It was my 30th birthday, and I wanted one thing and one thing only for my birthday dinner: the Bang Bang Shrimp from Bonefish Grill. Too bad the appetizer costs $9 in my area, leaving me with just $16 to reach my max budget of $25 to feed my family of four. With the restaurant’s mid-range menu, I knew the remaining $16 wouldn’t stretch far enough to give me much more than just a glass of water to go with my spicy shrimp.
That’s when a frugal friend reminded me of one of her favorite ways to save money: using a gift card exchange. “Don’t those sites only work for merchandise?” I naively asked my friend. She shook her head emphatically. “Absolutely not,” she replied. “They’ve got discount gift cards for everything. You really need to check it out.”
So I did.
Plastic Jungle
Plastic Jungle is one of the two main sites where you can buy and exchange gift cards. Everyone from Oprah to the Today Show has featured Plastic Jungle’s services, which include buying gift cards you don’t want and selling discount gift cards you’ve gotta have.
When I logged on to Plastic Jungle, I clicked on the “Buy A Gift Card” link at the top right of the home page. From there, I clicked on the “Gift Card Categories” drop-down menu on the right side of then and selected “Dining” from the list.
I was redirected to Plastic Jungle’s selection of restaurant gift cards. They’ve got everything from specialty shops like Jamba Juice and Starbucks to fine dining options like Fleming’s and Morton’s Steakhouse, all at a discount. At first, I was disappointed because I didn’t see a Bonefish Grill gift card; then I remembered that Bonefish is owned by the same company that owns Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba’s. I located the “Outback Restaurant Brands” gift cards. They only had one $50 gift card available, but with Plastic Jungle’s 10 percent discount, it would only cost me $45 to buy. Not bad, but I decided to keep looking.
CardPool
CardPool is the second of the two major discount gift card sites. Unlike Plastic Jungle, you’ll find all the dining gift cards under the “Restaurant” tab on the left side of the “Buy Gift Cards” page.
At first, I didn’t see the Outback Grands gift cards, like I had over on Plastic Jungle. Then I remembered that gift cards for the restaurants owned by Outback are interchangeable, meaning I could use an Outback gift card at Bonefish. That’s when I noticed that the discount available for the Outback gift cards on CardPool is 12 percent – two percentage points higher than over at Plastic Jungle. On top of that, CardPool had the denomination I was looking for – a $25 gift card, which I could buy for $22.
(Note: the gift cards available for purchase on both these sites vary day to day and even hour to hour. Sometimes, the discounts can also change without notice.)
I Got Exactly What I Wanted
Thanks to the discounted gift card, I was able to put an additional $3 towards my birthday dinner budget. Now equipped with a $25 gift card and $3 left over in cash, I was able to nab the Bang Bang shrimp I’d been craving, while still managing to feed my husband (we opted to leave our two young children at home). In addition to my shrimp and his main course, I also had a glass of wine and we shared a dessert, all for $27 with tax. We did leave the waitress a $5 tip, meaning we went over our budget by $4 – but it was my birthday! And if there’s one day of the year when I’m willing to pay a little extra to get exactly what I want, celebrating my 30th birthday is definitely it.
]]>There are a few times when even the most frugal families find the extra cash to have a little fun. For my family, the A-number-one reason for a food splurge? Our annual family vacation!
This year, we’re taking our almost four-year-old daughter to Disney World in Orlando (technically Lake Buena Vista), Florida. My husband and I have budgeted for this vacation over the past 14 months, saving $150 a month during that time, so that we’ll have enough to pay for our trip in full before even setting foot on Disney property. We’d planned for our hotel room, our park passes, food, and souvenirs. Then, Disney gave us a special gift.
Now through May 18th, guests can get a Disney dining plan for free (FREE!) for travel dates between August 25th and September 29th. According to the website MouseSavers – which isn’t formally associated with Disney World in any way – the folks at Disney have offered the free dining plan only sporadically over the past several years, meaning that if a Disney vacation is in your family’s plans, now may be the perfect time to take advantage of this rare freebie.
