Why do so many people think eating out is a waste of money?

SlavOz on 07/11/2019 - 20:02
Last edited 08/11/2019 - 09:14 by 1 other user

Eating out is like the devil to financially savvy people. I can't believe how bad of a reputation its gotten, when in reality it hardly makes a difference to your finances. Here's the math on a hypothetical situation:

You can get a decent lunch deal for $10-15. I don't mean Maccas or any other fast food - I mean a freshly prepared chicken salad, or butter chicken, a few plates of sushi, or even some lamb tandoori. At an average of $13 a day for 5 days, you're out $65 a week for buying lunch.

Now subtract the total cost of 5 days worth of raw ingredients to make the meals yourself. You're looking at least $20. Factor in another $15 for electricity and water used for cooking/cleaning. To make your own lunch for those 5 days, you would spend around $35.

Congratulations - you're saving $30 a week by eating in. That's about the average person's full-time hourly wage. How long would it take you to prepare the meals yourself, heat them up, and clean up afterwards? Probably more than an hour.

For someone on hourly pay with a busy lifestyle, accounting for overtime rates, that extra hour could've been spent at work which would yield you at least $45. So accounting for time (which is just as valuable as money), you're almost better off buying your lunch if you can do it strategically.

Feel free to neg me if you own 7 houses by the age of 23 by giving up your avo on toast.

Food & Grocery

Comments

    • leiiv on 11/11/2019 - 00:03

      Making your own food may cost more if you buy the ingredients when they are priced at the highest point, eg $10 tomatoes per kilo..

  • dbun1 on 10/11/2019 - 17:10
    +1

    I bulk cook lunches on the weekend. Works out to be $4-$5 a portion usually is a piece of chicken breast or thigh fillet with varying salad and veggie combos.

    Heck, when I can’t be bothered I just fill a tub with a packet of wraps, bag of salad, tomatoes, cheese etc (whatever fillings you want) and make wraps for lunch. Swap the wraps for whatever other bread you prefer.

    Yes, there are meals around at local Asian shops for $5 but you are getting far less meat and lots of fillers like onion or potatoes etc to make it appear substantial. Value for money wise it is very poor. I can guarantee that you won’t be getting a full chicken breast or thigh filet in those servings.

    Dinners are usually a few meals batch cooked on the weekend and then easy things like pan dried fish or steaks etc the other days for variety.

    The whole “I can earn money in the hour I spend doing xyz” argument is thrown around a lot yet rarely holds true for most people.

  • lltravel on 10/11/2019 - 19:06

    lmao this is ozbargain

    Everyone here eats youfoodz and mcdonlads 1 dollar big macs

  • freakatronic on 10/11/2019 - 20:21

    Hot damn I have no idea how you can make ends if you're spending $15 on electricity for lunch. What are you doing, frying it with a beam of pure lightning?

  • MrGareth on 10/11/2019 - 21:53

    Am I the only one that buys stuff from NQR for lunches? The little packaged meals for $1.50, and the frozen meals for $2.50 - $3… All still in date (and the aldi frozen meals too).

  • cloudy on 10/11/2019 - 22:19

    So many comments, not sure if this has been said already. But Op needs to look it from this point of POV.

    When buying your lunch, you guesstimate too high the cost of ingredients (will cost you).

    The cost of ingredients really cost around 10-20% of the meal. So paying $15 for a meal is only costing $2 in ingredients to make. The other $13 is, "other", taxes, profit, utilities etc.

    Add in your water and power, which others has mentioned your meal cost has gone from $2 to $2.05. (yea, only about 5c in power and water me thinks.)

    ofcourse as Scrooge has said, time is money. You can factor the time it takes you to make food etc and if paying that circa $13 for time saved is worth it (and I agree, to many, it can be).

    But least not forget, you may be slow now in preparing your meals, but if you get into the habit of it, it'll be pretty quick and easy.

    • leiiv on 10/11/2019 - 23:57

      Please give an example. Guzman's chicken nachos is $13. It is impossible to to buy the ingredients for only $2. Just the avocado alone already cost you $2, and that is when on special.
      And are you going to make the nachos from scratch? It will take much more time to do that..

      • cloudy on 11/11/2019 - 14:13

        Lol. You say an avocado costs $2, but Guzman would use a fraction of one avo.

        So by costing the whole avocado is OPs mistake, same with yours.

        Just because you use a small amount of avo doesn’t mean you have throw the avo away.

        • SlavOz on 11/11/2019 - 15:53

          That's speculative - you can't possibly know how much or how little avocado is used.

          And you don't need to throw the avocado after a small use but some people only enjoy cerrtian things (like avocado) once or twice a week with certain meals. That explains why the average household throws away a lot of food due to spoilage.

