by Kimberly J Johnson

Created on: September 03, 2009

Everyone is trying to save as much money as possible these days and that includes saving on food costs. While preparing food at home is by far the cheapest option, eating out is sometimes a necessity for busy families. Luckily, some restaurants have taken a cue from frugal consumers and have offered ways to save on meals by introducing low cost menus. By ordering from these menus you can easily keep the cost of a meal per person down to only five dollars. And the best part of this is that the items on the low cost menus are thing that kids LOVE to eat, so you aren't depriving anyone of eating foods they enjoy. Here are some tips on how you can eat out for less than five dollars a person.

Order from the dollar menu. Several restaurants have dollar menus (sometimes less than a dollar) to help you save money. A partial list of restaurants include: McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Wendy's. In fact at Taco Bell, there menu starts at only 79 cents. You really can't beat that, as long as you like Mexican food.

Order water instead of other beverages. No matter what your meal is, it is always cheaper to order water. Some restaurants have started charging you for the cup or the ice included with your water. To get around this, always take a bottle of water from home for yourself and juice boxes for the kids. You can really only do this at fast food restaurants.

Instead of ordering a combo, separate out the items and order them separately off of the low cost menu. This seems contradictory, but if you order small fries and water along with a burger, it is often cheaper than a combo which offers larger drink and fry sizes.

Use coupons. Coupons for restaurants and fast food establishments are everywhere. Get into the habit of collecting them, even if you think you won't use them. I like to keep an extra coupon organizer in the car just for fast food coupons.

Go to a different restaurant for dessert. This works if the restaurants are close together (so you don't use too much gas), and if you have a coupon that will reduce the cost even further. Ice cream is an excellent and cheap summer dessert, especially for kids. And if you stuck the ice cream coupon in your car like I told you to do above, you won't even think twice about treating your kids to a frosty treat because it will be so cheap to do so.

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