eating cheap

if you read my other blog, you know that i love food. cooking and eating out. ever since i started my budget in january, i have been learning new ways to eat out cheap (but still eat well). here are some tips i have learned. i hope they are helpful.

1. eat dinner at home before going out with friends and then just get an appetizer

if you are going somewhere to eat out that you don't really care that much about, just eat something at home and then get something small. then you can still have the social aspect of going out to eat but will not spend a ton of money on a meal you don't really care about. also, by getting something cheap you will not make people uncomfortable by just sitting there sipping water with lemon while they all feast on steaks or whatever. it's better to be eating something i think in order to fully participate in what is going on.

2. take advantage of weekly specials and happy hours

in the past few weeks i have had half off fish and chips at rookwood pub, a $2.95 burger and fries at mccormick and schmick's, half price sushi at dancing wasabi, $10 all you can eat pizza at pizza night at take the cake, $7 burger madness at arthur's, and a $35 three course restaurant week meal at nicola's. there are tons of other specials out there too, in fact here in cincinnati pretty much every restaurant except the really expensive places have some kind of weekly special. and the places that don't are almost guaranteed to at least participate in the occasional restaurant weeks that come around.

3. become a secret shopper

a friend of mine tipped me off on this when she took me out to a $250 meal at jeff ruby's waterfront... for free. what you do is sign up on the website, do a few reviews of crappy places (she had to do smoothie king a few times), and then you get the hookup to good places. i have not done this yet but i am planning to soon. seriously, this is an awesome way to get some seriously good meals for free. the only catch is that she says the reviews take a couple hours to write, but still, it's totally worth it if you are willing to take the time to do that.

4. order off of the extra value menu at fast food places

i don't eat fast food much but recently i took a trip to chicago on the megabus so we stopped at wendy's on the way there and mcdonald's on the way back. at wendy's i got some buffalo chicken tenders for $4.35. this seemed expensive to me since i didn't even get a drink or fries. at mcdonald's, i checked out the extra value menu. i got a chicken sandwich and a medium fries for $2.80. even if i had added a drink this would have been like $4. much cheaper than getting the combo thing which was like $6. it is possible that this chicken sandwich was smaller than the regular one but i don't think so... i think the only difference was that there was no tomato on it. and who wants one of those gross anemic fast food tomato slices anyway... so not worth $2.

5. drink water

do you know how much money i save simply because i do not drink soda? i mean i even drink beer and wine and coffee and all that, just not soda. any time i am eating lunch out i just get water. it is free and saves me probably $1.50 to $2 at every single meal. i have never been a soda drinker so this is not a sacrifice for me at all, but if you are and you can stop drinking it i promise you will notice a difference in your budget.