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I’d decided to challenge myself to eat out no more than twice a week for a total of $120 or less in January. 11 days into the challenge, here’s how I’m doing: not so well.

Money-wise, things are going fine. I’m at a total spending of $20.91 on eating out, thanks to a gift card. It’s the 2 times per week requirement that’s tripping me up. I did great the first week, but over the last 4 days I’ve eaten out 3 times, not including a time at work when I had to either eat out or not eat at all for 16 hours. I’ll likely eat out again before the week is up.

I realized yesterday that I wouldn’t have done this challenge if I’d thought about it more in the first place, because it’s like a diet. I don’t do diets. Generally speaking, they focus on what you’re NOT doing (not eating the chocolate cake, leaving off the dressing on your salad, etc) and on deprivation. Believe me, I’m not about deprivation or avoiding things that I like. So diets are out for me, but I DO want to eat healthier and I DO want to have more money to put toward savings.

So I think I need to refocus on what I do want. The whole challenge sounds much more appealing phrased as “I want to eat out twice a week and have an extra $50 to put toward savings this month”.

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