I went shopping as planned yesterday and bought all the fixings for a nice dinner. We had filet mignon, potato skins with bacon, green beans, corn, salad, foccacia rolls, and pie. Plus I made hot onion cheese dip and stromboli for appetizers. Yum. It was just as good as anything we get in a restaurant, except of course we had to cook it ourselves! I thought we would save a lot of money by doing it all ourselves instead of ordering dinners to go, like we did last year, but now I'm not so sure. If we all ordered a filet mignon dinner, it defintely would be a lot cheaper. But if we did it like last year and ordered 3-4 meals for 6 people, we probably did not save much, if anything. The take-out meals around here are so huge that we have even split one between 4 people before and still had leftovers for lunch the next day. But, at least we didn't have to go anywhere to wait a half hour on New Years Eve to pick up the meals. I spent $50.06 at Wegmans and $60.87 at BJs, but not all of that was for dinner. In fact, I bought nothing except the filets, cheese, pepperoni (for the strombroli), rolls, and green beans. We already had everything else on hand, even the beer and sparkling grape juice (our friend who came over is expecting) - plus the friends brought us a nice bottle of wine. The meat was really expensive - about $36 for 6 filet mignons. I probably didn't spend more than $10-20 on the rest of the food, so I think we saved a little money. We definitely made out better than if we had gone out to a restaurant.
I will try to tally up my December expenses when I get home tonight. My oldest brother has invited all of us over to his house for dinner. I am not too excited to see the final tally for the month - but I think January will be better. DH has gotten his fingerprinting done - now he just needs to send it in to get checked out, and he will be able to start substitute teaching.
December expenses: $5984.56 + 50.06 + 60.87 = $6095.49
December income: $3974.50