Hello, everyone! The first week of October has already passed. Isn't that crazy? I feel like I somehow fastforwarded to October from the beginning of January. It feels surreal to me that 2018 will be over in only 3 months. 3 MONTHS.
I want to manage my time better and improve my productivity on the things I desire to accomplish this year. One of them, as you guys all know, is my financial independence.
As you can see from my last month's expense history, I spent a lot of money on food for eating out so this week, I tried my best not to spend any money on eating out. I was successful! Except for one purchase of a Chik-fil-a spicy chicken burger (yum!).
How did I do it? Here are my tips.
1. Plan out what I'm going to eat for the next day. I know I sound like a broken record (meal prep, meal prep, meal prep). However, it does work. I made my own adjustment to this golden rule because I am the type of person who likes to eat what I want and have no idea what I would like to eat on the coming Thursday if it's Monday. Because of that, I made a rule where I plan out one day ahead. I can go grocery shopping more often than before so I will grab things I would like to eat.
2. Make cooking times as short as possible or as easy as possible. I find that I am willing to cook more when it's simple and easy. Now remember, I am just starting to "adult", so my cooking skills aren't honed to the point where I can minimize my cooking times to the max. Unlike pro adults out there, I take a long time to cook a lot of my favorite dishes. So I tend to stick to things I know how to cook quickly.
3. If all else fails, I go to prepped meals at grocery stores. Trader Joe's has a great selection of prepped meals at the cost of $5. Yes, it is usually more expensive than you buying food and cooking but it's a lot cheaper than eating out. Even McDonald's set menus cost around $9 these days. So it will be a win to get prepped meals (which are so much more delicious than McDonald's although I love their fries).
This past week was such a proud accomplishment of mine since I have been struggling so hard to cut down on eating out. I am planning to keep up with this for all of October and then improve on my cooking in November. Cheers!
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