27 Easy Ways to Save Money by Not Eating Out in 2022

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Did you know that the average family spends 10% percent of their annual income on fast food?! That is a shocking statistic found here on Barbecuelab.com. But I’m honestly not that surprised.

Because eating out is quick and easy. It saves us time and gives us something delicious when we need food.

But it doesn’t save us money. Although most people think that fast food is cheaper, that’s simply a common misconception shared by many around country. Fast food is fast and convenient but it’s typically much more expensive than preparing a good meal at home.

Fast food companies have to make a profit to keep selling you fast food. So you’re going to pay more.

Thats why I wrote this post. Because fast food costs more and you need some help cutting expenses. I also wrote this post because I’ve been spending way too much money on fast food here lately. Some of these tips are just things I’ve looked up for myself. But I decided to build an ultimate list of ways to save money by not eating out. And this is it.

So today we’re going to look at the cost of fast food and help you find ways to cut it out of your life and your budget. In this post, we’re going to look at:

5 reasons why you need to save money on fast food

27 easy ways to save money by not eating out and…

A few ways to save money on other stuff including – gasoline, groceries, coffee, utilities, and 101 ways to creatively cut expenses.

Alright…let’s get to it!

5 Reasons to save money on fast food

It’s getting more expensive

I just mentioned how fast food companies have to make a profit. If they don’t, they go out of business. And now with rising costs due to insane inflation, business are having to pass those increased costs onto consumers. That means your fast food is going to cost even more!

It costs more than cooking at home

In all of my experience over the years with cooking and eating out, I’ve personally found that cooking at home is cheaper than eating out. Now obviously there are some other factors involved like cooking a steak dinner at home versus a $5 dollar meal at Taco Bell. Or a steak dinner out at a restaurant versus a cheap turkey sandwich at home. The costs couldn’t be more different. Apples and oranges, really.

However, cooking a steak dinner at home and buying a steak dinner at Outback Steakhouse are going to be similar in price. But normally, cooking a steak dinner at home is going to be cheaper overall. You will save money by making food at home, period.

It’s unhealthy

If you’re not counting the monetary cost, consider the cost on your health overall. The majority of fast food – probably 90% percent of it – is not good for you. Between the crappy quality of food, sodium content, and other unhealthy ingredients, home cooking can guarantee that you know exactly what’s in your food. With fast food, you don’t. And those ingredients are what cause obesity and heart disease.

You’re broke

If your finances are a wreck, you really need to start looking at all of your expenses. But for the sake of this post, start looking at fast food because it’s something that can easily be cut out if you just don’t eat it. If you’re broke, you need every penny you can find to turn your finances around.

You have financial goals

If you have financial goals, you’re going to want access to every spare dollar you can get your hands on to help you make progress toward those goals. And wasting away hundreds of dollars per month on fast food is just a dumb decision.

Let’s take a look at all of the ways to save money on fast food so that we can hit those goals as soon as possible.

27 Easy Ways to Save Money by Not Eating Out

Not eating out at all

1. Remove the temptation: there are many benefits to not eating out at all, but you must first stop eating out. To do that, simply remove the temptation out of your life completely. Here are a couple of ways you can do that:

Take different routes to and from work
Don’t drive past your favorite restaurants when you’re out doing errands
Always have food ready
Always pack lunch
Always keep snacks with you

So make sure you’re removing any temptation for fast food from your life. That makes it much easier to not eat out.

2. Meal plan: another easy way to avoid eating out is to make sure you’re planning out your meals EVERY DAY. I’m serious. I want you to print out a month calendar and write down meals you’re going to cook or eat for every single day of the month.

Right now, I want you to write out at least 15 meals that you can make – do that real quick.

Now plan those meals out on your calendar. Try to put 1 to 2 days of meals and then a day of leftovers. 1 to 2 days of meals again and then a day of leftovers.

Plan your meals like this:

Monday – Cooked chicken, mashed potatoes, and vegetables.
Tuesday – Tacos
Wednesday – Leftovers
Thursday – Steak, sweet potatoes, and broccoli
Friday – barbecue porkchops with mixed vegetables
Saturday – Crockpot chili
Sunday – Leftovers

So you can see how easy it is to plan this out. Once you have a list of meals, just put them on your calendar and stick to that calendar. Other leftovers can be taken to work for lunch as well.

3. Meal prep: meal prepping is simple to do but it does take a little bit of time. Meal prepping, or meal preparing, is making a bunch of food and making it into meals that you can eat for a few days to a week or longer. You make a bunch of food, organize it into meals in Tupperware containers, and you’re ready to rock and roll with all of those meals.

