Episode 111 - Enjoying Restaurants without Financial Regret

Eating out can be a gift—or a source of quiet financial regret, especially during the busy Advent and Christmas season. In this practical episode, Paul shares how couples and families can enjoy restaurants, takeout, and celebrations while staying aligned with their budget, priorities, and long-term goals. You’ll hear real-life examples, creative ways to find deals, and a reminder that intentional planning today protects your peace in January. 

Transcript

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Paul, Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance, and we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host. Paul Scarfone, thank you for being here today. Welcome back to Catholic money talk, and we are right in the middle of Advent. Here today, I want to talk about enjoying restaurants without financial regret. What this time of year? I think people tend to dine out. Maybe have dinner parties that they go to participate in meet friends, to celebrate Christmas, New Year's whatever, whatever it might be. But this isn't the only time we might go to restaurants. We will go all year round, but in particular, in this season, we want to pause and just double check our decision making on some of these things to see how all of this fits into the overall plan. So that's why I want to talk about this today, enjoying restaurants without financial regret. But before we do that, let's say a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for all the ways that you love and bless us. Lord, we know that you have an awesome plan for us. Allow us to respond to your Holy Spirit. Allow us to yield to your Holy Spirit. Allow us to be quiet, to be peaceful, to be able to wait and listen for your direction. Lord, just fill us with joy and hope in this season, no matter what situation we might find ourselves in, Lord, let us remember that you are faithful and that you have an awesome plan. Thank you for your faithfulness. Lord, give us a great sense of gratitude for all that you've done and all that you're doing, and help us to draw close to you in a particular way. This Advent season, we ask this all in Jesus name, amen, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen so enjoying restaurants without financial regret, right? How couples, singles, individuals, families, can enjoy meals out, right? Enjoy meals out while staying true with your financial goals, with your financial plan. So why does this topic matter? Well, let me, let me start by just kind of framing the question, or the or the situation. You know, eating out is one of the most common budget leak points. We'll say, could be wasteful money or not, but just it can be a drain on the budget for families. It's also, it's also one of the ways I think that many of us might celebrate, or maybe we rest, or maybe we make connections or build relationships, right? So there's meaningful things that may be dining out or even ordering out right the nights when we don't have to cook, we can have something maybe a little nicer than we'd normally make for ourselves. So it's important, and it can be very meaningful, and so and so my idea, my thought, as I work with people, and we talk about these things, and we've talked about it here, but eating out should be a planned joy, right? Should be something we're excited and looking forward to, and we get to do. We don't want it to be a financial regret, right? And there's so many decisions made, maybe in haste or with poor judgment or not being prudent, that can end in financial regret. We don't want that to be we want eating out and being able to go to a restaurant with our family, our loved ones or friends, is something we can plan. So it needs to be intentional. It needs to to support our life. And one way that a decision supports our life is that it fits within our priorities. But when it's reactive or unintentional, it can quietly erode the margin of our financial situation. Right our the erode the margin of our financial life, right? Our money, it just goes away. So, so here's the question, how do we enjoy restaurants, coffee shops take out without sabotaging the goals that we've already prayerfully discerned? Okay? And there was man episode years ago, I remember I said something about like we don't have to prayerfully discern what, what entree we're picking, right, whether we're going with the hot dog or the steak, right? We prayerfully discerned within the budget, like to have money to go eat out, so we just got to stick within the budget, right? This should be the easy part. So that's why this matters. So here's, here's a question like, can we actually afford to eat out? That's an important question to ask, and it's not, it's not just, do we have money? Because we do have money, right? If you're making money, you have money, but it's, are we using it for what it should? Be spent for. And here's the challenges, here's some obstacles that might get in front of us. We don't want to just, we don't want to just justify it, right? We don't want