We eat out way too much. I have $140 a week set aside for groceries and eating out, for three people, which pretty much comes to $600 a month. We blow that regularly when we're too busy to cook.

When my older kids were still here, we spent less on eating out and more on groceries, and we cooked more, for about the same money. While our budget hasn't grown any, with fewer mouths to feed, I don't clip coupons anymore and I don't try new things. I pretty much buy what I want, name brands, and I hardly ever look at prices. I figure I've done my due diligence when I had a houseful of kids, and since it's not my favorite thing to do, someone else in the house can worry about it, if that's what they want to do. I just don't care anymore. I save money in other ways, though, like using a credit card that gets me airline tickets and paying it off every month. I also try to drive as little as possible, especially since I got the Element which gets half the mileage as my Beetle did (still put 42,000 miles on it in the first year of owning it, though!)

Of course, if we were in a financial crunch, we'd be eating beans and hamburger again in a heartbeat.

Karen