Save 50% When You Dine Out

As I start to pull together our information for February I am struck by something. Our Dining Out amount, when it is just us two, has really fallen, frankly in half for an average meal. This has allowed us to have, pretty frequently, left over funds in that Envelope!


For us, and probably anyone married with three kids, we often eat out to escape. It is nice to have adult time together. It is frankly nice to not order food through a Clown's Mouth when we do it either! :) We are both foodies, and Mrs. X is an amazing cook so we would good well made food. Unfortunately this can equal expensive (at least to us) and can leave buyer's remorse on the tongue!, not to mention in the past, the credit card!


Guide to Save 50% when doing the Full Dining Experience:

• Drinks - This is a restaurants profit center. If we are gonna have a drink, we will have one at home with our...($12 Savings)
  



• Homemade Appetizer - We plan out those dining nights and there is a great little Harry and David store here that has amazing appetizers (Stuffed Bacon Brie! mmm) that just has to be heated up. I will pick it up on the way home the night before, Mrs. X pops it in at the right time and with the drink above and we are half way through dinner before we leave! ($8 Saving w/purchase)
  



• Specials - Restaurants try specials to see if new things work at that location OR if you are in a quaint getaway, just because they want to! It is a great way to try new stuff and save money! ($10-$20 savings)
  



• Dinner Drinks - We are water-ers now (tap please! love the planet), but we will have a glass of wine. Often they will have a good wine by the glass, especially at a small restaurant, or...Bring your own. Most will charge you a cork fee, but that is nothing compared to 1.5-3x markup! ($10-$30 savings)
  



• Pay Cash - Unless you like doing dishes you will stay to budget! (Priceless!)
  



• Dessert - Have it, but not at the restaurant! Find a great little bakery and pickup some neat little deserts there. Or even go for Ice Cream together! A third the price of having it at dinner! ($10 savings)
  



• Babysitting - Your reduced time out saves money. This is one I give you 100% walk away from if the weather is good go take a walk together, or go to the park and breathe! (skip the savings and take the lady for a walk, bub!)
  

This is still an extravagant night, but she is worth it! But if you can do the whole night for $50-$60 instead of $100-$120 you can enjoy it at the time with no post-traumatic credit disorder and protect your budget at the same time!

180 Degrees in Less than 180 Days

Simplicity in Kansas suggested in a comment yesterday, taking a look at a post about how my family has changed since we began our journey together in October. A reflection on five changes I have noticed as we work our Success Map and through the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps.

It hit me immediately as a great idea, since a lot has changed in less than 6 months. In fact, regarding finance, nearly a 180 degree turn-around. It might be easiest to explain by listing some positive advances, and contrasting them to how they were being done before.

Change #1 Bill Paying:

• Then: We haven't had a 30-day late pay in a long time, but it was very close. Basically we paid them as they came in without a plan. This led to silly $20, $30 late charges from the cards. It also lead at times charging a payment to a credit card, or having wave after wave of Ninja Bills.
• Now: We track every bill in MS Money including yearly ones and know exactly when we are going to pay them to maximize cash flow and eliminate late-fees.

Change #2 Spending Habits:

• Then: It kind of used to be first come first served! If I wanted to go Golf, I checked to see which credit card had some credit and I was off. The kids would hit up their Mom for everything with little thought of earning or saving for what they wanted.
• Now: Everyone in the house know where a bill is allocated, down to getting a Tea on the way to work. All of us are on allowances, we can spend it on what we want, but when it is gone, its gone! We try to pay with cash anything that we can...oh yeah, the Credit Cards are chopped and haven't been used in four months!

Change 3# Success Plan:

• Then: Don't worry, we'll always make more money...It will work out. Hey, there is the sand, I am going to be over there with my head in it!
• Now: Each person, including the kids, has a good idea to where the money is going. They know we didn't handle our finances well and we are now cleaning them up. They now know that a budget is a lifestyle, not a prison sentence to be paroled from. We all know that whatever we want...we have to save for it. A great example is with the tax return that we are getting. While questions came up about vacations, etc., when I explained that we were putting it away for taxes, everyone understood why. My oldest daughter told me to find the best interest rate, so there would be more for Christmas! (Both Girls are budding CFOs)

Change #4 Attitude Towards Money:

• Then: When my 10 year old daughter was four, she asked for a credit card for Christmas...so she could shop whenever she wanted.
• Now: Just last weekend she said she never wanted one because it was silly to pay extra just to get it now! Today I was with my 7-year old son at the bank getting the cash for our envelope system and he asked if we could go to McDonald's for lunch...just us two. I said sure, but reminded him that since the family wasn't all there, we each have to use our allowances to pay for our meal, because that was fair. He turned to me and said, well, how about I save this for a Bionicle instead...Good choice Son!