to make excuses to spend the money, right? Well, everybody's going out, so I have to go with them. Right? Everybody's doing it. It's, it's the Christmas season. It's the, I hate it the holiday season. I don't like saying holiday season. But you know all those reasons people say we're on vacation, I'm doing air quotes here, right? When are we ever going to be here again? This is our favorite place. Come on, live a little. You only live once, right? All these little things we say to make an excuse, right? Any of these kind of excuses we make, we're saying them right before a poor financial decision, right? We're trying to justify a poor decision, financial decision. So does this fit in our priorities right now? That's why it's important to have priorities. My coaching practice, I call it dollar wise, and it's not W, i, s, e, it's W, h, y, s is because we need to have a good enough, why we need to have a big enough, why? I had a podcast episode a few weeks ago called start with why it had been a few months ago now, but you need to have a big enough why to be able to challenge your behavior or to stay on track. And so having priorities makes you like. Creating priorities makes you answer the question, why? So those are the challenges, right? If we don't have priorities, this is going to be really tough to do. If we're full of excuses, this is going to be really tough to do. Right? To be able to go enjoy things eating out, like a restaurant, or doing takeout or something like that, it's going to be hard to do those things without having financial regret. So here's a couple practical checkpoints. Is eating out already in your budget, is in your budget? If it's in your budget, great. And sometimes it might not be in your budget, like eat out to this restaurant. Let me give you an example for Taryn and I, we're in Christmas season here, and so we have a budget related to Christmas season. What's in that budget? Well, there's gift giving. There's also some extra food money, like groceries, or if we're hosting things, to have a few dollars extra to do things with. There's also some experience stuff. So we go in, we cut down our own Christmas tree, and we take the kids out to lunch. After we do that, that's all within that budget that we we create, right? And so that's with all areas of life. We have these budgets. And so within that budget we can do things. So for eating out, for Tara and I, for example, we have, we call it a line item in our budget. It's called date nights. And what does that include? Well, that includes me and Taryn spending time alone at least once a week, that's our goal, to have time to date each other. Still within our marriage of 22 years, 22 plus years, we still love spending time with each other. Want to date each other, so every week we want to go on a date. Sometimes, many times, most times that's actually going to a restaurant and having dinner together, alone, just us, and it's wonderful. Sometimes we might not have the time, or maybe the money, to actually go out to dinner, so we might use that time and go do some other task. We've done grocery shopping, right? We've done trips to other you know, errands, whatever it might be together, it's just us. The kids aren't around. We're able to just talk to each other about each other. It's not our family business meeting, it's not the budget planning meeting. It's just like, Hey, honey, I love you. What's going on in your life? You know? It gives us a little chance to do that intentional time to spend with each other. So within our date night budget, sometimes that's going out to eat, to give you an example, if there's something so that budget, typically every month for us is about $250 okay, so if you do the math, if there's four weeks, that's about$60 a date night. Now we've been known to go to a nice restaurant and get a nice dinner and tax and tip and everything all done. It might be 100 or $120 in one night. And some of you listening this might go, Wow, that's so much money. And others might think like, well, that's nothing we spend that, you know, double that, or whatever. It all depends on where you go, right? And this isn't a judgment thing of but that's just that's for us. So if we do that, if we use up half of our budget one time in a month, well that means the next time it's got to look differently, right? And there's been times where we'll go and get take. Out, you know, inexpensive takeout, and bring it back to the house and eat it while the kids watch a movie in the living room or something, just to get that time space. So, but the key is, it's got to be in the budget. And so you have to make room and understand what your budget is for that for the different things you want to do. So is it in your budget? The other things, the other checkpoints, is, if you're in, like, high interest debt, like out of control debt, if you've got medical bills piling up, if you've got your power about to get shut off, your home about to be repossessed, things like that, you should not be paying to go to a restaurant like that's just irresponsible, right? And