Eating Out is Expensive: How to Prepare

With inflation at record decade long highs in 2022, eating out is expensive. Many people are choosing not to eat out because restaurant bills are looking more like mortgage payments by the day. There are many things you can do to prepare for this sudden increase in costs.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall food costs increased 10.1% YoY from May 2021 to May 2022. That’s not an insignificant increase. What’s even worse is that that number can even go higher in 2023. Food prices are even acting like financial asset prices. That’s insane!

Financial literacy and cutting back matters now more so than ever before. When Elizabeth Warren asked Jerome Powell whether his rate hikes will decrease food prices, Jerome Powell replied, “I wouldn’t think so, no”. So inflation might just get even worse. We are in the crisis of our lifetimes!

It’s no secret that eating out is expensive and it’s no secret that eating out may become even more expensive. Preparation matters now more so than ever. Now is the time to protect your financial future because as bad as things have gotten, they have a way of getting worse.

Eternal optimists may be the hardest hit. Sometimes, a healthy dose of pessimism is necessary for us to survive and to move on from a crisis such as this. Nothing bad ever happens until they do. It’s time to put in the work to prepare for the worst.

2022 showed us that bad things happen when we least expect them to.

Why Eating Out is Expensive More Than Ever

One word. Inflation. Inflation by itself is not that scary. What is scary is that the Fed, specifically Jerome Powell, admitted how little they actually understand inflation. Remember the good old days when the Fed would tell us that inflation would be transitory in 2021? That doesn’t hold so much now.

Now they’re playing catch up and hoping that they won’t crash the economy as a result of their inaction. The government actually doesn’t understand that printing money and allowing citizens to have access to record low cheap money actually causes inflation. Even after widespread media reports.

That’s what’s shocking to me about this entire thing. How can ordinary citizens be better equipped to know what causes inflation than the Fed whose been alive for longer than we have? It just doesn’t make any sense at all whatsoever. Yes, supply chain issues have contributed to the increase in costs.

However, that impact could have been lessened if the government understood that cheap money causes record high inflation. Eating out is more expensive than ever but that doesn’t mean that you’re dead in the water! You can always do things to combat the impact of inflation.

Some solutions may not be so appealing but other solutions may be. I know that I’m personally eating out much less because of how expensive things have gotten. Eating out is expensive. Just the other day, I went to Raising Cane’s.

It was 33% more expensive than before and they gave out 33% less chicken. Wow.

Eating Out is Expensive: How to Prepare

The first way to prepare that eating out is expensive is you can SMASH that social share button and post to your favorite social media! Your friends may need to learn how to cut back in this time of crisis. We don’t know how long this crisis will last.

We have to be prepared for a crash landing as opposed to a soft landing that the Fed is thinking of.

1) Cooking More

I get it, grocery bills look more like mortgage payments now. However, even then, it’s still much cheaper to cook at home rather than to go out to eat. You don’t have to tip the waiter whose salaries became inflated and face tipping guilt shame.

You don’t have to dress up nor do you have to pay for any markup prices.

Eating out is expensive and cooking at home is expensive. However, one is more expensive than the other. And on top of that, you get to choose the menu and the food you eat to your liking. At restaurants, your food is pretty much fixed to how the chef likes to make it according to the menu.

Cooking is a skill that many of us should have. Too many people are dependent on restaurants to provide them with food that if push came to shove, they don’t know what to do. Cooking is a form of a DIY project. A project that everyone else should support.

2) Eat Less

Whether we like it or not, Americans overeat. By a lot. By not overeating, you not only save money on food you also get to improve your health. I currently weigh 154 pounds. For a 5’11 person, the BMI scale is right dab in the middle. I used to weigh 172 pounds and would feel terrible.

These days, I understand just how much I’m overeating and I adjust accordingly. Eating out is expensive but that doesn’t mean it has to break the bank. Food is a staple that we enjoy but we tend to overindulge in a lot of instances.

You’ll find out you need to eat less than you think in order to maintain the same weight.

100 calories give us a lot more energy than we think. That’s a lot of energy that we consume. Sometimes, we just think we feel hunger instead of actually feeling hunger. I overindulged a lot on food this way.

It’s not a bad idea to experiment just exactly how much food you need to sustain yourself every day.

3) Bringing in Outside Food

Some restaurants just downright refuse to let you bring in outside food. However, for other restaurants, they are perfectly OK with you doing so. I frequent Chipotle every single day and indulge on their decadent chicken bowl menu.

However, when I feel like it isn’t enough, I buy a $2 ham and cheese sandwich from Walgreens next door in order to give me satiety. I know if I were to buy a similar type of food in Chipotle, it would cost me a lot more money in order to do so.

For the same amount of calories that I eat. When eating out is expensive, consider bringing in outside food.

It’s to stop you from buying food at a higher price restaurant and instead buy food from a lower price restaurant. Eating out is expensive. Some restaurants are just downright too expensive and mark up the prices at a ridiculous pace. It’s time to avoid those restaurants menu items.

4) Walking to Nearby Restaurants

You may just be living in a prime real estate location. There’s no need to drive to a new location, you just may need to walk to a nearby restaurant that you like. I live in a great location where almost everything is within walking distance. I go to the local Subway and enjoy a good sandwich in order to cut costs.

Eating out is expensive already, it’s time to cut costs on other things that are driving up your eating costs. Many people neglect the other hidden costs of eating out such as getting ready to go out, actually driving to the place, and the like. There’s nothing wrong with walking to nearby restaurants.

