Restaurants

Ethan and I really like to go to restaurants. There are just some days that I don't feel like doing dishes or planning ahead to prepare a meal. To make it possible for us to eat out from time to time, we are having to become creative. So far here are the ideas I have found to make eating out a little more affordable. If you have any other good ideas for eating out at restaurants at a discount, please let me know, that would be so helpful.

1) Groupon/Living Social: Here we find restaurant deals, often purchasing a voucher for $20 worth of food at a specific local restaurant for $10 cost to us. These deals can be good offers and a way to try new restaurants. I am taking Ethan to a local Brazilian Grill for his birthday, because I found a deal on Groupon.

2) Swagbucks: If you sign up for Swagbucks, all you have to do is use Swagbucks for your daily search engine (instead of google) and you'll accumulate points quickly. Instead of typing in web addresses such as gmail.com or walmart.com, I search for gmail or walmart through the search engine, to increase my point earnings.
The best deal is to use your Swagbucks points to buy $5 Amazon gift cards (450 points). I save my Amazon gift cards until I have $25 and then I purchase restaurant gift cards on Amazon. It is also a simple way to have extra money for things like gifts, etc. I often earn enough points to purchase at least $10 in Amazon gift cards monthly.

3) Buying Discount Gift Cards: You can buy discount gift cards at Gift Card Rescue, Giftcards.com, or Plastic Jungle. People can sell their unwanted gift cards to these companies and they turn around and sell the gift cards to customers. For example, right now I could purchase an Olive Garden gift card for 8% less than the card value (buying a $25 gift card for the price of $23). Depending on the store or restaurant, I've seen discounts up to 15% off. Especially when you can combine the discount gift card with a restaurant coupon, then the savings start to add up.

4) Kids Eat Free: When the children are along with us at a restaurant, we almost never pay for their meals. There are many restaurants in our city that offer free kids meals on certain days of the week. I can find a restaurant in our city that offers free kids meals on any day of the week, except Fridays. There is a website for our area with a listing of all kids eat free offers as well as a printed publication.

5) Restaurant Rewards Programs: So far we are signed up for Panera Bread and Qdoba rewards programs. With Qdoba, you must purchase 10 entrees and the 11th entree is free. That's a decent deal, considering that's where I like to go on Sundays after church (when we can get $1.50 kids meals)!