My Month-Long Experiment: Dining Out

I mentioned in a previous post that I like to have goals of many varieties. One of my most recent goals was to go a full month without spending any money on food outside of groceries. That meant no restaurant or fast food meals, no stopping at a coffee shop for a snack (although I did make an exception for coffee with my pre-loaded Starbucks card), no popping in to 7-11 to buy a candy bar. I didn't do the best job setting up what my rules would be, but all things considered, I think I did pretty well.

Going into the month, I had one planned exception - a coworker and friend was leaving the office, so if a bar or restaurant celebration was planned, I was going to attend. As it turns out, we're still in the planning stages for said celebration, so crisis averted!

Here's how I did:

From January 21 to February 20, I spent $28.59 on restaurants.

February 5 - $19.30 - this was the day before a major event at work, and although I planned to stay a little late, I did not plan on working as late as I did. I took a break with a colleague and went out for Thai food. I knew at the time that I was breaking my own rule, but I felt like it was worth it. Otherwise, I'd have worked for another hour, taken 45 minutes to get home, and arrived at home hangry beyond belief. I'm a delight.

February 17 - $9.29 - my other "failure" during this experiment followed a three-day weekend where I did not leave my apartment. R was on a trip out of state, and we had yet another blizzard so the MBTA wasn't running and I couldn't get anywhere. I didn't really see another human for three days, so when my regular Tuesday night play date rolled around and we were concerned about getting home (neither of us live on lines of the T that were running at that time) we agreed to meet up downtown for dinner. I know we could have brought food and eaten at one of our offices, as we've done in the past, but after three days of solitary confinement, the idea of sitting in a sad dark office eating soup out of tupperware was too much. Worth it.

So, technically, I failed. That said, I did a lot better on food spending than I have in other months, so I'm not feeling too badly about it.

Take-aways:

I realized that with a bit of planning, I never need to spend money on dining out. There are certainly going to be days that I don't plan for, but for my regular routine, I can plan ahead and be just fine. I need to stop using "failed to plan" as a legitimate excuse for dining out.

A lot of my social life revolves around restaurants and bars. There were many reasons that this month was isolating. During the month-long period that I was conducting this experiment, we got about 8 feet of snow. That said, even when things were running as usual, I didn't reach out to people to make plans as I didn't really know what to suggest we do. I'd like to work on this in the future - there's no reason that all of my group outings need to take place "out."

Finally, because I did it a lot less often, the two times I ate meals out felt like special occasions, and it was kind of awesome. I didn't grab lunch somewhere and eat it at my desk. I didn't go out for dinner three times in a week and never really enjoy it. Each time I made a special exception to go out to eat, it felt more special.

So even though I may have failed, I learned a lot from this experiment and will be carrying on with limiting my dining out spending.

Mid-Month Mint: February

Let's take a look at my Mint pie chart for February so far:

As you can see, this month looks a little different than previous months. First off, it's worth mentioning that my student loan payment hasn't happened yet, so that will shift things around significantly. Second, there's a category here that I haven't seen in a while: travel.

I've mentioned a few times that I have a dedicated travel savings account, and this month was the first time that I put it to use, as I booked a cross-country plane ticket for May! I think this was the first time I've booked a trip with dedicated funds set aside to pay for it, and it felt pretty great. I don't have to worry about cutting down in other areas to pay my credit card bill this month; instead I can focus on continuing to contribute to my travel fund for the other trips I want to book and the expenses outside of the literal travel to get places. This feels like a huge step!

Health and fitness also makes an appearance here, as I've signed up for my second half marathon, taking place in late May. It was a less expensive race than my first one, and I think it will be fun. If my travel fund allows, I might even go a day early to the town where the race is taking place to avoid having to rent a car and deal with driving and parking. I'll have to see what work looks like that weekend, but it would certainly be more enjoyable that way.

Food and dining is a smaller piece of the pie this month, as I've been focused on not eating out for any meals - I'll talk more about that in a later post.