The key is to make at least two different meals to have enough to eat for at least 4-5 days. If you only prep food for 1-2 days at a time, you’re going to get tired of it.

Then take a couple of hours and make all of the food. Prep all of that food equally into containers and you’re good to go for a few days. That’s a REALLY easy way to avoid eating out. You’ve got food ready to eat at all times.

A good routine to get into could be meal prepping on Sunday night to have food for the whole week ahead!

4. Freeze your prepped food: one way to stretch out your meal prepping is to freeze your prepared meals. After meal prepping, you can leave a couple of meals in the fridge, but they will expire after a few days. So pop the rest of your meals into the freezer and you’ll be able to stretch out your meals to a week or longer.

Before my son was born, my wife prepped A LOT of food for us. She made really simple meals and put them in the freezer. It was a brilliant idea because we were able to eat on those meals for over a month!

5. Fancy stores and name brand food: now obviously you’ve got to get a bunch of food so that you can prep meals and make your planned dinners. That will help you save money on eating out but we all want to save even more money so let’s talk about saving money at the grocery store.

Two of the biggest things that cost people at the grocery store are the fancy stores they shop at and the name brand food they buy.

Skip the fancy grocery stores because they’re too expensive. Stores like Whole Foods and Harris Teeter are normally much more expensive than stores like Food Lion, Walmart, or Aldi. So save your money and shop at the cheaper stores. You’re getting the same food at a fraction of the cost.

At the cheaper, local grocery stores, try to get store brand items if possible. The store brand items are just as good, but heavily discounted.

6. Save more money at the grocery store: if you’re looking to save even more money at the grocery store, check out this post – “47 Tips and Tricks for Saving Money at the Grocery Store” – for more.

7. Crockpot meals and frozen dinners: next up, if you have a crockpot, you can do two things – make crockpot meals and crockpot frozen dinners. These kind of meals are simple and easy, but usually take 8-12 hours to cook. But the crockpot does the work so not a big deal.

Crockpot meals: these would include excellent family staples like chili and pot roast. Delicious meals that cost loss than $20 and can feed the family for at least two days.

Crockpot frozen dinners: these are meals that you put together with raw ingredients and place in a freezer bag for meals later on. You can just thaw them out and pop them in the crockpot for easy meals whenever you’re out of dinner ideas.

Those couple of ideas are awesome for helping you not eat out.

8. Get an Instant Pot: the Instant Pot hit its trend a few years back but can still offer you some great meals instead of eating out. This fancy gadget is an all-in-one cooker that allows you to cook foods in different ways, avoiding the kitchen mess of having multiple cooking devices. Instead, you have one awesome cooker – the Instant Pot.

Grab an Instant Pot here on Amazon and start cooking up some delicious food in just a couple of days!

9. Pack your lunch: one of the best ways that I’ve found to make sure I’m not eating out every day is to always pack my lunch. But not just packing my lunch. Making sure my lunch is packed, every night before work, and I’ve got enough food and snacks to get me through the whole work day.

The night before: around the time my son goes to bed, I start packing my lunch for the next day. I usually make my breakfast the next morning and eat that on my way in to work. I’ll eat a snack about an hour and a half later (930am) and maybe another at about 11am. I eat my lunch at 1230pm and hit the gym at 130. I eat a small meal at about 315 and won’t eat again until dinner.

So when I pack my lunch, I pack exactly what I need and a little bit more if possible. I can use extra food in my next day’s lunch. Think about what you need in your lunch every day.

Snacks: take more snacks than you need. Pack whatever meals you need and a few snacks that you can eat.

I pack 2 meals and about 4 snacks. I always snack more because I’ll get a headache if I don’t. But if you can get by on less, go for it. I would encourage you to only pack as much as you need so you’re not overeating or wasting food.

10. Just say, “NO!”: next up, as you’re going about your days and slowly getting through the agony of not eating out, I want you learn a new word – “NO!” Every time you want to eat out, tell yourself, “NO!” Most people these days are extremely undisciplined and cannot tell themselves “NO!” to anything in their lives.

They live this way, wasting thousands of dollars, and staying broke for their entire lives. Don’t be that person. Learn how to be disciplined and how to tell yourself, “NO!” to eating out every day.

