Wed 3 Jan 2007
I Spent $3000 Dining Last Year
Posted by RichSlick under Money Management
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Yesterday I shared with you that I spent $7350 on Energy related expenses and today I’ll share with you that I spent $3000 dining out (mostly breakfast & lunch). So between Energy & Dining (which could be considered energy too) I spent $10,350. I’m pretty amazed by a few things.
1. I had thought that the dining amount would have been more than 3k since I eat out everyday and lunch is usually $10+ a day. I guess I assumed the wrong number of work days. I took $10 x 365 = $3650 but I don’t eat out every single day and certainly not on the weekends.
2. I’m not sure if I should cut back or not. I know someone will post that 3k x 7% x 30 years will earn x amount but I like eating great food; it brings me so much joy!
3. Overall this amount represents a very small portion of my income which begs the question….. how much of your income should you spend on dining out?
In college, I had a roommate from Mexico who swore to me that he lived on $6/week of food. I balked at his insistence that he got by on $6 week for food so I asked him to show me how he did it. We went shopping one day and he purchased a big bag of rice for about $2 and a big bag of beans for about $2 then went on to buy a whole chicken for about another $2. There was no tax on these food items and he would take the three ingredients home cook them on Sunday and he dole out portions for each day for lunch and dinner. He put them in the fridge and that was it.
I was truly amazed and fascinated by his frugality. He did fib a little though because he occasionally would have tortillas and had oil to cook with but it really wasn’t that much more than the $6 since those items lasted him a few weeks.
Of course, the guy was miserable most of the time too. Whenever we’d all go out for beers & fast food he never participated and mooched off of everyone else. As I write this now, I remember a particular incident where a fight almost broke out over who had eaten someone’s Taco Bell Taco. It was there one minute and gone the next. Everyone blamed the Mexican kid but no one had any proof. It was a damned $0.39 taco and a fight almost broke out over it!
Oh those were the days……
5 Responses to “ I Spent $3000 Dining Last Year ”
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Pingback from The Rice, Beans & Chicken Experiment » Get Rich Slick
January 31st, 2007 at 11:52 am[...] I wrote about my college roommate that got by on $6 of food per week and I’ve decided that I’m going to play the Frugal Advocate for the month of February. My plan is to buy large bags of beans and rice and a bag of chicken quarters and/or chicken breasts. I’ll try to keep the cost down to under $10. I’ll cook the beans, rice and chicken, create portions for each day for lunch and dinner. I’m going to allow myself to buy breakfast to keep from going insane from the monotony but I won’t spend more than $4 on breakfast. I’ll buy the items tonight and do this for the whole month of February to see what happens. [...]











January 3rd, 2007 at 10:50 am
I doubt a Mexican would actually want to eat Taco Bell food. Though I could be wrong. Taco Bell sure isn’t Mexican food.
As far as eating out, I prefer to make my own food..because, well it’s usually better. However, I am sure there are time constraints and other issues ( like cooking, I eat a lot of raw food myself). What I like to do is eat breakfast and lunch at/from home, but I will splurge on nice dinners occasionally.
For example, I would rather go out to a nice dinner once a month and maybe breakfast a couple times than eat out lunch every day. Lunch is my least favorite meal of the day. I am a breakfast person ( but prefer cooking my own) and enjoy a nice dinner. My wife is the opposite., She would rather eat-out cheap junk 2X a day.
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Well we never found out who ate the taco, there were four of us there and I know I didn’t eat it (I had my own food) and the guy who bought it wouldn’t have made up the story so that left two people and the other guy had his own food so they blamed the kid because he hadn’t purchased anything…
It guess it’s a convenience thing for me, I tried brown baggin it for a while but I got tired of that microwaved reheated taste of left overs so I eat out. There are so many restaurants around my office that I can choose cuisine from 10+ different countries that I rarely get tired of eating out.
January 5th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Dining out is a big leak in our budget. With a daughter now it may be time to curb it substantially because it’s looking like it’s going to be the difference between saving money each month or breaking even.
January 5th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
If you have a daughter now, you’ll be spending plenty of money at McDonalds & paying $4 for mac & cheese when you and the spouse go out to dinner.
Lol! Good luck controlling that!