In all, February is going well spending-wise, and I'm hopeful that I can keep up the good work!

My one-out, one-in policy for clothes

An area of my budget that I often find myself struggling in is clothing. And it's funny, because I don't really enjoy shopping or clothing all that much. Actually, I really dislike shopping - I find the whole experience overwhelming. Regardless of that, I somehow end up buying clothes every month or so that I don't need, I don't wear, and I ultimately don't even want. Why do I keep doing that?

In an effort to continue my loan payments while also enjoying my life with occasional outings and trips, I took a look at my spending and my priorities, and it became really obvious what area I would be most willing to cut back or even cut out entirely: clothes.

I've never kept a lot of clothing around, and I recently did a pretty major purge of my wardrobe. I share a single closet with my boyfriend, so there simply isn't a lot of room for extra, unnecessary stuff.

Our closet

The rest of my wardrobe

These images sum up pretty much all of the clothing I own right now, with the exception of shoes, outerwear and underwear. There are a few items in the hamper, but otherwise, what you see is what I've got. It's not much.

When I first toyed with the idea of cutting back on my clothing spending, I thought maybe I could do what Mrs. Frugalwoods did - cut out clothes shopping for an entire year. I realized pretty quickly that that wouldn't work. My wardrobe is just the right size, but if something wears out, I don't have much of a choice but to replace it!

Instead, what I've decided to adopt is a "one-out, one-in" policy when it comes to clothes for the next year (and beyond!). That means if something has to go out, I'm allowed to bring something else in. Otherwise, I'll work with what I've got.

A couple of key rules:

• If I can reasonable mend an item or do without it, it doesn't need to be replaced.
• An unexpected "occasion" is not a reason to buy a new outfit - I can work with what I have, or borrow from a friends
• The exception to this rule would be a job interview
• I can replace my running shoes, once
• Finally, if I do change jobs and need to step up my work wardrobe, it will be on an "as-needed" basis, with a very strict budget

I think that about sums it up! I'm hoping that this new rule will help give me some structure in my spending decisions, and allow me to free up the extra for loans, travel and enjoying myself!

How do you manage clothes spending? I've never really had a system before, but I know plenty of people budget monthly or annually for clothing.

A spending update

Man, blogging is hard. I should probably try to post more than once a week, huh? I'll just have to come up with some interesting things to post about.

This week, I get again failed at some of my goals, but yet again, that's okay. I did a little better than last week, but let's take a look at where exactly I left things:

• Well, I didn't drink two liters of water daily, but it did come closer than last week. Not exactly a win, but I'll take it.
• I also didn't finish all my shopping (I know, that's bad) but I'm closer. I'm baking with my brother, so for him I'm buying groceries and I'll do that when I get to PA so I don't have to schlep everything with me. I haven't started my Dad's hat, but I at least found a pattern that won't take too long to make. I need to pay for Ruben's passport, but that can't really happen until he fills out the application. I guess what I'm saying is, I bought one present this week, for my sister, and made mediocre progress on everything else.
• Eating out actually was pretty successful this week. I went out for drinks twice instead of once, but the total amount I spent was under $30 for both, which was what I had planned to spend at once. Not technically a success, but not bad.
• Finally, I succeeded in keeping my grocery budget down by working with things I have on hand, and really only buying things that were on sale for future use - pasta, oatmeal, flour.

So, a better job than last week to be sure. This week is going to be a challenge, though. I have plans to go out almost every night, and I'm traveling this weekend to visit friends, so there will be a bit of spending there too. Because of that, I'm going to try to be a bit more flexible with my goals. So:

• Spend less than $80 in CT, including gas money for the friend driving me, and whatever my share of groceries, wine, and entertainment for the weekend comes to. I'll probably take this out in cash to be sure I stick to it.
• Less than $30 on food and drinks out during the week. I don't know yet (and have no control over) where we're going for any of my plans this week, so hopefully that will work...
• Drink two liters of water daily. I think this is the first of many weeks that I really make that happen.
• Make my dad's hat
• Post 3 times on the blog

How I did this week

My goals this week were to not spend money on eating out or drinking, and to drink 2 liters of water every day. I did... Okay. Well, if you consider failing all three to be okay. To be fair, drinking water is my goal every single week, and I have yet to achieve it for a full week straight. Maybe this week will be the one...