How It Works
The free Disney dining plan varies depending on which Disney property you’ll be calling home during your stay. If you stay at a moderate or deluxe level property, you qualify for a Magic Your Way plus dining plan. This plan includes:
If you opt to stay at one of Disney World’s value resorts, you’ll qualify for the Magic Your Way quick-service dining plan. This option offers:
What It’s Worth
The real question here is, what is this free dining package really worth?
We’ll use my family as an example. If my husband, daughter, and I (we’re leaving our youngest at home; his nap schedule would interfere with all the fun, so he’ll spend some quality time with his grandparents instead) were to stay at a the Caribbean Beach Club, moderate resort, we’d pay $1750.11 for a five-night stay – that cost includes our six-day park passes. If we wanted to add in the Magic Your Way Plus dining plan, we’d have to shell out an extra $590.50; that’s nearly $100 a day to dine!
If we were staying at a value resort, like the All-Star Music property, the standard cost for five nights and six-day passes to the parks would be $1319.27; add in the quick-service dining plan, and we’d up the price tag an additional $409.85.
The Best of Disney
Let’s face it – unless you stay at a Disney villa, campground, or cabin, you’re not going to have access to the amenities of a full kitchen, making it nearly impossible for your family to avoid dining out. And dining out at Disney World – where even the cheeseburgers are $3.95 – isn’t cheap; there’s no way you’d be able to spend $25 a day for a family or four to eat, let alone $25 a week.
But when it comes to Disney’s discounts, the free dining plan is the best of the best. Other special offers typically offered by Mickey and friends include up to 35 percent off on your hotel stay, or the “kids stay and play” free option, which gives you your children’s park passes for free with the purchase of adult passes. While these options can save you several hundred dollars, neither comes close to offering the discount on food available through the free meal plan.
Reader, how do you negotiate dining out on vacation? Do you reassess your options while away from home?
]]>I was a junior in college the semester I met the man who would one day become my husband. For our first date, I expected him to take me out to dinner; instead, he took me bowling.
That kind of thing, it turned out, was second nature for my husband. In his family, which included his parents and three siblings, they rarely went out to eat. Even a simple trip to McDonald’s could cost their family of six upwards of $25 – and that was back in the 1980s. I, on the other hand, just about grew up in restaurants.
I’m joking, of course… well, a little, at least.
Some families like to use their disposable income to buy electronics, like a former neighbor who always had the coolest gadgets the moment they hit the market. Other families choose to use their extra cash to travel the world, visiting exotic places and must-see destinations. My family, on the other hand, spent our money on one thing: food.
Saying that, you’d suspect that we’re all overweight, but that’s not true. Save my mom’s hypothyroidism, which can send her weight spiraling upwards if her doctors play with her medication dosage, all three of us (I’m an only child) are in a healthy BMI range. My mom simply didn’t enjoy cooking – and, quite frankly, she wasn’t good at it – so my father indulged us three to four times a week with dinners out. My parents and I became fixtures at certain restaurants. A family-owned joint in my small Ohio hometown was our regular Wednesday night destination; the waitresses grew so accustom to our weekly presence that they’d save our favorite table for us and bring out our drink orders the moment we crossed the threshold. Saturday mornings took us to a diner the next town over, where, once again, the waitresses could predict what we’d order before we even glanced at the menus.
A few years ago, my mom and I tried to figure exactly how much money she and my dad had spent eating out over the years. For roughly two decades, the three of us – and, later when I went to college, the two of them – ate an average of five meals a week outside our home. My parents did their best to limit the cost of those meals, taking advantage of coupons, loyalty discounts, and night-specific specials, but estimate they spent an average of $20/meal, for a weekly average of $100.
