Take My Money If I Cannot Control Eating Out Habit

Akrasia
1

HI Everyone!

I am looking to curb my eating out habit and I am willing to put some money on the line.Essentially, I use a service called Tiller that pulls my transactions from my credit cards and then I can categorize them.

link to expenses

The Bet:

Starting June 2017, If anyone catches that my eating out expenses is over $45 a month then I will personally send you $90 via Paypal. This is a 1st come 1st serve bet.

Rules:
-I can turn off the bet as long as I give a 4 week notice (e.g. vacation)
-I must update my Tiller goal/categorize my expenses 4-7 days a week (I have a beeminder goal already for this)

2 Likes
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You know you can use beeminder for this?

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Ha, I do know. I tried to do so for a time but I began to weasel. Having a bit of social pressure may help me out. I beemind everything else though :slight_smile:

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I had a Beeminder goal to eat more meals at home. That worked pretty well for me, and really cut down on the number of breakfasts and lunches I would eat out. (We already have a dinner-at-home habit.)

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I tried a similar goal at some point. The issue is that it was self-reported so I started to weasel and my eating out habit is pretty variable.

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Just to clarify. Your eating out history shows about $45 per week, and you’re offering 2x that ($90) as a penalty if you breach $45 per month. Ambitious. Foolhardy?

Your intention is admirable. For myself, I always wonder whether it’s better to focus on the spending or on the earning. Feels much easier to earn an extra $50 per week than to save it.

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Completely reasonable concern. I could earn a bit more money to offset the cost but there is a huge health component to it for me.

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Interesting. And sensible. One way of combatting the health component could be to increase your spending on eating out. (He says, making loads of unwarranted assumptions.)