Dining Out... Why?

I was over at Candi’s Blog reading about how she has a problem with going out to eat and her story really struck a chord with me. As you all know I’ve been struggling over the last 20 or so days and one thing I will say is that I’ve started going out to eat pretty regularly again. Surprisingly, I never really thought about “why” until today. To give you some perspective on how addicted I am to dining out, last year I spent roughly $8000 on dining out. That’s a little more than $150 each and every week. Last year was the first year my wife and I started tracking that information and the final number actually made me sick to my stomach.

For years I’ve been telling myself that taking my wife and kids out to eat was a great way to give my wife (stay-at-home mom) a break from her daily grind. After giving it some thought, I now believe that to just be an excuse to go out, the real reason is just a little bit less altruistic…

Like Candi, I was part of a single parent family that did not have much money. When I went to college it took me 6 years to get my engineering degree because I had to work nearly full time to pay my way through. When I got my first job, it was like hitting the lottery! As you can expect, Engineers make pretty good money and I was not prepared to handle my new salary. For 2 years my wife and I went on a spending spree buying anything and everything that represented the “status” of having money. I wanted to show the world that I was not poor even if it meant spending more than I made. We bought new “loaded” cars and clothes and expensive furniture. After the first year we moved to Greensboro NC and that just opened up the door to even more spending on a fancy apartment in a gated community, big screen TVs, trips, and yes, going out to all the restaurants the south has to offer.

Now fortunately for me, this story doesn’t end with me going bankrupt. After those first few years, my wife and I both realized that money and status weren’t really making us happy and instead we chose to start living a life within our means and stopped worrying about what everyone else thought. 3 years later we had paid off our debts and were in the process of starting our wonderful family.

So what does this all have to do with going out to eat you might ask? Well to be honest, living a life where you truly don’t care what others think is much easier to say than to do. I’m starting to believe that my dining out is still my way of showing my family, friends, and complete strangers, that I can afford to do so. I think it’s a status thing for me; why cook my own food when I can pay someone else to do it for me and my family. As I write this it sounds absolutely terrible to me, but at the same time it feels true.

There have been times when I have taken my family out to eat for every single meal through the weekend! I’m not exaggerating, we’ve done this multiple times. What’s amazing is that there have been times when nothing sounds appealing to go out for and so we just drive around until we come across a restaurant that we are “willing” to go into. Chinese? No, had that yesterday. Mexican? not really feeling it. Burgers? Well I guess so since nothing else sounds appealing. Does this sound like the behavior of a normal person?

Dining out should be a special event, not a normal way of life and if I’m not going for the food but rather to show people that “I can”, then what’s the point? What’s even more ironic is that you would expect that if I’m going out to eat all the time because of status that I would be going to only the “expensive” places. You would be wrong… with 3 kids in tow we actually end up at a lot of the “Kid Friendly” places that typically have mediocre food at reasonable prices. How’s that for status?

I don’t have the solution to my problem, this is one of those self-realization posts where you don’t really fix anything, you just realize you are doing something wrong. I’m open to any comments about this or if anyone has a similar experience I would love to hear about it.

Oh yeah, and thanks to Candi for getting me thinking about this! Go check out her blog HERE.