Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Saving Tips (2): Food

Depending on your lifestyle you can save quite a fair bit from your daily food.

1. Instead of eating out for dinner daily, why not "ta pao" (take-away) mix rice, noodles, etc.? A two-person meal in a restaurant with three dishes can easily cost you more than RM30. While take-away for two persons will not cost you more than RM10. (I do know some middle class couples who dine out every evening.)

2. Call your mother and ask her for some good recipes. Cook at home. Spend the later part of your evening play with your computer and/ or children.

3. Stay with your parents or parents in law or invite your parents or parents in law to stay with you. Depending on your family, this can be one of the biggest saving opportunities.

4. Are you too used to have your lunch at expensive outlet with your colleague? A quick reminder here, take-away mixed rice lunch is usually less than RM5. What about packed lunch from home?

5. Meeting your friends for dinner? Such outing usually ends up at expensive restaurant. Tell your friends you are on budget. There is nothing to be ashamed of. (I can be more blunt, I told some of my friends that I simply hate expensive restaurant. I will join them after their expensive meal.) A better idea is to schedule a gathering after dinner at mamak store.

6. Do away with beers, cigarette and pubs. Stay at home with your family or go out with your friends to mamak store. If you are surrounded by friends that drink beers, smoke and go pubs and you are financially strained due to such habits. You are probably with the wrong company. :-) Join another group of friends.

7. Find a place for good coffee at good price, instead of drinking Starbuck's cafe latte.

1 comment:

  1. i really agreed to your recomendation!..i used to spend lot's of money in this so called expensive restoran..i made my mind one day, cut down , home cook food as often as possible, now my savings really improved so muchhh!
    i like yr blog a lot...pls continue sharing, Thanks.

    ReplyDelete

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