January Eating Out and Take Out Budget

This is a new thing that I am tracking because I feeling that we are spending more and more eating out so I want to make sure that it doesn't kill the budget.  The hard part of this is that we use eating out for celebrations, vacation, family visitors and other things so I have a hard time putting a limit or budget around it but I know that I need to keep track and make sure that it doesn't get out of control.

Little Caesars                                    $26.50

Crayola Experience $8.47 + $6.50= $14.97

Wendy's                                         $9.49

Little Caesars                                 $5.30

Total                                            $56.26

This month's challenge was my son's birthday party.  We had the party at the house with a bunch of his friends.  He wanted to have pizza because it is one of his favorite foods and since we weren't paying lots of money for a party out, we agreed to start with the pizza and then they decorated cookies.  They ate one of the cookies and packed the other in their bags to take home.  The rest of the goodies were things that they made like a frisbee pokeball that they decorated and poke cards that they created and colored themselves.  There was also a guidebook with coloring sheets, mazes and other sheets that they also took home so there wasn't a large cost for the party so the cost of the pizza wasn't too large when the rest of the food was made at home including cupcakes for the party and cupcakes for school.

We also took a trip to Pennsylvania for my son's birthday and we ate pizza at the Crayola Experience and then my husband promised my son this icee (also his favorite) and he paid in cash and doesn't remember how much it was but thinks it was $5.99 plus tax so I estimated $6.50.  We ate the meal that night at the hotel so there wasn't the additional cost of the restaurant but ate Wendy's for lunch the next day and Little Caesars for dinner when we got home so that I didn't have to make dinner to eat any later then it was already.

I was hoping to be around $40 monthly take out but there weren't a lot of extra eating out for no reason so I think that it worked out really low for everything we got. I hope that you did well with your eating out spending.