Even as a plant-based person, with all the new options that are now available at restaurants and fast-food chains, I find the temptation to order in a couple of times a week insanely tempting!

My husband and I need to be saving for an emergency fund, however, over the past year the ability to effectively do this has completely been out of reach.

Yet somehow, we’ve eaten out and ordered in a lot. So how do we stop spending money on takeout?!

It is clear to us that in order to be able to put more money into savings or investments, we need to be able to put what is ‘leftover’ from our necessary spending (bills, etc) into savings. This means we need to make sure that money doesn’t get wasted on ordering in, getting takeout, etc.

Here are some practical ideas we’ve been putting in place to avoid spending money on takeout or dining out this 2021!

WE EACH USE A KOHO PRE-PAID VISA TO LIMIT HOW MUCH WE CAN SPEND ON TAKEOUT.

Prepaid Visas are beautiful, magical things.

I absolutely love my KOHO card and KOHO app. Not just because my KOHO card is an adorable pink and gold color combo, but because of how much money it helps me save!

My husband and I finally heard about KOHO prepaid Visas and decided to give them a try.

Here is how we use prepaid visas to help us spend less money on takeout.

We each have a prepaid visa for our own personal use.

We sat down together and decided on how much a month we could collectively afford to spend on totally random things like eating out, getting coffees, random personal items, etc.

For each income/ expense level this number will be different.

For us, we decided we can each spend $300 a month on personal use items (for a total of $600 per month collectively). This might seem a bit higher because we included ‘gas’ as a personal use item. We found budgeting for gas was too variable and therefore we should keep it under the personal use cost umbrella. With that in mind, you can see that it actually doesn’t leave much room for eating out.

So when we get paid, we allocate the money from our paychecks to our pre-paid visas right away!

We move over $150 to each of our Pre-Paid Visas at the beginning of the month ($300 total), and then again in the middle of the month ($300 total).

Therefore we only have the money that is on our KOHO cards to spend, and that is it!

We ensure that any money we want to put into savings (money that would usually be ‘leftover’ after paying off bills), is moved into savings accounts right away.

Therefore all that is left in chequing is the EXACT cost for covering our monthly reoccurring bills.

In this way, we cannot overspend even if we really, really wanted to. Literally, the option for us is now eliminated. Either we stick to our budget or default on a bill payment.

This method really helps us cut back on spending money on food all the time.

In an unexpected way, this has challenged me to save even more!

With the few dollars I get a month to spend on personal items, I try to save from one month to the next in order to have even more spendable money the next month!

By using KOHO for personal spending there are at least 3 extra benefits (beyond the compliments on my adorable card):

• At least when I signed up, there is 2% money back on 3 spending categories. I simply chose gas and restaurants as my top picks as that is mainly what I’m using my KOHO for.

• They also have the option to round up whatever you are spending and put that money into a little virtual piggy bank. So for instance, if I spent $4.50 on a latte, 50 extra cents will go to my KOHO virtual ‘savings’. Eventually, I can cash this savings back onto my KOHO card and have a little extra spending money!

• It live-updates you with how much money you have left on your KOHO card! Right after spending $4.50 on my latte, it will tell me how much is left to spend. It also obviously lists all my previous transactions.

• A bonus thing I just realized, I get 3% back when I use KOHO in-store at JJ Bean! My favorite coffee store. WOW!

Key take-away, in short, is an extremely easy and fun way to effectively limit yourself from overspending on take-out and eating out. If you use one tip from this article, I would hope that it is this one.

WE SAVE TIME WHERE POSSIBLE SO THAT CONVENIENCE ISN’T SUCH A DRAW.

Let’s hit on the root of the problem for many of us. After work we come home, we’re tired, we still have chores to do, and on top of all that we have to cook and clean dinner. YIKES!

With so little time, gumption, and will power, the CONVENIENCE factor of spending money on takeout or ordering in is extremely high. Our will power is so low at that point, that our goal to stop spending so much money on food seems less important.

So how do we tackle the problem of convenience?

Well, obviously there is the idea of meal prepping or at least pre-chopping and seasoning what you are going to eat throughout the week. However, if you want to read about the basics of creating effective, fun, and affordable meal prep, click here, because that is a whole long post of its own!