when, when there's a proper order to money, and the first thing you do is your four walls. That's food which is not eating out. It's basic groceries for your family to survive, food, shelter, utilities and transportation to work, if those things aren't paid for and in line. And then debt, like your obligations that you've given your word for to pay, if those, if you're not doing those things, then you don't have any money to go out to eat or to do takeout. You don't you can't afford it. You're broke. All right, so these are checkpoints. Is it in your budget? Are you carrying high interest debt, or are you in a season of financial strain or rebuilding like you shouldn't be going out to eat? If those are you. And then take into account if there's upcoming expenses that you'd prefer to use that money for, right? That's That's what keeps you away from those poor excuses. Well, you only live once. We're on vacation, like if you're thinking about the other things that are you know, in your maybe not too distant future that you want to have money for. Then don't impulse on eating out and stuff. So you want to have those checkpoints, right? Is it? It's already in your budget. You're carrying some kind of high interest rate debt. Are you in a stressed financial season of your life? Or there's some other upcoming expenses that money should be used for, all right? And you got to remember eating out, getting food from a restaurant, is a discretionary expense. It's a want, so it doesn't mean you deserve it, or you get it all the time, right? If you can afford it, then it's sometimes, it's strategically and it's seasonally, right, depending on what it is and and if eating out creates stress afterwards, like, then it's probably too frequent, or it's probably too unplanned, right? Your piece is a better indication than permission to go eat out. All right? Clarify the question, that's all the can we actually afford it out? Right? So let's say, let's say you can afford to eat out. Well, then you got to put it in the budget, right? So make a monthly dining out, or it could be dining in. You know, if you're going to do takeout, that can be cheaper because you don't have a tip potentially. So put it in the budget and then decide, are we talking about like a coffee, a casual meal, a sit down restaurant, and is it going to be special occasions or regular habits? And again, this season, this Christmas season, you want to know, like, if we're we told these people we're going to meet them halfway. They're not going to travel all the way to us. We're not going to travel all the way to them. We're going to find something in the middle and meet do some research, figure out what stuff costs. My wife, Taryn, she is awesome at saving money and finding deals. All right, so let me give you a couple couple quick deals. One thing she's found is certain places over, you know, throughout the years, different times they'll have different programs where maybe there's a certain night of the week, like a Tuesday night or Wednesday night, which aren't big dining out nights that the restaurants local places will have promotions. Sometimes it might be a buy one, get one free type of entree. There's one by us that's on, I think it's Tuesday nights. Is like, buy one, get one free. Or Wednesday nights, buy one, get one free chicken entree. That's awesome. It's really nice restaurant. Entrees are like 28 to $32 so the fact that you can both go have a really nice meal for like, $32 you know, you can bring your own bottle of wine or something, and you pay your tax and tip, and you're out of there for like, 50 bucks. That's fantastic, right? So, there's finding those deals and solutions. There's other places they might have. You know, particular type of Taco Tuesday. I'm just thinking of promotions and things I've seen that maybe you want to take advantage of. So look for deals. The other thing that I found too restaurants. And sometimes I'll do this, there's restaurants that will sometimes give a cash discount. So if you're paying with cash, you'll save money. Sometimes it's 3% or 4% other times they've been deals. I remember years ago, there was a pizzeria by us. It was like, Fridays had like, $5 pizzas, which is crazy, but you had to pay cash. And I think there might have been a limit, like, you know, order up to two or three pizzas or whatever, but we used to do that regularly after. Work, on my way home, I'd pick up a pizza for dinner, and it was like $5 like it was great. So look for deals. And of course, there's Groupons and coupons and all these things that you can you can find, but those things will help alleviate the weight of the financial cost of going out to eat. So look for those things. And that's where, like, knowing the special occasions and events and deals and stuff locally is going to help you. And so you need to decide how much you can spend before you you go someplace, right? If you only have $30 in the budget. Tara and I, we've, you know, went out to eat a certain place, went out somewhere else, went out somewhere else. We're