My husband and I don’t have many major vices. We don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, but we do have one consistent decadence: ordering takeout and delivery.
The luxury of ordering from any restaurant we want instead of cooking is one that we indulge in regularly. After all, my husband works full time, I handle our home and schooling for our teens, and I live with a chronic illness that zaps the rest of my energy. So, a night free from cooking is always a much-needed win.
However, we recently noticed that our spending had gotten extreme. At the beginning of the year, we were ordering dinner to be delivered several days a week. By March, we were ordering in for lunch most days, too. Come April, I realized we hadn’t cooked anything more substantial than frozen pizza in our kitchen since February. Looking at our bank statement, I worked out that all this liberal spending was starting to add up to big bucks.
When I saw the total amount spent, the wasted expenses were sickening. In April alone, we spent $2,500 through a single delivery service. To put that into perspective, our monthly mortgage is only $1,500. We were spending $1,000 more than our house payment on delivered food. The realization was shameful and more than a little embarrassing. Something had to change.
How we got into this mess
Having three teenagers already means accommodating their never-ending appetites, but we also have an issue with pickiness. Two of our three kids are exceedingly choosy about what they will and won’t eat, making planning for shared meals more complicated. Ordering food to be delivered seemed like the quick fix to that problem, but it really just created more trouble.
Instead of ordering from one restaurant for everyone, we began ordering from multiple places per day to keep the kids happy. But they began to expect this accommodation regularly, adding more cost to each meal.
The other contributor to our food delivery weakness was the effort needed to cook meals regularly. As I mentioned, my husband works full time as a network operations manager for a local school district. He manages a team of 14 employees and oversees the network for about 70 campuses. It goes without saying that he’s pretty tired by the end of the day.
While I don’t have a typical 9-5 job, I do write freelance, which can be time-consuming when I’m on deadline. I’m also in charge of education for my two high school students and handle daily after-school pick-up and extracurriculars.
On top of these responsibilities, I also have fibromyalgia, a chronic pain and fatigue disease. Affecting my body and mind, it sometimes minimizes my ability to do something as basic as cook dinner for my family.
We devised new solutions for savings
After I told my husband the truth about our food delivery spending, we devised a plan to eliminate the waste.
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First, we talked to our kids about cutting back on food delivery and refocusing on cooking at home. We set new rules around when we could and couldn’t order. We eliminated delivery orders for desserts and after-school snacks. We would no longer be allowed to order from multiple places for one meal.
We had to cook dinner on the weekdays, with the exception of Mondays, to accommodate our extracurricular schedule. We could also choose one day during the weekend to order food, as long as we followed the other rules.
To make dinner prep less of a chore, we began planning menus a week out. This allowed the kids to decide on alternatives for days when they didn’t like family dinner and helped simplify grocery shopping.
Additionally, we added alternatives such as pre-made meals, salads, sandwiches, and frozen entrées to our fridge and freezer spaces, so having no food at home wouldn’t be used as an excuse.
We’ve only been trying this new spending habit since the start of May, but in the first few weeks, our total spending was under $400. It’s a massive improvement over $2,500 a month, and as long as we follow our rules, we’re guaranteed to save even more.
