But that’s not all!  Head over to Mr. Rebates, sign up, and score an additional 35% off cash back when you click through to Restaurant.com over there!  That makes 65 cents for a $25 voucher for qualifying purchases at thousands and thousands of restaurants nationwide.

(Too much work?  There’s nothing against heading straight over to Restaurant.com to get one for a buck.  No-sir-ee!)

Just double-check the terms and conditions which will be clearly visible next to your chosen restaurant.

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It’s natural to want to put on a flashy looking meal that looks and tastes delicious, but by the time the big day rolls around, most of the budget has already been blown on filling little Johnny’s stocking with awesome electronics. The good news is that Christmas dinner can be done on the cheap, and none of it involves stealing or shooting the neighborhood pigeons.

It’s human nature to want to wrap the presents in sumptuous paper with a massive bow on top, but that type of packaging doesn’t come cheap. The same can be said for food makers, all of whom put their products in packages that are designed to catch your eye and make you buy. But the packaging is no indication of the quality of the food inside. You can save yourself a fair amount of cash, simply by ditching the gold trimmed paper, and buying a less extravagant looking package of the same food.

Oftentimes the dinner party gets started with some little snacks or finger food, and while most of those are available in the frozen, pre-packaged section of the supermarket, you can save a ton by just making them yourself. Canapes are a perfect example of a food that’s expensive to buy packaged, but cheap to make at home. Your dinner guests will love that you made the effort to do a little cooking DIY. It’s also smart to keep in mind that your guests will be doing a lot of eating throughout the course of the day, so keep the dinner fairly simple and stick with a couple of sides, rather than offering all the trimmings.

Try not to go too overboard when you are buying the food you need. Avoid pre-packaged food as much as possible, and don’t go for an ostrich-sized turkey when you know that a good portion of it will end up in the trash, or as permanently uneaten leftovers. It’s understandable to want to make sure that your guests get enough to eat, but allowing a Tiny-Tim-sized amount of common sense to prevail will leave your wallet thanking you for weeks to come. The same rule applies when it comes to drinks and desserts, as in most countries it’s expected that guests will bring a bottle of wine or some sort of candy treat with them. By all means pick up a couple of items, but let your guests do their share too.

Christmas is a time of giving and sharing, but you can easily do that without having to take out a second mortgage on your home. Guests are usually always friends and family, and they will be delighted with the effort that you have made to feed them, even if it means they don’t get both mashed and roasted potatoes.

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We were confused when the card came back declined.  At first we checked the balance on the card because we thought that they had given us less than they had promised (it was for a rebate).  That wasn’t the problem: we knew how much was on the card, and we didn’t overcharge that amount.  We finally talked to the manager of the restaurant, and he suggested in the future that we first try to charge half of the gift card’s value to see if that takes, and then try the other half.  “Sometimes it works the first time; other times it doesn’t,” is what he told me.

In any case, the meal finally got paid for, and we didn’t even have to stay to wash dishes.

Here‘s what I think might have happened

I did a search for hold on gift cards and ran across this FAQ from Visa:

“When using your Visa Gift card to initiate a transaction at a merchant where a tip may be included, be sure your balance is sufficient to cover an additional 20% above your total bill. If the bill, plus estimated tip, exceeds the available balance on the card, the purchase will be declined …”

Since our bill was larger than the amount on our card, there was no 20% wiggle room.  Somehow they did manage to debit the gift card even though the total bill was larger than the balance on the card.

It makes sense that there should be a buffer for the tip for two reasons: (a) the tip isn’t forgotten as it can be with gift card, gift certificates, etc., and (b) the server can treat the gift card basically like a credit card when it comes to writing in the amount of the tip: there’s room for most tips right on the card.

The main lesson we learned is that there are easier places to spend a Visa gift card than in a restaurant; the declination because of the tipping cushion was a distraction.  Had we just bought groceries with it, there probably would have been no issue.

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But wait! There’s more! If you first sign up for MrRebates.com, click through there instead, and use the coupon code TOUCHDOWN, you’ll get another 50 cents knocked off!

Enjoy!

* Be sure to check the fine print on redemption of the vouchers.

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As I pile through a year’s worth of financial statements in time for taxes, in order to make tax time easier and to get some financial organization in place, these trends will reveal themselves naturally.  Entering the transactions, and then refining the categories of these transactions by reconciling the transactions to what was actually purchased via the receipts, will give my financial software the data it needs to chew on to create the spending reports.

Fortunately, I got early confirmation of something I had suspected.  My Chase Sapphire card has a year-in-review statement feature that not only shows all of the transactions for the past year, but takes a first cut at categorizing them: Travel and Entertainment, Restaurant, Automotive, Merchandise, Services, and Miscellaneous.  Apparently we’re boring homebodies, as our Travel and Entertainment charges were only a third of a page out of 29 pages of transactions.

However, the Restaurant section was almost six full pages, and ran nearly $4,000 for the year. And this doesn’t include the charges that were classified as Automotive but were actually us buying subs and other fast food at our nearby Sheetz gas station.

This wasn’t a surprise to us.  We know that we ate out a lot this past year.  What did surprise me was the sheer volume of the transactions.  They took quite a while to enter!  I was also a little surprised how a lot of little charges add up.  (I know: The Latte Factor®, right?)  A majority of the charges were under $10, and many of those were under $5.

That’s the bad(ish) news.  The good news is that we’re already taking steps to knocking this amount down, and that we can measure whether we’ve made progress on knocking the amount down. Without the baseline, any feeling that we’ve made progress is just that: a feeling.