in that fourth week of the budget. We have $20 or $30 left. That's gonna limit where we can go, okay? And then also just decide the frequency, right, when we were in debt and we're trying to pay off our debt, we didn't go out to eat, like, I don't think at all, basically, or We'd only go to really, really significant, cheap places if we made the debt, the dent in our debt that we had wanted to do that month, right? So literally, we needed to have uncovered extra money in a couple places to be able to go on date night. But when we came up be Christmas or my birthday or something, and people, friends, mothers, mother in laws, if they're like, Hey, can we get you guys something for your anniversary? It's like, yeah, we'll take a gift card to Applebee's like, so we can get out to dinner, right? Like we would do those type and get those things, and it was fun. We sort through the gift cards we have and be like, hey, we'll go out to dinner at this place tonight. All right? So you know, understanding what you can afford and where you can go is important to doing this. And then the frequency. You might decide that date night isn't a once a week thing, maybe it's every other week thing. Or, you know how often you can go out to eat? Maybe we can only go out once a once a month. Me and my wife, we've discovered just simple math, that it's so much cheaper for just her and I to go out to eat than bringing the entire family. And by the way, it's more enjoyable for us to just be by ourselves than with all of our six children with us. One, it would be very, very expensive, and two, in a loud restaurant, like, it's hard to have a good conversation with the entire family at the table. Like it can just be challenging to do that. So understanding how much and the frequency is important, and it should be like a joint decision, right? We don't want someone to say, Oh, we always go to the restaurants you want. Or, you know, you always get coffee on the road, you know, you always stop for coffee. I never get to stop for coffee. Or, you know, we want to have good, good decisions. So here's, here's why some of this is important. I'm going to give you an example. I have a few examples here that I want to talk about to help you when you're whether it's a regular date night or taking the dinner the family out for dinner, or meeting friends for dinner for a special occasion, like Christmas season, which we're in. Like, here's just some examples that we've done that have worked really well. And I have have one from clients once that I will, I will share here. I was working with this couple, and they had, you know, usually, before we meet for the first time, we'll usually talk about what their hopes and dreams are, and after that conversation, they'll usually determine if we'll both determine if we feel like this would be a good fit. And so we did that, and then their homework is, send me a budget. Send me their budget, all their monthly expenses and kind of like their personal financial statement, their personal balance sheet, like, let me just see the whole financial picture, because I don't want them paying me while I'm collecting all this data. Right? That can get very boring and expensive for them. So they sent me their budget before our first coaching meeting. And one of the things that jumped out at me was they spent $3,000 on eating out in the month. And their conversation with me was they were trying to save to buy a house, and they didn't know where they could get you know how they were ever going to be able to buy a house in New Jersey when it's so hard to save money because everything's so expensive, and so our first meeting, I said, Hey guys, I went through your budget. Like, is there anything that jumps out at you that you feel you could change in order to create some, you know, excess cash to put towards your goals? And we're going line item by line, and we get to kind of food and eating out and groceries now, like, No, we need to eat. We need to eat. They just keep rolling. And, you know, we go through the whole budget. I said, Really, just anything jump out at you? And they said, Well, I, you know, and they're looking through again. They say, Well, I don't know. Like, what do other people spend in some of these categories? Like, are we out of line in some of them? I said, Well, you know, let's look at eating out. Like, that seems a little high. Like, how often do you guys eat out? And they said rarely, most of its takeout, and it's almost every night. I was like, Oh, that makes so much sense for how much it is, right? Like, it's almost every night. It's why they just talked about how, with both of them working, I. Don't think they, yeah, they didn't have any children. It was just hard to be able to get home and make something, and it was exhausting to, like, have to work all day and come home and make something. And I said, guys, it's exhausting saving for a house like, which, which one's going to be more exhausting, right? And as we talked about it, more and more, they quickly identified there was great opportunity to