The Weight of Money

Every time I run the budget numbers, I have to face the reality that I’m making poor choices. You’d think a month or two of doing this would prompt me to change habits, but it hasn’t. It’s all about food, actually, and eating out far more than I should. 75% of our dining out budget it my fault and its often just the daughter and I. We’re talking about $300/month that could be saved just by staying home and eating at home — we could really use an extra $300/month.

I need to do some serious personal reflection to figure out where this constant eating out obsession is coming from. It is basically a daily occurrence, usually between the hours from noon - 4:00 p.m. This month it could be contributed to the fact that a $50/month for groceries is a pathetic attempt at saving money — if I don’t feel like there is any food in the house, I go out to eat. The most likely reason is that I’ve been moderately depressed the past few months and haven’t been taking care of kitchen duties - like keeping the kitchen clean enough to cook in and grocery shopping.

Its time to get food spending back on track and also own up to the fact that I’m really hurting our family’s finances. Steps to fix this, off the top of my head, include:

1. Tell the partner about my eating-out spending — he knows that I eat out a lot, though I still try to obscure the fact and will give vauge answers about whether we’ve eaten or not. Also, because I manage the budget numbers, he usually doesn’t really see just how much I’ve spent eating out or doesn’t realize how it impacts our budget. This isn’t a good pattern to be in and it certainly doesn’t lend to a trusting, honest relationship that we try to maintain. And it adds to the guilt I feel about eating out in the first place.

2. Make a food plan for the week — I do this about once every other month. It really helps us keep spending in check and the house stocked with food for a week or two. However, I always dread this task, even though it can be so simple. So each week, by grocery shopping day, I must make a plan for that week. If I don’t have one, I need to just pick a week from my Saving Dinner cookbook and use that.

3. Make a grocery list and go shopping — This may sound silly, but the grocery store is the most stressful place in the world to me. For many years I avoided it altogether (difficult to do as a single parent). The past several years, I’ve mostly gotten over it, but I still drag my feet when it comes time to go shopping. Also, when were short on funds, it’s very difficult for me to go and spend money on food when I feel like we don’t really have it. Of course, not doing that just means I’ll send twice as much, or more, eating out when the cupboards are bare.

4. Make sure there are easy lunch and snack items available - I’m home all day, most days, so I need to be sure that I don’t just buy food for dinner. If I can’t instantly find lunch in the kitchen, I’ll run out and get something. The majority of my spending is on lunch or pre-dinner meals (around 3pm).

5. Find a way to hold myself accountable — I’m still not sure about how to do this. Perhaps I’ll just post a weekly report on how often we’ve eaten out (including how much was spent) and whether is was a family meal or just me avoiding the kitchen.

6. Keep snacks in the car at all times — I just bought several snack items that I can keep in my car for the moments that I’m suddenly starving. Rarely are my trips away from the house that a snack won’t tide me over until we get home. The partner has always been good at this and it’s time I follow his lead.

I expect to see positive progress in April that will encourage me to make even more progress in the following months. I also expect to see a slight increase in our grocery spending as I’ll probably buy extra convenience foods that will make eating at home easier until it’s a settled pattern.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 8:48 am and is filed under budget/goals, relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.