(The Latte Factor is a registered trademark of FinishRich, Inc., and was made famous by David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire and several other popular personal finance books.)

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Case in point, here is an excerpt from here recent post on meal planning:

I strayed from my planned menu for the second half of last week, but we didn’t eat out, so I truly believe that any menu plan is better than none. It keeps me thinking about cooking and eating at home, rather than planning to go out . . . I’ve just moved the meals planned for last week that didn’t get made to this week.

Let’s break this down a bit:

• The goal of the meal plan is to replace eating out. Eating out is expensive.  Food by itself is always less expensive than food plus all of the other costs of running a restaurant.  But since eating out is easier than eating in, it’s what gets done in a pinch when hunger hits and the stuff to make the meal at home isn’t there.
• Having the meal plan in place really is better than having nothing in place at all. Fail to plan, plan to fail, and all that.
• Meal planning has some up-front costs that can be used again and again. Putting one meal together takes time, but once it’s done, it doesn’t vanish into thin air.  It’s there to be inserted again, moved around, and modified any number of ways.
• The meal-planning habit breaks the eating-out habit. The more meals that are planned, the more this becomes the default instead of “Let’s order pizza.”

My wife has begun to plan some meals for us, which rocks.  She’s been playing with the meal planning templates over at Vertex42.com.  They’re free.  Fortunately, she doesn’t need to plan too many different meals to keep me happy.  One thing I am a creature of habit is with the types of foods I eat regularly.  I like a lot of different kinds of foods, but it boils down to only a handful of dishes.  I can get by on rice and beans, apples and bananas, oatmeal, and a few other things at work for a good long time.

This was all precipitated by looking at our dining out expenses, which were pretty high.  I’ll discuss why this is an issue in a later post in my Mvelopes series.  (Promise!)

If you plan out your meals, what tricks get you the farthest?

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For those of you who aren’t familiar with Restaurant.com, here’s a quick rundown.  Restaurant.com sells dining certificates for thousands of restaurants across the US.  A $25 dining certificate gives you $25 off of qualifying expenses at that restaurant.  Normally, a $25 dining certificate costs $10, so if you buy one and use it, you just netted $15 off of your meal.  Nice, right?

Through August 31st, 2010, it’s even better:  using the coupon code CLEARANCE at checkout will give you 80% off of your order.  That’s 80% off of the cost of the certificates, not the face value — so that same $25 dining certificate goes for just two bucks with this coupon code!

Here’s what I recommend you do if this sounds cool to you:

1. Head over to Restaurant.com and enter your ZIP code.
2. Look at the participating restaurants nearby.  See ones that you like?  If yes, go on to the next step.
3. Check out the restrictions on redeeming the certificates at a particular restaurant.  They’re directly below where you add the certificates to your cart.  The certificates aren’t exactly like cash, so just check first.
4. After you’re done, go to checkout, and be sure to enter CLEARANCE in the coupon section to get your 80% off!

Enjoy the sweet rewards of CLEARANCE price meals at Restaurant.com!

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Mighty Bargain Hunter,

Thank you for your recent write-up about Restaurant.com. I appreciate your thorough thoughts and critical look at our site, particularly with your financial savings expertise. I wanted to reach out and address a few points in the piece to clarify our services for you and your visitors.

First, thank you very much for using Restaurant.com. I’m just sorry to hear that you found a favorite restaurant only to discover that it was no longer participating in the program. If your issue was not resolved we will follow up and take care of the matter immediately. Our policy for any similar instance of a restaurant no longer taking part in the program is to issue credit to customers holding their unused gift certificates. That credit can then be applied for thousands of other options on our site. Again, I apologize for the disappointing experience and please do let me know if it’s still unresolved.

Second, a binding contract is in place between restaurant owners and Restaurant.com, requiring restaurants to honor our restaurant gift certificates. The contracts allow us to promote their restaurants and obligate them to honor the certificates. We need a restaurant’s permission and cooperation before ever including them within our program. As long as diners are using the gift certificate according to the stated terms, the restaurant is required to accept the gift certificate. We never like to hear when restaurants fail to hold up their end of our agreement and it’s neither our policy nor our practice to allow restaurants to breach their contracts at the expense of our customers. If there’s ever any doubt, customers can always reach us at 1-800-979-8985 or at info@restaurant.com.

Finally, you are correct to point out that one gift certificate is valid per restaurant per month. This term and others are stated before, during and after purchase. Terms of use are a very important part of using our gift certificates. We post them conspicuously in the following locations:

• Main “Terms” link at the footer of each page
• Within each specific restaurant micro-site page
• On the actual printed gift certificate

I hope the above information answers some of the questions that you raised. I also hope that we can get you back to visit another Restaurant.com restaurant soon!

[ ... ]

Thanks again,

Jeff

Jeff Conlin
VP, PR & Corporate Communications
Restaurant.com

A couple of comments on his note:

1. First, it was not the case that a restaurant failed to honor a certificate that I had printed out because they had dropped out of the program.  The restaurant dropped out of the program entirely, which they are entitled to do, which meant that I could not exchange my Dinner of the Month certificates (essentially uncommitted dining certificates for particular restaurants) for that restaurant anymore.  Every certificate that I’ve printed out for a specific restaurant has been honored.
2. I wasn’t sure about the one certificate per restaurant per month rule, but Jeff clarified that this is true.
3. I’m very satisfied with Restaurant.com and the fact that they took the time to write a note to me improves my feelings about them.

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