Change #5 Stress:

• Then: Never knowing what would turn up next, always waiting for our next check. Everyday felt like a rainy day.
• Now: Never is everything perfect. But the stress level around money is 10% of what it was. What stress there is really due to our understanding of what opportunities we blew by not having our stuff together...

So looking back we really have turned 180 degrees in less than 180 days. We are not perfect by a long shot but we got a budget, planned out our Success Map, are working our baby steps, built our snowball, and the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train anymore!

If you haven't started, start. If you stopped, restart. If you are doing well, look for improvement! You can do it!

Easy Savings to Your Budget Using Cash

For most of us, our budgets don't break due to huge expenses every month. We die from 1000 small cuts and potentially give up since it "is just too hard for us", or, "we aren't good with money like Bobby!"

What I saw with our budgeting struggles was exactly that, we would say "oh we've been so good we'll go out to dinner", or, "It is just a sweater, it was on sale, I Saved you money, that what you wanted wasn't it?" so we would be $20 over here, and $10 over here, it just adds up quickly. Also, once you break discipline, you have to get right back in or you will stop trying soon.

One of the things that I was initially dead set against after reading Dave Ramsey, was the wacky envelope system. I thought that since we were bad with cash this would be a ticket to crash, but really that is the secret of the system...you can't crash, you can't go over!

The system works like this:

• Separate bills - Separate the ones you can pay with cash, true cash, not money orders or checks. For us this was the following: Groceries, Gas for our car, Entertainment, Dining, Kids Allowance, and Our Allowance.
• Set budget for each - If you already have a budget, great! Otherwise you need one for every category.
• Break It up - I get paid every two weeks so our plan was to get cash every Saturday after I got paid. So we divided the budget in two. I understand that I get paid 26 times, but our stomach doesn't know that so we looked at a top down budget and a bottom up and determined our bi-weekly needs.
• Separate Envelopes - You need separate envelopes for each amount. On allowance, one envelope per person. Write on the outside of them what they are for and how much is in them when filled.
• Divide up the responsibilities -Get your spouse Involved! Letting someone else have decision ability over a fund is a great way to stop being the budget police! If it is just you, then still judge each envelope as a separate entity and not as a pool of money.
• Plan out your cash - In order to fill those envelopes to the exact amount, and no more, you will need a wide variety of denominations, in our case, all of them! Plan out what bills work for you in each envelope. If you want to eat pizza, and you know Pizza Hut won't take a $50...don't put a fifty in that envelope. On the other hand, you might not want to bring 200 single $1 dollar bills anywhere...trust me...
• Off to the Bank - I will warn you, some of you will feel weird the first time you go in with a note asking for an odd amount of cash and then want it in all of the possible denominations. Don't stress. The banks don't care, and if they did...who cares! It is your money. In fact I have explained the system to a few teller now and one of them is doing the same now as well!
• The Last Envelope - There is one more envelope; label it Overage. You won't need it yet. But at the end of your period, one week, two weeks, etc., whatever is left over goes in to that fund. My suggestion is to do something that the whole family wants to do; pizza, a movie. Celebrate that you beat budget, which is the only way money is left! Spend it guilt free. You will want to put it towards debt, or some other noble cause, but don't you need to as it is truly extra But you do need it, and so do your loved ones, small motivators. If you want Budget to stop being a 4-letter word? Just try it!
• The Aftermath - For us it is important for everyone to know how we ended up for the month at. IF we went over in some other area of our budget we dock the next envelopes, but not the overage. So for us for example, our gas bill was a Ninja this month, as some folk decided that they preferred it warmer then where the thermostat was set, no surprise, higher Natural Gas bill. So for the next few envelopes we will pay it back via lowered Dining and Entertainment. It is a great reminder to all to do there part...and have my kids tattle on each other (kidding).

So what about those easy savings that I spoke about. They come from making budget every time. If you are not using this method, add up over the last 90 days how much you went over in those categories you could pay for in cash? $20, $50, more? Big time budget blowers and money management killers. Using a debit card, or even worse a credit card, and you can nickle and dime yourself to death.

Us? In 12 weeks we haven't gone over once in anyone of the categories, and had, on average $20+ to spend on a couple extras! We are not perfect by a long ways, but we have been able to work together and still have some creature comforts. I know I drive people nuts by saying this, but It is a marathon and not a Sprint. You have to be able to live your plan...forever!

Hope this works for you. If you are doing something similar let me know, would love to hear how it is working for you.

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