11. Have the right cookware: having the right cookware at home can mean the difference between cooking and not cooking at all. There have been days where our kitchen was a wreck and everything was dirty, but neither me nor my wife wanted to cook or clean anything. We didn’t have the appropriate cookware and so we ended up just eating out. That’s an extreme example, but you get the point – we didn’t have the cookware ready, so we didn’t cook.

However, if you’re without cookware, I highly recommend that you go out and buy a few quality pieces, including two pans, a larger pan with sides, at least two pots, a strainer, and an oven tray. Those are generally pretty inexpensive and will guarantee that you always have what you need to cook.

Even though you might be spending a little bit of money up front, that cookware will save you thousands of dollars over time.

This cookware set from Calphalon here on Amazon can get you started.

12. Learn how to cook better: another great way to avoid eating fast food is to simply learn how to cook better. Fast food is delicious, and can be tough to turn down if you’re cooking skills are poor. But that’s why you learn. Everyone should know how to cook well…or at least how to cook decent enough food to enjoy what you’ve made.

But how do you do that? Easy. You cook food over and over and over again. Pick a couple of easy recipes that you like and cook them over and over again. While you’re at it, check out these easy cooking tips here on eatthis.com.

If you do all of that, your cooking will improve in no time at all!

13. Keep your cooking simple: speaking of simple…learning how to make delicious, yet simple food, is how you can continue being motivated to cook your meals and avoid eating out.

Don’t shoot for complex, 12 ingredient, 5-star meals. Just make simple 2 to 3 ingredient meals that don’t take that long to make. Grilled chicken with garlic salt and cayenne pepper is easy. Steak with Montreal steak seasoning is simple. Pork chops with Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce is awesome. See? simple, easy, and delicious meals.

This post here on eater.com has more of The Easiest Recipes and Techniques for Beginner Cooks.

14. Copy your restaurant favorites: instead of eating out, find recipes online for your restaurant favorites and copy them! There are thousands of recipes online that tell you exactly what spices and foods you need to copy the fast food meals that you love the most.

Check out this simple copycat Chik Fil-A grilled nugget recipe here.

Check out this simple copycat meal recipe for copycat Chipotle chicken here.

Or you can just look up your food of choice. I’m sure there at least a few versions of the recipe online.

15. No spend challenge: I love a good no-spend challenge. Because they’re REALLY hard and can be perfect for helping you not eat out. If you don’t want to do the extreme version of this and cut out everything, you can simply do the easier version and only cut out fast food. But if you do this, that means NO FAST FOOD for at least a month. If you really want a challenge, try cutting fast food out for an entire year!

For more on the no-spend challenge, check out the following posts:

“Quick Guide: What is a No-Spend Challenge and Why Should I Do it?”

“37 Insanely Easy Tips for Crushing a No-Spend Challenge”

16. Get an accountability partner: one of the best ways of avoiding fast food is to find a friend or family member that can serve as your accountability partner. This person doesn’t have to be doing what you’re doing, but has to steer you in the right direction whenever you’re thinking about eating out.

However, I would encourage you to find an accountability partner that’s doing the same thing you are – not eating fast food. Or someone who is simply trying to be healthier. They will help you to avoid fast food and you will do the same for them.

Try to find somebody that you’re close with, someone you work with, or somebody you see often. That’s the only way this will work. Because if you never see your accountability partner, they can’t help. And if you hang around people that only eat out every day, you’re going to eat out, too.

17. Tell your family: this is either going to be a fun way to get family involved or something extremely aggravating. Hopefully, it’s fun and easy for you. I say this because every family is unique. And every family is going to react differently when you tell them you’re cutting out fast food.

If you can, try to get your family on-board so that this can be a fun challenge. Tell them that you’re trying to improve your finances by not eating out. Ask them to help you out a little bit this month. Who knows, you might even inspire them to do the same and join you!

But some families won’t understand. They’ll be pissed when they want to eat out and you say no to them. Tell them the same thing – that you want to improve your finances by not eating out this month. If they don’t like it, too bad. They don’t control you or your finances, YOU do.

18. The quick backup meal: if you’re running out of ideas for dinner, or you don’t have much left to cook, that’s when you need a quick backup meal – something that consists of a frozen pizza or frozen TV dinner. While these meals may not be all that healthy or as cheap as cooking, it’s a quick and easy meal that keeps you from eating out. Find at least two options for this kind of frozen backup meal and have them stocked in your fridge.

19. Protein shakes and smoothies: protein shakes and smoothies can be delicious, healthy, and cost-effective options for you while you’re trying your hardest not to eat out. They’re not difficult to make and normally cost about $1 dollar per drink.

