This is generally your best option for eating, along with some vitamins. But if you want to wuss out and eat out, I'll have to understand.
Everybody knows that eating in saves you money, but seriously, who wants to do that? You have to pre-heat the oven, scatter the cockroaches away from your dishes, and rinse off your fork. No, it’s much easier to eat out and not have to worry about any of that stuff. However, eating out can cause issues as well-namely, to your wallet. Sometimes it feels as if, after the meal, that you’ve frittered away $1000 on a sundae. Other times that feeling is correct and you actually have, because Serendipity in New York apparently sells one. The perfect way to get your daily intake of Au, I say.
Seriously, eating out is not cheap. According to www.marketwatch.com, people ages 16-27 eat out, on average, 27 times a month. Those crazy kids, spending all their money before they get a penny in their pocket, right? Not so. 28-39 year olds eat out 21 times a month on average. At an average of $6 a plate, that adds up to…around $1,152 a year for those in the youngest group. That’s more than I spent on my car. Now, granted, eating at home costs money, but not nearly as much. With the rabid use of coupons (like I instructed you to use in a previous post), you can easily save as much as 50% more than you would spend on the typical meal at the restaurant.
So now that you’ve committed yourself to the life of a hermit, let me further explain myself. You can eat out, but you gotta be sneaky about it. I don’t mean that you won’t tell your spouse about it, as I’m sure they’ll want to abandon your home cooking at the first chance they get, but I mean you need to try and save money even if you do eat out. It can be done. Here’s a site completely devoted to food that is $3.99 or less, some of the offerings make $5 McDonald’s meals look as spendthrifty as caviar. Even if you throw all your coupons out the window, there are still deals to be had. Five bucks at Little Caesar’s for a pizza that feeds two? That rocks my socks. You can also find great deals at little out-of-the way places, remember, they don’t have to pay for franchising fees, stock options, or mega-CEO salaries. Oftentimes, as well, they aren’t as high-strung. If you ever find out that a restaurant’s employees are chasing each other around with meat cleavers, it’s time to find a different dinner destination.
By far, however, the best deal in eating out is your local Chinese buffet. If you don’t have a job, you could conceivably pay $5.99 and eat all day. Just be careful, sometimes the staff will notice and tell you to leave. If you have to turn your head everytime they walk by, then so be it. I would suggest you just bring a disguise and change, but that could backfire and you might have to pay for even more than you bargained for. I would say your best bet is to hide out in the bathroom until they forget you were only there for the lunch buffet, and get out in time for dinner. Being in the bathroom for three hours might even be a legitimate excuse, depending on if you ate the Egg Foo Young before it had warmed up.
So, although eating out can cost more than you would spend eating in most of the time, you can control where you eat to control how much you spend. One Golden Opulance Sundae, or two hundred Little Caesar’s pizzas? I know which one I’d choose.
What can I say, I have quite a sweet tooth.
