Saving on Eating Out

Not wanting to work constantly to keep paying for the things we need or want, I'm constantly on the lookout for ways to save money. Do we really need cable TV? No, the digital converter box works just fine. Do I need internet on my phone? No, I have it on my computer. Do we need to go out to dinner once a week? No, but it would be really nice if we could.

Date night is important. We need the time together, to spend those couple hours with just Elizabeth make me feel nice. It is important to her too. But it gets expensive. Spending $35 on a meal really hits the pocket book. How many hours does it take to make that $35 and we blow it in an hour of leisure? Ouch. But we need that personal time... How can we cut the costs?

I've found a couple of options for saving. You can get one of the coupon books that has coupons for eateries or entertainment in your area. Some have 50% savings at restaurants, discounts at movies, plays, museums and more. They offer some great discounts. You should look through them though. Most of the coupons will never get used and you want to save more than you spend on the book. A lot more. Why spend $25 for the book if you are not going to be saving at least $100 off of the coupons?

Another option is to have deals delivered to you. Check out the web sites of your favorite places. They will sometimes have deals listed. You can also use services such as groupon or woot. These guys have a deal a day which is a great deal. With groupon, it only happens if enough people buy it, but you can often find meals at 50% off, and the like. Woot keeps the same deal going until they have sold every item, then they have another deal.

If you don't mind writing a report about you eat, go shopping, whatever, you can also be a secret shopper. There are a lot of places that offer secret shopping jobs to people like you. The DMOZ has a great list of mystery shoppers, but beware of scams. A legit service will never ask you to pay them for a job, nor will they ever send you a check to deposit and then ask you to send them money back.

If you save money on grocery shopping then you can spend that savings on fun things, but saving money using one or more of the above methods is better. Save money good.