For a great budget smoothie recipe, check out this one here on budgetbytes.com or this one here on savorandsavvy.com.

For protein, I’d go with Optimum Nutrition’s whey protein here on Amazon. It’s the best-priced, best-quality, and best tasting protein out today.

20. Raid the pantry: once you start getting low on food to make meals, try raiding the pantry. Take a few minutes and go through every product on every shelf. Try making meals from whatever you have. Because if you can make 2-3 more meals, that will save you money, help you actually eat everything you’ve bought, keep you from going back to the grocery store early, and keep you from buying fast food.

Still want to eat out?

21. Track your fast food costs: if you’re not convinced yet to cut out fast food completely, I’d encourage you to start tracking your fast food costs using a zero-based budget. Although I do recommend that you use a budget for your overall finances, for just your food budget this month, you need to do two things:

Add up all of last month’s expenses: add up everything you spent last month on fast food. You might cringe at this number. If so, that’s good. Now you’ll have an idea of exactly how much you’re spending per month eating out. How much would that be per year? Probably a lot. How much would that be over 10 years or 20 years? A lot probably.

Cut back and add up: for this month, cut back as much as you can and add everything up at the end of the month. Your fast food expenses will probably still be high but hopefully they’ll be lower than last month. If you can cut back to just once or twice a week, that’s great. Keep trying to cut back more and spend less on fast food.

22. Budget limit: one awesome way that I limit myself every month is to set a budget limit on certain categories – one of which is fast food. I used to do $40 dollars per month, but with inflation going through the roof, I’ve given myself $50 dollars per month. That’s basically a meal a week. If I go over that budget, it’s not by much.

23. Only eat out once per week: another easy way to cut back on fast food is to only allow yourself to eat out once per week. If the budget limit doesn’t work for you, just try giving yourself one allowed meal a week and then forcing yourself to cook the rest of the week.

This is tough but it can be a good start toward cutting out fast food completely. And you can either do what I normally do and start the week off right by eating out on a Monday night. Or you can save your meal toward the end of the week and eat out on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Either way, only one meal per week!

24. Happy hour: if you’re just trying to cut costs down a little bit, tip 24 through 26 can really help you. For this tip, try only getting fast food during happy hour. If your favorite restaurant doesn’t offer it, that’s okay. Just use the next two tips.

But if your favorite place offers happy hour, this is a good way to still get fast food and save big. You just have to go at certain times of the day to get it. If you do that, you can easily save 50% percent or more on your fast food bill.

25. Leftovers: leftovers are awesome. A lot of people are really against leftovers, though, and that blows my mind. I mean, the food isn’t going to be exactly as good as when you first get it. But it’s usually still pretty good. So whenever you go out to eat, try taking your meal and splitting it into two.

Make two meals and only eat one. Save the other meal for later. That way you’ve done a couple of things – you’ve only eaten half as much at a sitting (which is a little bit healthier), you’ve now got two meals (one to eat later), and you’ve now saved some money. Now for the same price you paid, you’ve gotten two meals for the price of one.

Now think about all of the places you eat. One of those places, for me, is Chipotle. The burrito or the burrito bowl is always going to be two meals. If you get enough food, you can almost make it into 3 meals. Do that for all fast food and you’ll save a ton of money over time.

26. Don’t order delivery: another way you can save money on fast food? NEVER order delivery. Go get the food. Because if you order delivery, you’re paying for a lot of extra convenience. Whether it be delivery fees, gas fees, app fees, and tips. It all adds up. And if you’re ordering delivery often, you’re wasting A LOT of money. Especially if you’re ordering through a delivery app. So take those apps off your phone and skip the delivery fees. It’s costing you big time.

27. Start living a healthy lifestyle: this last tip is more of a health tip than just a saving money on fast food tip.

I want you to work on improving your overall health by working out more, drinking more water, getting more sleep, and eating healthier. You’ll start feeling better and soon realize how unhealthy fast food really is. Once you cut it out, you’ll want to keep it out. Because you’ll feel awesome without it. And if you eat it again, you won’t feel as good. You’ll notice the difference and cut it back out.

If you start living a healthy lifestyle, you’ll find that you just don’t really need fast food at all.

Finally

Hopefully this list has helped you. Because it’s everything I could think of to help you with not just cutting back on fast food costs, but ways to cut out fast food completely. This is the ultimate list of ways to save money by not eating out this year. And if you follow every tip on this list, you’re going to save a ton of money!