If you’re not a math guy – like my dad – I’ll help you with the numbers:
Consider what you could do with $104,000. You could buy four brand new Toyota Camrys. You could put down a 38% down payment on the average American home. You could go to Disney World – and stay at one of the deluxe-level resorts – one week every year for 22 years (if you stayed at a value-level resort, you could stretch that out to 50 years’ worth of Disney vacations). If my parents had invested in an IRA, contributing $5,200 a year for that 20-year period, the money would have more than doubled; it would now be worth more than a quarter-million dollars.
We often talk on here about how important it is to have a dining out budget – hard and fast parameters to guide our spending when we eat out. But the thing is, my parents did adhere to a budget at restaurants. Was it a little high? Probably. Could they have done better things with the money? I guess that depends entirely on your personal preferences. My mother would argue no; I’m much more frugal than her, so I’d say yes.
Here, our dining out challenge is $25 a week for a family of four. Is that realistic for your family? Is it in line with your family’s financial priorities?
Reader, where does dining out fall in your family’s priorities? Are you like my parents? Or are you more conservative – or just have other ways you’d rather spend your disposable income?
]]>As a self-confessed restaurant lover, I know how important it is to budget for these little treats. Here are a few tips that I think everyone should try, that will ensure you have the cash to splash (modestly) when the time comes to dine outside your kitchen table.
My first tip is to have a ‘dining-out’ jar. This is the place where you put any spare change you have lying around and any pennies you may find hanging out in your pockets. Team this with any money that you win from playing FoxyBingo and you will find that the dollars soon start to multiply. This can be the place where you save up for romantic dates with your other half, so that you can both have the occasional break from being parents, or where you save up for big family dinners. It may take a while to save-up enough for a meal, but the end result is so satisfying that the saving is definitely worth it.
If you want to eat out more often than the time it takes to save up enough single pennies, then another idea is to actively put a certain amount in the jar every week. Say for example that you put $5 away every seven days, then within a month you will have $20. If you keep up with this, then you can have a guaranteed meal every month, aside from any other outings you may have planned. The money-in-a-jar idea has been around for such a long time that some people forget how well it actually works. So my tip is to come up with a small amount that you can afford to spare each week, and put it in the jar. Dining out after saving up is such a great feeling, and it ensures that this type of lifestyle is sustainable.
]]>There’s an old rule of thumb that you should never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. But I beg to differ.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I found ourselves in desperate need of baby food. We’d fed our ten-month-old son the last jar of Gerber lasagna over lunch, and had nothing to give him for dinner. In fact, we had nothing to give ourselves for dinner either. We had to go grocery shopping, and we had to eat.
We settled on a plan that would allow us to do both: first, we’d swing by our local supermarket to pick up the essentials – including several jars of baby food. Then, since going home and cooking that food would keep us from eating until an impossibly late hour, we’d head on to our favorite (and frugal) Mexican restaurant nearby. I could already taste the pork enchiladas on my tongue. Yum.
Free Samples, Aisle One
With our two children in tow, my husband and I decided to each take a kid and split up in order to conquer our shopping list. I’d take produce and dairy while my husband would conquer processed foods (sorry, cereal’s a staple in my house) and fresh meat.
As I walked into the produce section, my daughter spotted a cache of strawberries – with cream cheese yogurt dip – available for us to sample. A free appetizer, I thought to myself, why not? Just as we were finishing our fresh fruit, my husband texted me from the meat department:
“Cajun shrimp samples here. Come get one.”
Never one to pass up fresh seafood, I plunked my daughter back in the shopping cart and headed off to the meat aisle to nab some more free samples.
Once we’d reunited with my husband and son, we decided to just check off our shopping list together. Returning to the front of the store, my husband grabbed one of the strawberries, while noticing that sugar snap peas were also available to sample nearby. Just as we were finishing those, I saw gala apple slices with caramel sauce in the adjacent aisle. We zigzagged through the produce section, stuffing our mouths with sample after sample, careful never to break the two cardinal rules of supermarket samples: (1) one sample per person and (2) never, ever double dip. Before moving on to the cereal aisle, we’d already indulged in five different fruit and veggies.
