budgeting for eating out is always tricky as it usually happens on the fly when you're really hungry. One thing I've done to help budget and make the most of my money is I bought a gift card for a restaurant that my husband and I like to eat at. This restaurant also happens to reward you with points each time you eat and at a certain threshold they comp you $10 toward your next meal. I try to budget for one or two months at a time and put that money on the gift card. I get points when I make the gift card purchase and then points again when we go out to eat and use it. We usually eat out only once or twice a week so having the card is handy because it's prepaid and we earn points to earn free meals along the way. We obviously don't eat every single meal out at this place but it has helped control our eating out.