The thing about the whole saving money thing is that it is not just saving money for the sake of saving it. We save money in order that we can have some to spend on things we would like. Each person has his or her areas that they prefer to spend their money on. For some people it is clothes, others really like traveling, and some like to golf. For my wife and I it is eating out.
Eating out is a bad investment
Financially speaking, eating out is a bad investment. It costs a lot more than making food at home, and that is why we have worked hard to discipline ourselves not to do it very often. The beauty of this is that we actually enjoy it more since we don’t go out to dinner every other day, or even every week. Even the fun things in life can become boring when you do them everyday.
Tools to help save money when eating out
Since going out to dinner is something that we love to do, we work to find ways to make it possible. One of the best tools we have found has been the Entertainment Book. I believe they are sold in every major city in the U.S. – if not, you are missing out! 
The Entertainment Book
The Entertainment Book is filled with coupons for any and every kind of restaurant, grocery store, movie theaters, dry-cleaners, and a bunch more. Most of the coupons for restaurants offer buy-one-get-one-free meals. This almost cuts our bill in half. Saving this much money makes it a lot easier to justify going out to eat!
Another great thing about this book is that since a lot of the restaurants are smaller “mom-and-pop” type places or new ones it helps to try out restaurants that we otherwise might not have known about.
Restaurant.com
You should also consider Restaurant.com who sells $25 gift certificates (with restrictions) for $10 to thousands of restaurants across the country.
Do you have any tips on how you save money eating out?
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One of the things that we have done in to put together a list of the days of the week and the restaraunts that have “kids night”. Most have low to free food for kids under a certain age.
Another advantage of this is that there are less crowds. Why? Because most of the kids nights fall between Sunday to Thursday, while most of the crowds hit restaraunts on Friday’s and Saturday’s.
Sign up for birthday/anniversary clubs! Everywhere from expensive places like the Melting Pot to fast food places like Arbys have clubs where you can have free food on special events, and sometimes you’ll receive coupons at other times as well.
We have been eating out much less as well. We actually got take out food today, as it was a time issue. I ended up spending $45.00 for take out, and quite honestly, I felt ripped off! Since I have begun keeping track of my money, and really paying attention, I look for maximum value when I spend money. I just didn’t feel that I got it today. Lessons learned.
@Mama
Good idea – I have never really done that, but why not sign up?
The entertainment book is great. Not just for restaurants but they have deals for events, entertainments, etc. Restaurants.com has good deals as well although not as many restaurants are on it. Do you feel that is because of the economy right now?
Craig
Great ideas! Very interesting website!
Pascale
Great ideas!
I recently wrote an article on my blog about Restaurant.com. After a bit of research, I found that a number of Restaurant.com users were dissatisfied with it, because the restrictions were unusually excessive, and in some cases, not clearly defined to the purchaser prior to the purchase.
Occasionally, though, Restaurant.com offers bonus codes that allow you to purchase the gift cards at a deeper discount than normal, sometimes as much as 80% off. Getting a $25 gift card for as little as $2 or $3 really takes the sting out of the inconvenient restrictions.
-Callie Lorentson