored with Taylor Jensen from Sugar and Savings. Taylor is a life coach specializing in personal finances, career and opportunity coaching, and teaching you to live your best life. You can check out her blog here or find her on Instagram @sugarandsavings.
Today, she and I have partnered to share some tips about one of the biggest budget busters around: fast food and take out. Let’s get started!
The Dreaded Question: What’s For Dinner?
In your budgeting and debt free journey, you are going to come face to face with the dreaded question... "What do you want for dinner?” This question is the worst! Do you know when this question is a total nightmare? When you don't know what you feel like having, when you don't feel like cooking, when you’re short on time for dinner prep, when you haven’t planned, and when french fries sound like the tastiest things in the world. Basically, when you are completely unprepared—that is when this question is asked.
While many fast food places offer "value meals" and "dollar menus," the average fast food meal cost is rising. Consider this report from Bloomberg:
“Median fast-food hamburger prices have jumped 54 percent over the last decade to about $6.95, according to menu researcher Datassential,” while humble chicken sandwiches — always the bridesmaid, never the bride — are up a still-notable 27 percent. Both, Bloomberg notes, “surpass overall U.S. price inflation during that same time.”
And that’s just for the burger. Throw in fries and a drink, and the price gets even higher. Even though that is less than what you might spend at a regular sit-down family style restaurant, it isn't by much. And it is definitely more per meal that you'd be able to make in your own home.
If you’ve got a standard family of four, even one fast food meal per week can easily add up to over $100 per month. Throw in grabbing a few lunches out to the mix, and you’ve easily spent hundreds on eating out alone.
A Cautionary Tale: Are you Eating All Your Money?
Taylor has this story to share about her college roommate:
In college, my beloved roommate (who 100% knows I use her in this example consistently) had some spending issues. This was before I became a personal finance coach, but already loved to be that nerd who helped people make budgets. We determined that her issue was her food spending, and in fairness, that is the problem area for MOST people.
Even though my roommate was in the habit of skipping breakfast, she almost always ate the other two meals from fast food places. She reasoned that she was only getting one or two items from the menu at a time, so she wasn't spending that much. Once we calculated it up, we figured that she was spending over $400 per month on eating out. And she was only eating two meals per day! It was easy to see where all her money was going—she was eating it!
With a few scheduled trips to the grocery store together, we were able to lower her monthly food expenses to a more manageable level. And unsurprisingly, the food she bought and prepared would last her longer than eating each individual meal out. Never underestimate the power of left-overs!!
(Kate here: $400 may sound like an astronomical amount of money to spend on eating out per month, but do YOU know how much you spend on eating out each month? I guarantee you it’s more than you think! Pull your bank statement from last month (or the last 2 or 3!) and highlight all the money you spent on eating out and add it all up. I promise, if you’ve never done this before—you’re going to be shocked!)
3 Simple Solutions to Help Avoid Take Out & Get Dinner on the Table Fast
So what do you do when hunger strikes and the day has been one where you cannot imagine going home and cooking a full meal? We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves:
Meal Plan—But Plan Easy Meals. Every Sunday, sit down and plan what meals your family will eat for the week. Take in to consideration any late nights you may have to work, practices the kids will have, or any other events that need attention. Then, head to the store and buy all the ingredients for each of your meals once per week.
When you are meal planning for the week, plan meals that use limited ingredients and don’t take forever to make. If you can whip together a great meal with 5 ingredients in less than 30 minutes, that’s a winner! And, you’re more likely to get dinner on the table when the cooking is easy and the total cook time is low.
Use Freezer Meals. This is Taylor’s secret weapon and the inspiration for this post! If you are a total kitchen boss, you can make your own freezer meals ahead of time and then store them for busy days or days when you just don’t feel like cooking.
But if you are like Taylor, and that sounds awful (haha!), there is a short cut. She buys the freezer skillet meals. I am positive you've seen them in the frozen section of your grocery store—beef and broccoli Chinese meals, pasta meals, chicken entrées—whatever you can imagine, there is a freezer version of it. Are they the best for you? Probably not. Are they as cost effective as making it from scratch? Also, probably not. But is it cheaper than ordering take out? Absolutely!
Taylor buys a few of these per month and keeps them in the freezer in case she hits a day where cooking just sounds like too much work! Or she really wants Chinese food. Because she really loves Chinese food. And that way she is saving money by taking away an excuse to go the take-out or fast food route. They really are easy, most of them you just throw the entire bag in a pan and heat for 15 minutes. Not only do you not have to do any prep work but in the end you only have one pan to clean. For us, that is a major win.
Keep an “Emergency” Meal on Hand.
Much like Taylor’s freezer meals, I love to keep emergency meals on hand. We always have a frozen pizza we can just pop in the oven, or cans of tomato soup which we can pair with grilled cheese sandwiches. We also always have ingredients to whip up breakfast for dinner — pancakes or eggs and toast — which is also a quick fix for when you are too tired to pull something together.
Action Steps
We encourage you to take some action steps to help make getting dinner on the table a lot easier for you! Here we go:
Figure out how much you spend on eating out. First, pull your bank statement from last month and figure how out how much your family spends on eating out. Bonus points if you do it for the last 3 months. You need this info so you can see what an impact eating out is making on your personal finances. I promise you, this number is higher than you think and just may shock you!
Gather a list of easy-to-make meals that your family loves. These will be your go-to meals when you are meal planning. Make sure the preparation is easy, the ingredients are few, and the total cook time is low. This way, it’ll be easier to get dinner on the table in a snap.
Commit to meal planning every week. You’ve got to have a plan in place to help prevent you from succumbing to the temptation of fast food.
Keep a few emergency meals on hand. Frozen pizzas, skillet meals, and ingredients for tomato soup and grilled cheese or breakfast for dinner are perfect for this.
Set a budget for eating out and stick to it. It’s ok to eat out every once in a while—just make sure that you are spending your money intentionally in this area. I don’t think anyone intends to spend hundreds upon hundreds eating out in any given month. It just happens when you aren’t being mindful with your money. So, set an eating out budget and stick to it. When the money’s gone, it’s gone.
There you go, friends! We hope these solutions will help you reduce your eating out budget and get dinner on the table in record time.
Your Turn
Tell us—what’s your favorite way to reduce your eating out budget? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve? Do you have some “go to” meals in your home that are easy to prepare? We’d love to hear all about it all in the comments below!!
And, again, another special thanks to Taylor for her idea for this article and her assistance in writing it! Go check Taylor out at her blog, Sugar and Savings or on her Instagram @sugarandsavings, tell her I sent you, and say hi!
