Best Calculators or Best Way to Guess-timate

My kids don’t order drinks when we go out to eat. They know that eating out is a privilege. They can have soda, smoothie, or juice in the car or when we get home.

At high end restaurants, we tell them to order a drink to appease the waiter a bit because DH and I don’t drink alcohol. Waiters sometimes get upset at us for not ordering wine or other alcoholic drinks. We give an extra tip to those waiters who give us great service even when we don’t order alcohol!

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Yes, if it had just been my kids limits would have been set much more so. But with GF along the dynamic was a little different. This also is a reflection of my teens’ habit of going out for drinks at Sonic, ice cream at Baskin Robbins or something almost every day. DH and I don’t get it at all, and tell them to save their money and get a drink at home or ice cream out of the freezer (of course the fact I rarely buy soft drinks may not help). But they like going out for a little something, not sure if it’s an independence thing or they are just spoiled! I do have to say, after a summer of manual labor my DS18 did seem to develop more appreciation of the cost of things and cut this down some :wink:.

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Yes. Same. We will let them get drink sometimes for the same reason.
And we generally tip a little extra too bc of the hassle they have with DS food allergies, but they can’t know this as we are ordering.

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My kids are even cheaper than I am. Seriously. It actually bugs me sometimes. Kid #4 is a little spendy, but kids #2 & 3 are cheapos.

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This past trip, 10 days, fam of 4, I went as far as looking at menus and calculating exactly what we would order (to the best of my ability…obviously tastes change a bit). As well as I calculated most QS even though we chose different places a few times and actually ordered QS breakfast a couple more times than I had expected.

I came up with roughly $1400

In reality I ended spending roughly $1600

NOTE: I DID NOT calculate alcohol in my initial calculations so I was expecting reality to be more.

So make a budget, and make it cushy.

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I think it’s their generation. When I was in college, my friends and I go to McDonald’s or somewhere else relatively cheap. DD and her friends college friends go out to $20-$25/person places or $5-$8/person nonalcoholic drinks. Unless definition of relatively cheap has changed…

Of course, she is spending her own money. DS on the other hand is a tight wad.

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You and me both!!!

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That was a great tip. It quoted me $400+ and I’m taking $700, so … more souviniers!
Thanks!!!

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I think there is definitely some of that. I read somewhere recently that the average going rate for the tooth fairy now is $5 per tooth!?!

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$5 per tooth!?!

Wow!

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