Whenever my husband and I go out for dinner on a week night, we play a little game that we created, quite by accident. It's called the $20 Challenge. It all started one night in a local family restaurant. We were both so exhausted from work that we were almost too tired to eat. So instead of starting with a couple of glasses of wine, we both asked for large waters and placed our food order. When our bill arrived, it only came to $16. With the tip, we ate out for under $20 and yet, we were both full and rehydrated!

We do love to eat out often, but it can get very expensive after a few wines have been added on to the bill. We decided that night that we would try to keep our bill under $20 whenever we ate out on a week night. And the easiest way to do this was to eliminate those overpriced alcoholic beverages. After all, why pay $8 to $10 for a glass of wine that was poured from a $7.99 bottle? We can drink wine at home for a whole lot less! The same applies to coffee and dessert - we can have that at home, too, if we really want it.

We've been playing this game for about a year and having fun doing this, although we don't eat out as often as we once did. We're very selective about the restaurants we go to now, but they're all well-known. Sometimes we're off by a couple of dollars because of the tip and that's OK. Besides saving money, we've found that we are actually ordering healthier choices, we no longer order unnecessary appetizers and desserts, and we drink lots of water. We also have the added advantage of always being able to pay the bill in cash so we don't have to see credit card bills with restaurant charges. And we can now leave a restaurant without feeling like we were royally screwed. Of course, we don't subject our friends to this game when we go out with them. But they do know about it and I think that secretly, they're all trying it too!

Janice Gorman

Lincoln