If you tend to eat out a lot (or eat in with pizza, Chinese takeout, or other fast food), you may feel guilty about the fact that you're not cooking.

To ease this guilt, you may go grocery shopping every week or two and buy vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other perishable foods, with the intention of changing your ways; but you don't change your ways, and the perishables go bad, and you throw them all out. A few weeks later, you start this vicious circle of wasted money all over again.

Here's the thing: Either decide you're going to have someone else cook for you, or decide you're going to cook for yourself. Neither way is inherently good or bad, but don't do both and waste food in the process. If you buy the food, stop eating out until it's gone. If you know you're going to eat out, don't buy the food. You could save a few hundred dollars a month.