This post is a few days late, since we just got back from a cruise (which I'll be doing a huge review on later) and I didn't have time to post about this before we left. If you've been reading my blog, I challenged myself and my hubby to 30 days of dining in starting January 3 to see just how much money we could save.

I admit- we did cheat a few times. I took a friend out to lunch for her birthday, and there were a couple of occasions that Ryan and I forgot our lunch. We also ate dinner out twice- once at Buffalo Wild Wings and at a sushi restaurant using a Restaurants.com gift certificate.

That being said, it is absolutely unbelievable how much money we saved by dining in. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I was able to put almost an extra $1000 this month towards bills- insanity!

We've decided to start again for the next 5 weeks (we have a trip to Savannah planned in mid-March) , except this time allow our selves to eat out only once a week, and try to eat at places where we have gift certificates to use towards the balance to minimize our OOP.

I encourage you to join us in this challenge. It has definitely been one of the quickest and easiest ways to save a ton of cash. I'll be posting meal plans again and making meals based on items I have on hand or I can get on sale. I promise you, at the end of the month your wallet will thank you!!