Restaurant Budget

[whiskeytails]

How much do you have set aside for eating out each month?

I know we spent far TOO much last year eating out, ordering in and picking up fast food. We have done better so far this year (19 days, sad, I know), but I am wondering if my eating out budget is too unrealistic for us. 

[Deleted]

It will be different for everyone, but to answer your question for a regular month (i.e. no trips to the city and no special occasions) I try and keep it to $250. We're not terribly good about sticking to that, although this month, we've been pretty good and still have $84 left.

[Deleted]

I think it is really hard to pick a right answer without knowing how often you plan on eating out and how expensive the places you go to are. We spend a ton on restaurants, but we live in an expensive city, eat out at restaurants at least twice a week, have dinner delivered at least once, and buy lunch every day. But good meals are one of our great pleasures and we have tons and tons of amazing restaurants here, so it is worth a lot to me.

[Deleted]

We don't really have a budget set for it, but we limit ourselves to 2 dinners out per month and 1 lunch out per week.

It helps that I really enjoy cooking. I'd rather cook than go out, most of the time.

[Deleted]

This will vary by person.

If you feel the amount you spend is too unrealistic for your budget, figure out what you can afford and go from there. When we had a stricter budget we treated ourselves to dinner once per week, on Friday, as a "yay, we made it another week" treat.

I know a lot of times the reasons we ate out too much was because we had nothing convenient at home and time was short, so I also started keeping certain things on hand to prevent that. Obviously prepared foods are more expensive than a lot of other foods at the grocery, but still significantly cheaper than dropping money at a restaurant.

[whiskeytails]

I live in rural Wisconsin, so a meal averages $15 per person and maybe an additional $5-10 for drinks. If we are trying to be conservative, a meal will be about $40 to 50. My goal is to only go out once a week, so it would be probably $200 a month budget, but I am not sure if we are being too excessive. We have the money for more, but I am trying to save more, because at one point we were eating out 3 times a week, plus deliver 1-2 and picking up food once. That adds up SO quickly.

I guess I am just trying to figure out what is reasonable.

[M]

I agree it will be different for everyone. We don't have a budget, we just go out to eat when we want to, but we love to cook so we hardly eat out. I averaged out last years eating out cost and we spent maybe $40/month. That was like dinner every other month and picking up pizza for dinner once a month. We made our own pizza once and it was awesome but costs more than Domino's haha.

[sillygoosegirl]

$100/month, which we did a really good job of sticking to when I was unemployed. It's more to a challenge now that we both work full time again. I'd estimate we go out 3-5 times per month, normally for Thai, though sometimes Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Sushi, etc. We have a strong preference for family-run restaurants, and figure nothing says "authentic" like a kid in the corner doing homework. Conveniently, these restaurants also are normally really cheap.

We also rarely go out to eat with friends anymore... we seem to have different restaurant preferences than those of the friends we've made in this city, so it's easier to get together at times other than meal time. We used to spend an additional $100/month eating out with friends (normally pizza or Thai before D&D nights), and if we tried to keep up with the restaurant choices of our new urbanite friends before weekly board game night, that would easily be another $300-$400/month.

Takeout is a hugely unnecessary budget killer, IMO. Try to come up with a few quick easy meal ideas that you can make on short notice with non-perishable (or semi-perishable) items you keep in stock. Grilled meat (chicken or sausage) + grilled onions + baked sweet potato is one of our fall back meals. Pasta or rice + stir fry of whatever veggies we have in the house is another (at the very least, we always have onions, garlic, and carrots on hand because they last for ages).

[belovedbride07]

We don't have a specific "eating out" budget line item; it comes from our three "Misc" lines (his and hers at $100 each, and joint at $150). That has to cover clothing, personal care, and any fun stuff (Starbucks, hiking gear, iPod player for the house, etc..."wants" that we can't justify elsewhere in the budget).

So with than in mind, each month we try to keep it to 1-2 lunches out (~$24-48 total), each, and 0-2 dinners out together ($0-100+, depending on what we have left in that budget).

If we weren't trying to save as much as we can right now, we might give ourselves $125-150/mo, and that would a comfortable amount for us and our lifestyle. That would be crazy high for some people here, and crazy low for others; a lot of it comes down to your financial priorities.