Second Course, Please
After a quick stop to pick up cereal for the next morning’s breakfast, we headed on to the dairy section, only to find more samples. A grocery store employee was there, handing out crackers and Boursin cheese. I’m a fan of any type of cheese, but this stuff was rich, creamy, and utterly tasty.
As we made our way to the frozen foods section, I thought I smelled pizza. Turning the corner, I saw yet another employee, and, yes, he was serving slices of DiGiorno frozen pizzas. I handed a slice of pepperoni to my daughter, while I took a piece of supreme for myself. Further down the aisle, there were barbeque chicken wings available to try. My husband and I each scarfed down a honey BBQ wing, while my daughter refused to eat it because it was “too spicy.”
Hot & Fresh
Winding our way through the prepared foods section, daughter started shouting that she wanted macaroni and cheese. I tried explaining to her that we weren’t buying any blue boxes on this shopping trip, and that dinner was going to consist of tacos. Unrelenting – typically of a three-and-a-half year old – she continued to fuss at an obnoxiously high volume until one of the workers behind the counter overheard her. He stopped us and, scooping up a small cup of macaroni from the case, handed it over to my daughter with an equally small plastic spoon. She was in heaven. We thanked the kind man and continued on.
That’s when we saw it – the Holy Grail of supermarket samples: sushi. Every Friday during Lent, our grocery store sells fresh sushi, rolled in house by a team of chefs. Today’s selection included not one but three full-sized samples: a traditional California roll, a salmon roll, and a crunchy avocado roll with peanuts and the most amazing sweet and sour sauce drizzled on top. My husband and I each scooped up the avocado roll (at this point, my daughter was refusing to eat any more, claiming she was full), then looked at each other quizzically: did the one sample per person rule apply to the sushi as a group, or to each type of sushi roll? With a shrug of my shoulders, I reached over and picked up a California roll, prompting my husband to do the same. Three sushi samples later, we headed up to the front to pay for our groceries.
Don’t Forget Dessert!
On our way up to the register, we had to pass through the bakery. I could smell the aroma of fresh pastry and frosting coming from behind the counter. That’s when my daughter remember the free cookie samples our store handed out all day, every day. Suddenly, she decided she had a little extra room in her belly for a sugar cookie, and happily took her treat from the bakery attendant.
Still Hungry?
After paying for our groceries, my husband and I wheeled our cart out to the parking lot and began loading everything into our trunk. As we climbed into the front seat and buckled our safety belts, he turned to me, casually asking, “Still want to go to dinner?”
I paused. I considered my stomach, full of all our free samples. After all, we’d eaten:
I was satisfied. I didn’t need to eat any more.
So we went home, where we fed the baby his turkey dinner with mixed vegetables from a jar.
Reader, what are the best grocery stores in your area for free samples? What’s the most unexpected sample you’ve ever seen at your store?
]]>Dining out is one of my favorite past times. In fact, whether it is an actual meal, a snack, or a beverage, I probably hit at least one restaurant every day. I usually get coffee in the morning, I sometimes go out to lunch, and at least a couple times a week I go out with my spouse for dinner. Restaurants are a huge part of my spending habit. But there is one thing that frustrates me about them: what types of payments they accept.
The Cash Only Restaurants
Some of my favorite dining spots only accept cash – and I can’t stand it. I’m the type of person that doesn’t carry much cash with me because I use a credit card most places. With so many options when it comes to credit card processing, restaurants need to get a clue as to what their customers want and how they pay.
I know that restaurants lose business because they only accept cash because I don’t go to certain places as often as I would if they accepted credit cards. I use my card for everything because I get cash back rewards, and I find it a hassle to get cash. There is one taco shop in particular where I would go everyday if I could since it is hands down the best place around. But their cash only policy makes it hard for me to justify going there as often as I’d like.
Restaurants and Giftcards
Another type of pet peeve of mine when it comes to paying at restaurants has to do with restaurants that accept gift cards. For giftcards, why do some restaurants let you put the tip on the giftcard, and others don’t? If I have a giftcard, I want it to cover my full experience at the restaurant, not just certain parts of the bill. How is the tip any different when putting it on a giftcard compared to putting the tip on a credit card? I just don’t understand this policy, and I wish the restaurants would understand that it is making it harder on customers.