Here are my top tips for making your time work better for you:

Honestly, wake up an hour earlier to get things done.

Perhaps this means doing your workout before work, doing a quick vacuum, chopping up all the vegetables for tonight’s dinner. Whatever your future tired self will appreciate the most, do it in the morning before your day starts.

Buy some ready-made treats!

As a plant-based person on a budget, I always thought I had to make everything from scratch. Everyone says that in order to save money, make everything from scratch!

However, if I’m making everything from scratch but then ordering in 3 nights a week because I’m tired of cooking everything, somethings got to give!

I have to re-evaluate if my cooking absolutely everything from scratch method is accomplishing what I thought it was.

Though buying a few more ready-made options may feel more expensive on your next grocery haul, in the end, I believe this method saves money.

So for instance instead of ordering in burgers once a week from A&W or Romers, I’ll pick up vegan burger patties while I’m grocery shopping. These are so easy to cook that even tired me does not mind cooking them.

Some other options for ready-made treats I buy for the nights I know I’ll be way too tired to bother cooking are:

• vegan perogies

• frozen french fries

• soup mixes/ instant noodles

• frozen pizza dough and vegan cheese

• vegan cream cheese and English muffins

• Some kind of vegan salami

• Vegan hot dogs

• etc.

Instead of ordering these items from a restaurant and paying 5 times the amount, I’m saving a tonne of money by quickly making them myself!

There are also little things I can do while picking these items out and preparing them to ensure they are perhaps a tiny bit more nutritious than the versions I’m getting from restaurants that load on the fat, salt, and sugar!

I find this method a more realistic approach. It realizes that the draw of convenient foods is in our lives for a reason. We are busy people these days, trying to accomplish a million different things.

If you were like me always trying to cook everything but then still eating out and ordering in a lot, this might be the first step you need to cut back!

MEAL PREP SAUCES SO THAT MEAL PREP DURING THE WEEK IS EASY!

I had a huge realization this week.

I realized that if I spent more time on Sunday meal prepping delicious healthy homemade sauces, my actual meal prep can be insanely easy and still taste amazing.

So for instance, let’s say I spent Sunday creating an incredible vegan teriyaki sauce and green goddess buddha bowl sauce and I simply pre-chopped a bunch of fresh vegetables.

Now for dinners, all I really have to do is stirfry or bake my vegetables and top them with a delicious sauce!

By making your meal prep so easy, convenient, and tasty, it helps lessen the draw to spend money on takeout.

Getting ingredients for the sauce can be a little more costly so how do we fix that problem?

USE A WHOLESALE MEMBERSHIP!

Now we get MOST of our sauce creating materials at a large discount store, Costco, to be exact.

We buy our oils, types of bottles of vinegar, spices, soy sauce, tomato paste, vegetable broth, and more from there in large quantities.

This helps cut down on the price and frequency of buying items that are useful when making your own dressings, sauces, soups, stews, chilis, and curries.

We decided on how much of our grocery spending should be used and use that as a limit when we shop there.

How much should I spend on eating out?

To better answer that question, you should be thinking about how much you want to be saving each month.

List out ALL your expenses - fixed and variable.

From there you will see what you have ‘leftover’. Usually, this money would get spent on takeout, dining out, and random impulse buys.

From that leftover amount, you are going to decide how much you can put away into savings, and how much you would like to keep for takeout and dining out.

This number will vary depending on your circumstances. If you are just trying to slowly add some money to your savings month by month you might just put a little into savings and keep a good amount to use for dining out or ordering in.

If you are saving for a downpayment, for school, for traveling, etc, you might really want to limit how much you spend on a monthly basis by decided to put more of your leftover money directly into savings!

To recap, easy ways to stop spending money on takeout!

1. Obviously, meal prep, check out this link for awesome tips.

2. Use Cash or a Pre-Paid Visa (like KOHO that gives you money-back)

3. Make your meals easy and quick by having delicious sauces ready to go.

4. When you can, buy bulk items from discount wholesale stores like Costco

5. Have a couple of prepared items for the days you are just too tired to bother!

6. Create more space in your day by getting up earlier, this fights the convenience factor of takeout.

7. Take into account how much you want to save each month from your carefully calculated budget!