reduce that, right? I mean, $3,000 to me, that was shocking, how much money that was, right, if you break but if you think about if it's every day, it's like, okay, like 100 bucks. I mean, I mean 100 bucks a day. Sound, does sound crazy? Like, what? What are you getting? Right? That that is a lot of money so, and that might have been just that one month that they included in there, but it was, it was high all their other months it was high. It was something we're constantly talking about, but that's where they just they hadn't had a budget, right? When I was asked them to put it on paper, was the first time they really got to look at it. So they didn't have a budget. And so when you don't have a plan, it just gets messed gets messy. And messy gets expensive. I say that a lot messy gets expensive. So that's just a great example. So what are some ways that we can kind of help? I mentioned looking for deals. So for regular date nights, like finding local deals is really key. Sometimes, I know by us, there's Costco all promoted here. They'll have like, local restaurants for sale, like gift cards for sale in their store. I can think of one, like local Italian restaurant, really nice Italian restaurant. They'll sell$100 gift card at at Costco for 80 bucks. So right there, 20% off, right? And then you use that to go the restaurant. And, you know, make good choices there, and you save 20% so there's ways to find local deals. Use cash. Sometimes you can get a discount. Those are great for, like, the everyday things. But what about this Christmas season? You know, bigger dinner parties? I just I was overhearing someone at the store the other day talking. There's two people talking. One of them was saying how they were having 18 people, they were hosting 18 people, and they said, well, actually, we're not hosting we're actually going to a restaurant, but we had to pick it out. We had to organize everything. And I was thinking, wow, how expensive that's going to be like, did they? Did they plan it well? So I thought to share a couple stories that maybe could inspire you to plan well and think ahead. So the first was when Taryn and I, this is a long time ago, but you can just adjust the numbers, right? The behavior is the important part, not the numbers. We were having our rehearsal dinner, and we had to figure this out for ourselves. And there was a little seafood restaurant that we thought, oh, let's it was a big seafood restaurant. It's like, a big chain, but we liked it. We're like, Oh, let's see if they would do our rehearsal dinner. So we went there and they said, Oh yeah, we'll host, like, private dinners. And, like, it's, it's this much money and that much money. We're like, well, we have to pay for this. That seems very, very expensive. We see that on your menu you do have. And reason why we went there they had $10 items, like$10 entree, items like, we have about 30 people coming, like that. And they said, We they couldn't take a reservation for 30 people unless we were going to do a banquet. I said, Well, we will, but we want to stick it the menu just to the $10 menu. And after speaking with them, they were more than happy to host us. They I think, if my memory serves me correctly, we might have gone to dinner before we went to the church to rehearse, because they it was a Friday or it was a Saturday night. Thing was a Saturday night, and they wanted us to come and have an early seating in order to give us that deal, because they knew their restaurant wasn't going to be full anyway at that time. That time. And we did it. We did it, right? It was $10 a person. We had 30 people, and everyone was on their own, right? It was like a cash bar. If they wanted a drink, they had to go pay for it. They included, like, pitchers of soda for us or whatever. It was great, right? But it would took a little work and prep and talk and negotiating to try to get that good deal, and then years later, years later, right when our youngest daughter was born, we were trying to figure out how to host a party after her baptism, our home wouldn't be able to hold everybody, and we couldn't find a place. We were getting married. We were doing the baptism at a small chapel. Wasn't like a church hall, a regular parish church that has a hall. So we went to a local little barbecue place that we love, that's mostly does take out and have this tiny little dining room area, not tiny, but small dining room area that there was like never anybody in there. And so I asked the guy, I said, hey, could we have a party here after my daughter's baptism on a Sunday morning, and he said, Oh yeah, here we have a banquet menu. And I'm like, I'm not gonna do banquet menus. Like, we don't have money for that. But if you had, like, all of a sudden, sat your whole dining room and everyone was just ordering, like, chicken meals, and you had the whole dining room full for two hours. Like, wouldn't you sign up for. That, like, wouldn't that be a good business day on a Sunday, you know, late morning, and he was like, Look, if you can pay cash, if you gave me all these