Happy Ash Wednesday, friends! As some of you may remember from last year, I participate in the yearly tradition of Lent (in fact, Lent is actually what inspired this blog). This year I somehow managed to rope KC into participating with me (despite the fact that he wasn’t raised Catholic. He’s really missing out on some sweet, sweet guilt). I think the kicker was that my Lentolution involves saving money, and KC has been trying to tie me down with a budget for years. YEARS! Or months. Whatever. It feels like years.
This year for Lent, we’ve decided to limit going out to eat. This challenge came about because a. we’re trying to be better about a budget, and b. we (meaning: mostly me and a little bit of KC) love to go out to eat. Especially on weekends. I generally try to cook during the week and bring my lunch to work, but I like to take weekends off. I especially like to not cook and have KC take me out to a big, fancy meal, complete with cocktails and dessert. But, y’know, that’s a pricey little evening. So, I figure we can suck it up and try to get creative with weekend meals for 40 days. I’m hoping that eating in during the weekends will inspire me to make some new dishes (since I won’t be dead tired from working all day). I also hope it will spark some together-time in the kitchen (as I plan to rope KC into cooking for/with me — we’re in this together, right?) Maybe it will even create a few dinner parties with friends over the coming weeks (potluck, anyone?)
Here are the rules:
- We’re allowed one lunch out during the work week. If someone else pays, it doesn’t count.
- We’re allowed one dinner and one lunch out on the weekend; however, we will be working to limit this to only one meal (or zero meals) out per weekend.
- We’re allowed to buy coffee once during the work week and once on weekends.
- Going out for drinks doesn’t count (because, y’know, sanity.)
- If we use a gift card, it doesn’t count unless we spend any money over what’s on the gift card. (Which means, it’ll probably always count. Wah.)
Are you participating in Lent? What are you resolving to do/give up this Lent?
I love this idea. We don’t do Lent (and as someone who was raised Catholic, I still feel guilty about not doing it, even though I no longer consider myself a practicing Catholic. Funny how that works …), but were going to sit down and finally nail down a for-reals adult budget this weekend, after putting that conversation off for the past year. I think this might be a great way to really cut down on weekend and weekday food expenses without being totally insane and expecting ourselves to never eat out. We were also thinking of capping the total monthly budget for eating out at a certain amount so it encourages us to balance the fancy pants dinners out with cheaper options for other dinners/lunches out. We’ll see how it goes!