In fact, it may even be healthier for you because you’re getting that exercise. Then after you finish eating out, you can come back and digest the food while walking back, also. Too many people are dependent on their cars when they can easily walk to their restaurant of choice.

5) Not Going Into the Restaurant Starving

This one works for grocery stores as well. Our perception of hunger is really bad at actually forecasting the real food demands that we have. We think we’re hungrier than we actually are and we buy more food than we actually need to eat.

We are too impatient and want to solve the hunger problem now so we end up over-ordering food.

There’s so many times that I ordered more food than I actually needed only to find out that I only needed half of what I ordered because I went into the restaurant hungry. Then I paid the price for it the very next day. It was always unforgiving days that always came out by the end.

Going into the restaurant hungry is like the restaurant already winning against you. The restaurant plays all sorts of tricks in order to get the customer to spend more money than necessary. This is from the moment that you walk in, from the menu that they place in front of you.

They know exactly what they are doing. Eating out is expensive already, they play all sorts of games for it to be even more expensive. It’s time to play games of our own.

6) Finding Out About Discounts

There’s no shame in asking about discounts or specials for the day. Some of the specials of the day actually is a worse deal for the customer and is a better deal for the restaurant. You will have make a judgement call in those instances.

When eating out is expensive so much, then there’s no shame in asking for a discount.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. The cashier is just more knowledgeable about the specials and discounts the restaurant runs more than you. Especially if you are not a regular at the restaurant. You are more likely to get a no but you lose nothing by asking, anyway.

They may just have a buy one get one deal already ready for you to take advantage of with your family. I personally never pay retail price for anything, even with food. I try to find some ways to find 5 – 10% discounts from the menu price, on top of the discount that I get for using my credit card.

7) Skipping the Extras

Drinks are the most marked up items on the menu, ever. There’s a reason why the restaurant gladly gives you a free refill. It costs them pennies to charge you dollars. The extras aren’t just bad for you, they are transferring money out of your wallet in the restaurant’s wallet.

Eating out is expensive because of the extras. It’s not just the drinks. There are the desserts and appetizers that are adding more dollars to the bill. Tips are based on how much the bill comes out in the end. So the more dollars you add on to the bill, the more money it comes out by the end.

There’s no need to get an appetizer if you’re going to take it home with you anyway. There’s no need to get desserts if you’re going to regret it down the road, anyway. The extras are extras for a reason. It’s not necessary.

There are other ways to enjoy a dining out experience than getting everything that’s on the menu.

8) Going to Restaurants Within Your Budget

There’s no need to go to Capital Grille. There’s no need to go to Fogo de Chao’s. Fancy restaurants cost more money but give you less food anyway. One steak at Capital Grille costs something like $85 or so. When I got the steak, it was just like 8ozs worth of food with nothing else.

I didn’t know what to think. It didn’t even make me full, and I had to order even more food just to feel satisfied. Eating out is expensive already, there’s no point in going to another restaurant that’s even more outside of your price range. I spent an entire month’s worth of salary on one day’s worth of food.

Fine dining is almost a scam.

Although it was fine for one day’s worth of experience, I don’t think I will go through with that again. I’m not at a point where I can go out for fancy dinners often. Maybe I will get there someday, but the coming years is not that day. Going to restaurants within your budget combats the rising cost of food.

9) Splitting Food

Fancy restaurants may give you little food while it being expensive. Other restaurants just give you so much food it’s too much for you to handle by yourself. There’s nothing wrong with getting one main dish and splitting it with your friend and the cost as well.

It’s a way for you to both enjoy the food without breaking the bank.

There are many interesting foods you can try at new restaurants that you can just split with your friends. I tried goat meat at one restaurant. It was expensively priced at $18, but much better when I split it with a friend. Eating out is expensive but splitting the bill with someone else makes it better.

It’s a way for you to enjoy the food even without paying the high price tag. It all goes back into overeating, as well. You will be surprised at how little food you need in order to function normally throughout the day to day life. It shocked me, as well.

Eating Out is Expensive But You Can Combat It

There’s no doubt that eating out is expensive. The government is so bad at understanding basic economics that they put the burden of buying the necessities on us. It’s almost like a real life game of Squid Game and whoever is more in the know is going to come out ahead.

I am not one of those people. I am deeply and heavily impacted by the rising cost of food and the decades high inflation we’re experiencing. Even though I was too late in preparing, I’m still doing everything I can in order to combat inflation because it’s my livelihood that’s at stake.

We can all do things in order to enjoy life AND live a fiscally conservative lifestyle that’s going to make us all come out ahead by the end. You have the sole power within you. The government may throw all sorts of problems at us but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it.

We have to power to control our own financial destiny. Eating out is expensive but if eating out being expensive is the highlight of our problems in our lifetime, then we are in good shape. It may sting in the short term but short term sacrifice for long term gain is well worth the effort.

Knowing how to get rich from nothing starts by saving money and making that money work as hard as it can for us. Money is the best employee we’ll ever have but it will not be afraid to master us if we ever mismanage it. Now is the most crucial time for us to employ prudent financial decisions.

Eating Out is Expensive: How to Prepare Shortlist:

• Cooking more
• Eat less
• Bringing in outside food
• Walking to nearby restaurants
• Not going into the restaurant starving
• Finding out about discounts
• Skipping the extras
• Going to restaurants within your budget
• Splitting food