things, and we were happy to do it, right, we're happy to do it and and so I forget what it was, but we saved a lot of money, right? I think we ended up paying like, three or $400 for like, 40 or 50 people to eat, where originally he was giving us a menu for like 19 something a person, plus tax and tip. Instead, we're all out for like three or 400 bucks. So, you know, finding ways to really host things. I understand around Christmas time, there's just more competition for for stuff, but finding times, whether it be a midday, a brunch, just an off hour, maybe an early seating, or a really late seating, not going for the prime time to save some money. And if you're part of a group, right, maybe you're meeting you know six other people, and so you're not the one that's necessarily picking or calling the shots, but to be able to speak up and say, hey, look, I'm, you know, trying to still stay within my financial goals this year. What if we do an earlier sitting What if we go to this restaurant they have, you know, a great happy hour special that we can get, you know, cheaper appetizers and stuff, instead of doing full dinner entrees, right? Like coming up with those ways, I promise you, when you offer good solutions that make sense for you, they also make sense for other people, and they'll be happy to do it. Right? I've told this before, but when we were trying to get out of debt, there'd be guys at the bank being like, Hey, we're going out to lunch. Like, you want to come and be like, Look, I'm trying to get out of debt right now. I don't have money for that. And they'd be like, Oh, I don't want to go to, I'm not going to go to, like, a restaurant eat lunch by myself, like, I'll pay for you. Like, you know what? I will take charity. I have no problem with that. So if there's some generous people in your life that have the means to be able to cover expenses, like, just understand that you're sticking to your priorities. And if that creates an opportunity for someone else to be generous towards you, just embrace it. It's not it's not like a contest, right? So, so that's my encouragement on all of this, right? So, enjoy restaurants, but don't let it come with financial regret, right? And it's so important, you know, celebrations and going out to eat and not having to do the dishes and cook the whole meal, they are important. Going out, like date nights, they build up. If it's you and your spouse, or maybe you're dating someone, you're trying to start a relationship or deepen one. Maybe it's with you, like a really good friend just trying to get some quality time. Maybe it's a guy's not a girl's night out, whatever it might be like, they're important. It's great. There's something about sharing a meal with people that's so good, but we want to make sure it's intentional and supports our life and supports our goals and falls within our priorities. We don't want it to erode the margin right our financial margin. We don't want it to allow our budget just to leak out that that way. We want to be intentional. Make good decisions. We want to understand how it fits into our budget, and so that means picking where we go and how much we have to spend. It means we're looking for deals and trying to find lower cost options and communicating with the people we're going out with, right that we're going to you know if, whether we're hosting it or splitting the bill or trying to arrange the time like speak up other people appreciate it, I promise. So in a particular way this Christmas season, just acknowledge the reality. December is loaded with some of this stuff, parties, travel, shopping, and don't fall into the trap of we deserve this or I deserve this. Is No, this is just, it's the only time we're going to get to know, be intentional and be truthful. All right? So decide advance how you're going to do this, right? That's that's important about having a plan, having your priorities, that you make sure this fits within them. Go for simple, right? It's not about how much you spend. It's about the time that you're spending with people. So maybe it's, you know, suggesting appetizers instead of entrees, maybe it's about grabbing coffee instead of lunch, and you should be able to say no without guilt, right? So staying on budget. It isn't restrictive, it's protective, and I promise you, January's peace is worth December's restraint. Okay? So it's about hospitality, it's about rest, it's about celebrations, about relationships. And you can enjoy food, enjoy people, but let your spending serve a mission. Don't let it compete with your mission, with your priorities of what the Lord's calling you to. So that's my encouragement. That's my little practical you know, sometimes I get into some of this deeper spiritual stuff, but today, this is just really practical. Enjoy restaurants, but do it without financial regret. I hope this has been helpful to you. Thank you for joining me today. God bless. Thank you. For listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe on your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. Foreign.