[Deleted]

we budget $500/mo based on our location, income, overhead spending, and savings goals.

like others have said, this varies so much by person and location.

[gibbinator]

$100 ( two dates)

[sporky]

We try to stay under $250/month.

[vmars]

I don't have a specific budget, but normally takeout 2x per month and eat at a casual restaurant 1x per month. We will also pick up coffee/sandwiches a couple times a week. DH is a great cook, so I try & limit our dinners out to save $.

[cricketwife]

Ours is $100/month which generally means one meal out. Sometimes we can make that be two meals out, but then we usually go our a bit in the budget. I really wish we could eat out for less.

[pugz]

we have $100 budgeted but often go over if we get a date night.

[chessie]

We limit it to 50 a month. Normally we can go out for 1-2 times. We rather stay in ourselves, going out is a big treat normally.

[regina22]

$350/month. That includes dining out and delivery/take-out. It's actually half of what it was two years ago. It's way to easy to get delivery in a big city, so we've had to buckle down to limit it to roughly two times per week.

[mbcdefg]

We don't have a set budget for that, we just spend our fun money. Probably around $200-300 a month.

When we're with friends we typically have dinner at their house, either home cooked or we order out.

Last night we had done awesome Vietnamese food for $35 total with a ton of leftovers. Meanwhile a shitty TGI Fridays lunch was $40, but we only went because we had gift cards.

[flygirl22]

We budget $350 for entertainment. Most months this is mainly spent on eating out and drinking.

This really depends on what you are comfortable and what goals you have/what you are willing to sacrifice for those goals.

[HoneySpider]

I'd guess on average less than $75/month, we don't eat out all that much and when we do, we often have a coupon and/or gift card. We enjoy grilling and cooking at home. We probably spend most of the money on fast food/convenience food like pizza delivery when we are tired and lazy

[biogirl21]

I would like to keep eating out/take out to $100 a month. This month we're doing decent but still went over. For the past couple of months we'd been spending $400 plus on eating out. But we were buying minimal groceries so that's ok? Haha

[keweenawlove]

I budget $200 a month. We average going out for dinner once a week and maybe one lunch during the week.

[macmars45]

H and I just went over our budget on the 1st of the month. Last year we were averaging $80/month. We want to get down to $60/month. FWIW, we live in the Seattle area.

[wanderlustfoodie]

We don't have a budget but we easily spend 4 figures on eating out a month. Like others said, this is going to vary for everyone based on how many people are in the household, how much they prioritize eating out, and other money goals.

[gt7301b]

Last year we spent around $1,000 a month on food for the two of us, split almost evenly between groceries and eating out.  This year our goal is to reduce the overall food budget down to $800, so far this month we have about $300 left to spend.

[grover]

No specific budget, but normally we eat at a casual restaurant 1x per month (~ $40/50), and then order in pizza 1x per month and other delivery/carryout 1x per month.

[SusanBAnthony]

We had been at 100 a month, which was once a week- 2 sit down dinners (no apps or drinks) and 2 cheap dinners like Panera. But with kids needing their own meals now, we were spending more like 200 many months.

Starting this January, we set a firm 150$ a month eating out budget. We just went out for Chinese. And with three entrees, two apps, water to drink, taxes and tip it was 35, so that works out about to 150 a month if we eat out weekly.

We tend to go out either Saturday or Sunday night. We like to do take out and such on other nights, but honestly by the time yu order, go get it, get back home, it takes just as long. Plus you still have to clean up the tables and dishes after. So now we are making more of an effort to just heat up frozen soup or something if we are desperate, rather than getting takeout.

[kershnic]

I averaged last year from mint and it came to about $340/month. That's probably on average 1-2 meals out per week plus a few random lunches or coffee here or there. It takes constant vigilance to keep it that "low" (VHCOL city, culture of eating out, lots of good food), but this is one of the categories where I would definitely spend significantly more if we had more disposable income and I would cut quickly if we had a financial crisis.

[Deleted]

$160/mo & usually go over.

[rebekistan]

Money is tight in our house; we are not meeting our financial goals like retirement or savings contributions. But we still want to have some ability to get take-out on nights where cooking seems like a daunting task or we go out on a date, so we have an $80/mo budget for restaurants, $50 for entertainment (sometimes they get folded in together). We are in a HCOL area.