This one is funny.

Sometimes I order from the kids menu. Mostly it's about money, or not wasting food though. So does Urchling (she's almost 18 now).

So it goes like down like this....

Sometimes, when we eat out with family and friends one or both of us is not that hungry for a full adult plate. We'll either split an adult plate if we can agree on one, one of us will get an adult meal and the other will get kids menu, or we both get a kids meal, depending. If the situation is conducive to getting a doggie bag, then we'll do that and both just get an adult plate and take home the left overs for later.

So how did this come about?

Well, we're both invested in sustainability so food waste is something that we try to eliminate and find hard to swallow (pardon the pun). We're aiming for zero waste. Food wise, we do really well. Eating out is where the most difficulty lays because portion sizes are too big here in America, a lot of restaurant food doesn't keep or reheat well, and since we're night owls we're eating at off times (to us) when we eat out with family and friends. This behavioral adaptation mitigates those issues with waste.

The second thing that led us to this change has to do with money. I put Urchling in charge of the budget at 16 as part of her "how to adult" and "developing financial discipline" education. Whatever she says goes, with her mandate being to increase our net worth as much as possible. Every so often she institutes rationing of various persuasions to see what's effective, and she measures outcome and how much complaining said rationing produces. If it works, it becomes permanent or semi-permanent.

When it's just us and waste isn't an issue, then we've found that every other week gets declared a ration week. If one of both of us is going to be just as satisfied with a kid's meal or splitting an adult plate, we'll do that and move the difference we would have spent over to the savings account.

That kid whittled $10K from household spending the first year and we weren't exactly living high off the hog to begin with. I'm a single parent with zero income from child support.

I don't know how well we're doing this year. I do know that before the inflation started hitting bad, we were at +3K in that savings account for this year in the second week of March.