]]>It’s no secret that my family likes to go out to eat. We know that we like to do it, so we make sure to include it in our budget. We try to employ various strategies (Groupons, sharing entrees, drinking water) to stretch our dining out budget and for the most part, it works. We’ve had to make some tweaks to the budget here and there but we’re content with where we stand.
However, my husband and I have had some discussions as to what’s going to happen if I no longer work full-time. Clearly, our dining out budget will have to be reduced but we refuse to eliminate it completely. This led to a discussion as to why it’s important for us to go out to eat. We have a few reasons:
I don’t see us eliminating our dining out budget altogether unless we’re faced with some pretty egregious financial circumstances. To find that extra money in the budget is completely worth it.
What are your reasons for going out to eat?
]]>(Enter, stage left: She looks sheepishly around the restaurant, knowing every eye is on her. She knows that when you’re eating out with kids, you become public enemy number one.)
“Hi there. Balke party, table for four, please? Oh, and we need a high chair, and a booster seat, and preferably a table in the far corner so we don’t disturb the other diners. Thanks.”
Regardless of the day, time, or location, whenever my husband and I head out to eat with our two children – our three and a half year old daughter and our ten month old son – that’s typically my opening line.
For years, I was the snippity, professional woman in her twenties who hated sitting near young children in restaurants. They were loud. They were dirty. But, most of all, they were busy. They were always on the go – they never stopped moving. Their constant motion made me anxious, jittery, nervous: like dining with a hungry lion who was on the prowl, just waiting for his steak to arrive – and liable to throw a massive tantrum at any moment. The mere presence of children around me at a restaurant – even family friendly restaurants – had the capacity to turn my nice, relaxed evening out into a circus side-show.
Now that I’m a mother, I am keenly aware of the less-than-enthusiastic reaction my children and I get whenever we enter a restaurant. I compare it to boarding an airplane: you smile at the mother and her young children as they walk down the center aisle (or past your table), but you hope and pray with all your might that the stewardess (or hostess) sits them in the seats (or table) as far away from you as logistically possible.
Since my daughter’s arrival, my husband and I have tried to frequent family friendly restaurants – places where they hand out children’s menus and allow little ones to color on the paper table cloths. But sometimes, even in kid-friendly establishments, waiters, waitresses, and fellow diners can be downright leery of my children: and with good reason. Over the years, I’ve witnessed my daughter throw what must have been history’s all-time greatest tantrum on a steakhouse floor; I’ve seen my son shred an entire basket of free “appetizer” bread into a pile of crumbs beneath his high chair; I’ve watched my husband slowly simmer – like sauce on a warm stove – then boil over in reaction to his children’s bad behavior; and, I’ve thrown a wad of cash on the table as – mid-meal – I pick my entire family up and head for the hills to avoid an epic meltdown.
That’s not to say my children are always poorly behaved when dining out. Many times, we’re able to peacefully make it through an entire meal without someone whining that they suddenly don’t like chicken fingers anymore, or someone else fussing because mommy isn’t spoon-feeding him his pureed bananas (brought from home) quickly enough. Often, my husband and I are able to carry on intelligent, adult conversations without interruption as our children quietly play with the crayons provided by the restaurant. Sometimes, we walk out thinking that – with our two perfect children in tow – we should really dine out more often.
The next time you and your loved ones are enjoying a peaceful evening out – only to spy my brood and I walking in the door – remember this: I’m trying. I’m doing my best. I’m not here to ruin your evening, but merely to salvage my own.
So, what about the table for four for the Balke party?
First, thanks to all of you for welcoming me to Dining Out Challenge!
Readers: What are your worst eating out with kids experiences – whether as the parent, the child, or a spectator?
]]>For a lot of people, when they first start to focus on getting out of debt or developing a budget, they look at their spending in two categories: food and dining out. My husband and I were not alone in this.
