<prompt> Human: My husband and I have been married for 6 years, and Im the one who handles the finances in our house. Weve never been budget down to the dollar people- I keep a spreadsheet of bills and when they are due, if theyve been paid, etc. so I can make sure we have enough in the account for whats coming out, but havent really tracked our general spending. The last few months have been hard-- we accumulated a little credit card debt that Ive been trying to pay down aggressively 300mo, had some large medical bills another 300month, etc. We made some changes-- cut cable, switched internet service providers to a much cheaper plan, etc. However, its still felt like we keep coming up short-- at some point during each month the money runs out and Ive had to dip into savings to tide us over to the next weeks paycheck. So finally I decided to bite the bullet and actually map out our money. I used my spreadsheet to calculate how much were paying for bills on average each month, and how much income we are bringing in. Income - bills 2000. Obviously some of that goes to things like gas, groceries, dog food, etc... but it still felt like we should have money to spare. I pulled all the transactions from our bank statement for the last 5 months April 1 - September 1. I started coming through-- how often are we buying gas? How much are we spending? Groceries? Kindle books my eternal weakness is reading? Today I finally went through and marked all the eating out charges-- based on our card numbers I indicated which were my husbands solo meals, my solo meals, and our meals out together. Ka-ching. Now I know where our money is going. We are spending SO MUCH MONEY on eating out. It doesnt seem like a lot at the time but all those small charges for lunches add up! I at least eat at home 3-4 days a week for lunch, but my husband still picks up fast food even if hes running home to let the dog out. Add in all the evenings when I dont feel like cooking and my husbands cooking skill consists of Mac cheese or ramen noodles? so we order in, and literally hundreds of dollars a month are going to eating out. At least that explains why our grocery bills are so reasonable. I guess this weekend the husband and I will be sitting down to talk about how we can change our habits-- for our physical and financial health, I dont think we can continue down this road. They say ignorance is bliss-- but dont let ignorance come between you and true control over your personal finances. My eyes are opened now. I still dont know that I will be come a down-to-the-dollar budgeter, but at least Im going to pay closer attention to the trends in our spending.  <response>: I meal prep on Sundays and Wednesday. I like the strategy so far. Sunday meal prep covers Mon-Wed, Wednesday meal prep covers Thurs-Sat and Sunday Ill usually do something simple. But basically Ill lay out my breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next 3 days and when its time to cook, everythings ready to go.For example, this was my schedule for yesterday, today, and tomorrow:Breakfast: Banana and OatmealLunch: Grilled chicken salad with onions, tomatoes and peppersDinner: Pork stir fryEverythings prepped Wednesday night, so in its own containers and ready to be thrown in a pan and cooked Except meat, I tend to buy meat day of because Im picky about it. Takes maybe 20-30 minutes at most to make dinner typically. Definitely recommend. 