I came very close to not spending any money on food out this week, but yesterday I needed second breakfast after my run, and the yogurt I had at my office was long expired so I ended up buying a bagel. So, I spent $2.77 (wow, that's a lot for a bagel with cream cheese) and didn't spend the morning feeling miserable and cranky. This weekend, I'll pick up more yogurts so I can avoid that outcome in the next couple of weeks.

I also ended up going out for drinks on Thursday night with a friend I dint see very often. I spent more than I should have, putting down $25 for two cocktails, but I at least had the foresight to eat dinner at the office. We went to a pretty pricey spot, so dinner easily would have doubled what I paid. That said, I could have been just fine with water, or drinking beer instead of cocktails, and really cut down my costs.

Other unexpected expenditures this week: I signed up for a race in February, running me about $35, and I bought a few impulse kitchen items on Amazon. I am making a lot of cookies as gifts, and decided that I should have more sheets and cooling racks so I can be a bit more efficient. Necessary? Absolutely not. Foolish? Probably. Will I enjoy and use them? Definitely.

In all, not a bad week.

Goals for the coming week are:

• Finish Christmas shopping - still need to get gifts for my sister, brother, and boyfriend. And make my dad's gift.
• Drink 2 liters of water daily
• Only one day with money spent on food/drinks out (planned for Friday)
• Keep grocery costs under $50 - last week was a bit pricey, picking up a lot of ingredients for a lot of cookies. Let's rein it back in.

Things I (believe I) will always spend on

Living frugally is one of the major keys in making my debt repayment plan happen. I've been pretty frugal all throughout my life, and especially in college and since graduating. I've never amassed any credit card debt and I work hard to consider whether things I'm purchasing are "worth" my money - I even wrote my honors thesis in college about the difference between value and price!

That said, there are some things that are important to me, and that I'm willing to spend money on even though they might be beyond what most would consider necessities. In the interest of full disclosure, here are some of those things:

• Groceries - I do what I can to keep our grocery cost low, shopping seasonally and planning meals around sales when possible. That said, I also enjoy cooking and eating well, and I value my nutrition. Most of my grocery spending happens in the produce department and the baking aisle, where I find many of the supplies to make healthy meals from scratch for my boyfriend and I. In addition to "normal" cooking, I make all of our bread and almond butter, I keep a freezer stocked with soup and other frozen meals, and I am constantly looking into other ways to introduce fewer processed foods into our diets, even if it means spending a bit more.
• Netflix and HuluPlus - we don't have cable, but we have both of these relatively inexpensive subscription services. And frankly, I think that's okay. I rarely spend money on entertainment, but having a huge variety of shows and movies available on demand makes a major difference in my quality of life. Worth the >$20/month in my opinion.
• Shoes and clothes - not in the sense that I have a lot or enjoy shopping, actually quite the opposite. I maintain a relatively small wardrobe and I don't shop often, but when I do, I try to focus on quality. I buy items that I think will last and that I will enjoy for years to come, even if they are more expensive than some alternatives that would keep me just as clothed.
• Occasional travel - my family is spread out all over the country, and my boyfriend's family lives in California. This means that seeing either of our families almost always involves a plane, train or bus. Neither of us would be willing to give up the expenses associated with seeing them at least twice a year, although we try to do it cheaply. We're also planning a real vacation for next summer to Montreal. We'll do it on a budget, but it's certainly not a necessity.

I know that none of these are necessary expenses, or at least not to the degree that I spend my money on them. Right now, I'm comfortable with what I spend in each of these areas, and that's good because I'd really rather not adjust in any of these areas. That said, knowing that these are areas where I could cut back also means that in leaner times, I know the first places to look for extra money in my budget.