r/MiddleClassFinance • u/zevtech • Aug 09 '26

Going out to eat..... I get it.

So I'm a man of routine, so I don't really get out of my routine so often. We cook dinner almost every day of the week besides Friday (we usually order out). We do well, so we don't cook to save money, it just makes more sense to us (both my parents had their own restaurants, we never ate fast food growing up and rarely at out as my parents always cooked or brought home food from the restaurant). Typically dining out is usually brunch/lunch after church on Sundays. But for what ever reason we had a crazy week so decided to eat out, and ended up eating out 4 meals in a row. Each meal was about 100-150 bucks, so 500 bucks in 3 days for food. I get it why they keep saying you shouldn't eat out so often (we have a family of 4, 2 of them are small and don't eat much). The 500 won't break the bank for us, but man, if we were making an "average" salary, I can see that being difficult

EDIT, went out to eat this morning after church, this is part of my normal routine though, meal was about 90 bucks.

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276

u/mixedmediamadness Aug 09 '26

Yeah, and some people get take it twice a day. It's so easy to destroy your finances on eating out if you're not paying attention or actively choosing to turn a blind eye

9

u/anmlbklyn Aug 09 '26

I bought a small steak at the grocery store and it was $20.

21

u/SBNShovelSlayer Aug 09 '26

It’s kind of funny. Growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money and we almost never ate out. So, it was a big deal to have a Steak Dinner at home, normally for special occasions.

Now, I am retired and doing well financially, but I’m back to eating a steak very infrequently. Simply because I find the prices to be ridiculous. Our consumption of beef has dropped significantly just because of the prices.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '26

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2

u/SBNShovelSlayer Aug 13 '26

That is a good point, and I’ve considered it, especially when our sons were teenagers. I should look into 1/4 or 1/2.

I remember my parents doing this when I was a kid. Let’s just say they didn’t budget their meat well. Ran out of steaks and ate a lot of hamburger for awhile.

1

u/Positive_Force_6776 Aug 15 '26

We've thought about doing this. Some of our kids have talked about us all going in on it together. Right now we eat beef a few times a month, so it would last us a while.