Personal Finance Challenge - June - Reduce Your Eating Out Budget
Welcome to the Living That Debt Free Life 2019 Personal Finance Challenge!
If you are new to budgeting, paying off debt, and managing your finances, you’ve come to the right place! I’ve compiled 12 monthly challenges to get your 2019 financially on track.
Each monthly challenge contains one of the many steps I’ve taken to help me pay off debt faster.
If you’ve been paying off debt for a while, the information in these challenges is probably nothing new to you.
But, if you’re one of the hundreds who ask me each month how I’ve managed to pay off so much debt, then this is going to be so helpful to you!
The challenge is completely free to join! Each month, we’ll complete the challenge together and chat about it here on the blog in the comments down below and on Instagram.
I’ll announce each monthly challenge here on the blog and on my Instagram Page.
If you are participating, please feel free to leave a comment down below and let me know how it’s going! And, be sure to tag your challenge-related IG photos with #TDFL2019Challenge, so I can find you and cheer you on!!
For all the monthly challenges, click HERE.
Prior Monthly Challenges
If you have done the rest of these monthly challenges, then you have tracked your expenses, made a zero-based budget, and eliminated one recurring expense from your budget. You’ve also tried using cash envelopes to keep yourself in budget and going 15 days out of the month without spending!
If you haven’t done the previous month’s challenges, that’s ok. You can complete these challenges at any time. If you want to, complete the January, February, March, April, and May challenges first, before forging ahead to June.
Ready to get started? Here’s this month’s challenge!
June 2019 - Reduce Your Eating Out Budget
This month’s challenge is to reduce your food budget—specifically, your eating out budget.
If you are one of those true die hard Dave Ramsey fans who “hasn’t seen the inside of a restaurant unless you’re working there,” mad props to you—this challenge will be a breeze.
But, if you’re on a debt free journey that will take a long time (3 years like me!) and the idea of not eating out for 3 entire years seems a bit impossible, then welcome to my world!
Here are a few ideas to complete this month’s challenge. Pick one that you’re most comfortable with, and tackle this month’s challenge!
OPTION ONE - No Eating Out at All. For those truly committed to this challenge, do not eat out at all in June.
That’s right no eating out whatsoever.
Pack your lunch, meal plan, cook at home, and save all that money.
If you’ve done my prior challenges, you should know, on average, how much you or your family spends on eating out. Imagine if someone handed you that amount of money and said “I’ll pay you $200 (or whatever you normally spend) if you don’t eat out all month. Think you could do it? Think of all the money you will save if you really commit to this challenge! Add that money to savings to get to your $1,000 starter emergency fund faster. Or throw it at debt, if you’re already in baby step 2!
Don’t know what Baby Step 2 is? See below!
OPTION TWO - Pack Your Lunch Everyday. If cutting out ALL eating out seems too difficult a task to complete, limit yourself to lunches.
Every single day this month, commit to packing your lunch.
Even if you don’t work outside the home, commit to not eating out for your lunches for the entire month. If the average lunch out costs $10 and you eat out daily, that’s $200 in your pocket this month. Even if you only eat out once a week, that’s $40 extra to send to savings or debt. And trust me, every single penny adds up!
OPTION THREE - Reduce Your Eating Out Budget By 50%. If you’ve tracked your expenses before or have consistently been making a zero-based budget, you have a pretty good idea of what you normally spend on eating out in any given month.
If that’s the case, then one option for this month’s challenge is to reduce that budget by 50%. That’s right. Slash it in half.
So which one of these are you going to do?! Tell me in the comments below or over on Instagram.
Don’t forget to tag your social media photos with #TDFL2019Challenge!! I want to encourage you and cheer you on this month! I want to see those home-cooked meals and see you brown bagging it!
Then meet me back here next month for July’s challenge! Good luck, everyone!! You’ve got this!!
Oh! And, as always for bonus points, complete January’s Challenge and February’s Challenge, again this month, in connection with June’s challenge. That’s what I’m going to do!