When we got serious about paying off our debt, we had to take an in-depth look at how much money we were spending on food. We had never had a concrete budget for this; we would go to the supermarket, convenience store, restaurant, swipe the debit card and that was that. I would just input the purchase into the checkbook and move on. We didn’t realize how much we were spending until one day, I added it up. The number was staggering. Almost $800 per month. For two people.
Disgusting.
It’s not like we ate at fancy places, either. Pizza, diners, Chinese food, Wawa…these were the establishments where our money was being spent. So the fact that we were spending almost $800 per month between these places and the supermarket made us both a little sick. We knew we had to do two things: 1) eat out decidedly less often and 2) have a budget when we did so. But there was one question plaguing us.
How much is enough?
As if budgeting isn’t hard enough, now we needed to have a sub-budget. We had to determine how much we needed and how much we could allocate to each meal. We also had to stop with the $3 and $5 purchases because they were destroying the budget in a big way (you know the saying good things come in little packages? Not so when those little things add up to over $100 per month). This was a challenge we were not sure we could handle (if you live near a Wawa or one of its cousins, you know what I’m talking about). But we also knew that if we were going to get our finances under control, this was part of it.
We agreed that it was impossible for us to completely eliminate restaurants from our budget. We just had to figure out how to make it fit. So, one night, we sat down with a pen, some paper, a calculator, our checkbook and we went to work:
The budget we established has worked extremely well for us over the last few years. It’s had its fluctuations, like the months we had to completely eliminate it or the months we’ve gone a bit over but, for the most part, it’s been a good amount. As our income has increased and our debt decreased, it’s now time to revisit the restaurant budget.
But at least this time we know what we’re doing and we won’t be subjected to an $800 sticker shock.
How did you establish your dining out budget?
]]>Going out to eat with my daughter is a challenge. She’s extremely picky when it comes to restaurant food, and she often picks what I could make for free at home (sometimes she even tells me that she’d rather I cook. That? Is flattering). That is to say, she likes to order from the children’s menu. I, on the other hand, cannot stand the children’s menu.
I find the children’s menu in most restaurants disgusting. For starters, people always complain that their kids will only eat macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, hot dogs or peanut butter and jelly. Many parents want their kids to try and eat new foods, yet when we go to a restaurant, what happens? We are inundated with the same choices we are trying to remove from our kids’ diets. Kids’ menus only reinforce the stereotype that kids will only eat these foods and, as parents, we’re left with limited choices.
Why are we trying to remove those foods? Because they’re unhealthy, boring, and bland. Even meals that you think are healthy are not. For instance, you would think that a turkey and cheese sandwich from Panera Bread is healthy. The sandwich alone is about 400 calories. Add in milk and the yogurt, and the meal is easily around 600 calories. That’s a lot for a small child to consume at one meal (and if your kid is anything like mine, she will eat almost all of it).
They’re also a ripoff. Kids’ meals are expensive. Most of the restaurant we frequent will nickel and dime you on the cost of a kids’ meal. A couple of weeks ago, we went to Saladworks. My daughter originally wanted soup but when she saw that she could get a sandwich, she wanted that instead. In an effort to avoid a tantrum, I relented and let her pick a sandwich from the kids’ menu thinking that it would a) be smaller and b) a better value. It was not. The sandwich alone cost about $6. I thought it came with a side of apples or chips; it did not. I had to pay an extra $.75 for the apples. We got around the drink by getting a small cup and filling it with water but had we not done that, her drink would have been another $2.29. This is unacceptable to me.
So what can we do to combat the kids’ menu disaster? Well, there are a few things:
Eating in restaurants is a perfect opportunity to teach our kids about new, exciting foods, as well as teaching them how to get the best value for your dollar. It’s not always possible and sometimes we just let our kids eat the hot dog, fries and lemonade. It’s OK. Sometimes. We can just try again next time.
How do you try to combat the kids’ menu disaster?
]]>