Going back to our article on Financial Health entitled, ‘Does Your Financial Health Look As Good As You Do? Beginning The Journey!’  we highlighted the importance of becoming financially healthy. Growing savings and reducing spending are two sure fire ways to move a step closer to becoming financially fit. We have decided to challenge ourselves to curve ourspending habits related to eating out. We did the math and realized some months we spend ridiculous amounts wining and dining ourselves at restaurants. That is money we could put back in our budget to pay off debt, build our savings or direct towards investing. We came up with a challenge to help us achieve our goal. With the support of our family, friends and you our loyal readers we are on the road to meeting meeting our goal. Which is to change our spending habits with eating out and use that money to help payoff our debt. We invite you to join us. Together we all will achieve our financial goals.

Be prepared for lunch throughout the week. We use our slow cooker and smoker over the weekend to make meals for our lunch throughout the week. In our slow cooker we have prepared red beans and rice, jambalaya, chicken stew, ribs, and pot roast. On the smoker we have prepared Boston butts, chicken quarters, and ribs. Of course there are plenty of lighter options. But as my wife often reminds me, I like full meals. We found simple recipes on YouTube and Facebook that are very flavorful. These meals stretch over several days and are easy to reheat. Taking the time to prepare these meals over the weekend saves a lot of money during the week. Getting food from the cafeteria, restaurants and vending machines is costly.

 If you like this article check out  Lunch Bag Swag!

Grocery shopping. Running out of groceries is the easiest excuse to use to have a reason for eating out. Having groceries in the refrigerator or freezer help ensure you avoid the eating out trap. A simple grocery list and meal list will ensure you purchase only the groceries you need. Making a meal list is important and is often over looked. The meal list will help ensure you get enough ingredients for each meal. This helps prevent return trips to the store which waste gas. Once you have placed the last item from your grocery list in your basket, put on your blinders on and head to the nearest checkout line. Take advantage of store discount cards and coupons to maximize your savings. If you manage to have money leftover in your grocery budget from savings you can re-purpose that money to debt repayment.

Tell your friends, coworkers and family what you are doing. A big key to being successful in meeting this challenge will be the support of your family, friends and coworkers. I get motivation from sharing our challenge with others. I can see the look in peoples eyes. When I see that spark and the light bulb goes off, it reaffirms that we are on the right path. When I see others begin to do the same thing and retake control of their finances it empowers me to see the challenge through. There have been times when my wife and I wanted to run out to a restaurant. We leaned on each other to get through.

After the challenge, now what? Have a plan once you complete the challenge. Use the challenge to create new habits that will support your financially healthier lifestyle. It is okay to eat out on occasion. Put a plan in place to ensure you don’t fall back into your old ways. Continue the behaviors you learned: Budgeting for groceries, Having a meal and grocery list, and cooking over the weekend for the week for lunch during the week.

Now you have the details of our eating out challenge! Do you think you can challenge your family even your friends to put the challenge to action? Use the next few days to set your goals, set your budget, build your menu and have discussions with your household. Use your goals as motivation. Find pictures to represent your goals that you can display on the refrigerator. Make those pictures the background image of your phone. Stay motivated. Have an accountability partner. They will help you stay on task. If you cannot find anyone let the group know and we can try to help you find one.

Lastly, share your journey with us and others. Your success will be motivation for someone else. Also share your hurdles and roadblocks. Someone else may have advice to help you through your challenge. And now there is nothing left but to do it. We can and we will do it. We will save! We will meet and exceed our goals.

To find out how we are doing with this challenge read this article

No Eating Out, 30 Days into a 60 Day Challenge.

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