Frugal Green Living: Eating Out on Special Occasions

We are trying to live a frugal lifestyle, and limit our eating out to the occasional lunch. But then a dear friend invites us to join her in a restaurant for dinner last night, and we certainly were not going to say no. But what is the best way to handle such things?

The first rule would have to be: Do everything in moderation. But we are the first to arrive, and when the count is up to four, I order a bottle of wine (the cheapest, but so much for being a Weekday Teetotalitarian), on the assumption that my obligation in the alcohol department will end there.

The next step might have been to order a pasta as a less expensive, and more filling dinner; I didn't, but that wasn't my real problem in the evening; when you are dividing up a bill, what the other people do can really affect you. So when others start ordering bottles of Cava (a Spanish sparking wine, cheaper than Champagne) you look awfully rude if you drink some but don't pick up your share of the bill.

On the day after, I searched around some of the other frugal sites to see how they deal with Restaurants, and of course Trent at the Simple Dollar had the most sensible recommendations:

1. Drink a lot of water before you go. It fills you up and keeps you from ordering too much food.

2. Order something inexpensive but filling. My wife ordered a pasta; I ordered a bouillabaisse. Her meal cost a third less and I was still hungry.

3. Enjoy the company. When you are talking, you are not eating.

4. Drink more water. Trent says it not only fills you up, it cleans the palate and makes the food taste better.

When I do this again, I will try to maintain my goal of being a Weekday Teetotalitarian; had I not drunk any of the Cava I could have avoided contributing to it. But then I kept remembering John Maynard Keynes' last words and biggest regret: "I should have drunk more champagne."

Read the whole series to learn more about Frugal Green Living.