          • cloudy on 11/11/2019 - 17:41
            +1

            @SlavOz: It’s piss easy to know how much avo is used, eat enough of it and you can easily guess how much is used, I used to work at the vic market, and I could put any weight of apples within 50gr variance into bag.

            I eat avo spread on my toast most mornings and I can easily see how much avocado is used at cafes.

            But given you seem to eat out lots and make your own food not often I can see how it would be speculative for you.

            • SlavOz on 11/11/2019 - 18:12

              @cloudy: No, it's speculative for both of us because you can't possibly know how much avocado is used in a dish or dip. Unless you work at Gomez or the particular store in question, your estimation is only speculative by definition. "Because it tastes like a lot of avocados" doesn't count as proof.

              • cloudy on 12/11/2019 - 13:23
                +1

                @SlavOz: It’s speculative for you, it’s a very well educated guess for me.

                Guessing weight or volume, is a bit like a driver has to estimate speed when entering a street. After a bit of driving it’s not hard to do, if it’s too hard one must get off the road.

                You don’t seem to buy groceries and make food much, hence why you speculate costs of gas and power to be $15, if you spent some time to figure it out you will be closer to the ball park.

        • leiiv on 12/11/2019 - 02:19
          +2

          You have not given your example yet. Of course there is only a fraction of avo in a portion, but you still need to buy at least one. I am sure some people have thrown their left over avo because it went bad. Assume that the nachos has 1/4 avo = $ 0.5. Still, no way you can get the rest of the ingredients under $2. Unless you can buy everything on special, which requires even more effort. Want to make the chips yourself? The oil to fry them may even cost more. The restaurant may be able to get the ingredients at 20% cost, but it is just impossible if you buy retail in coles/woolies.
          And if we are comparing discounted items apple to apple, you really can’t beat the $5 burritos..

          • cloudy on 12/11/2019 - 13:20
            +1

            @leiiv: Yes, you are right if you are making one meal and that’s it.

            I happen to eat 3 times a day 7 days a week, so does my wife and kids. So, fair enough if one really thinks everything that goes unused needs to be thrown.

            I don’t live in such a throw away world, if I have excess avo I just eat avo , if it’s just excess nachos I just eat the chip. It’s fine by me. It all comes down to are making a single meal period, or you gonna eat long term.

          • TEER3X on 16/11/2019 - 17:34

            @leiiv: Nothing wrong with freezing avocado

            Restaurants do it all the time, where do you think your smashed avo comes from?

  • wombat81 on 10/11/2019 - 22:23
    +2

    No, eating out once isn't a big deal financially, especially for 1 person. It's getting into the habit of eating out regularly that's the issue. If you eat out 10 times, I guarantee you won't do it as cheaply as you are suggesting every time. You probably won't even do it cheaply 50% of the time.

  • GUYANDSON on 11/11/2019 - 10:27
    +3

    It really is though, I'm single and cook for myself, I generally spend around $60 a week on groceries - this covers all of my meals. And I think I eat pretty well. Generally when I go out to eat I spend at least $15 a meal. Lunch/dinner specials plus a drink ends up being at least $18. Just need to meal prep.

    My groceries this week;

    2x bunches of asparagus - $4
    500g green beans - $2
    head of broccoli - $1
    3x Lebanese Cucumbers - $3
    1kg of Chicken thighs - $9
    1kg of pork chops - $16
    Dozen eggs - $4
    1/2kg of bacon - $5
    fancy loaf of bread - $3

    that's $48. I did a cookup yesterday for today, tomorrow and wednesday -

    Cut up and steamed half the veggies (aspag, beans, brocc)
    Pan fried half the chicken thighs
    Marinated half the pork chops
    Hard boiled half the eggs
    baked 6x strips of bacon

    split up into;

    Breakfast - Hard boiled eggs, bacon, toast
    Lunch - Chicken thighs & steamed veggies
    Dinner - Rice, fry up the pork chops, slices of cucumber, slices of homegrown tomatoes, pickled carrots and a fried egg

    Took about half an hour all up on sunday and maybe 15 minutes for dinner.

    Come Wednesday, I'll probably grab a curry mix ($5?) and some vermicelli ($1?) to make a pork curry with the veggies on the side and a chicken noodle soup. This will probably take about an hour (active time) to put together wednesday or thursday night.

    If I isolate to just my lunches? that's typically chicken/other meat + veggies, which usually comes out around $15 for the week. $15 vs. $60 a week for lunch. That's a 45$ difference. Over the working year (48 weeks) that's nearly $2.2k difference, take out $200 on electricity/water and ongoing consumables (rice, spices, oils, sauces, stocks). That's $2k, 2k is flights and accommodation for me on a holiday somewhere nice.

  • esty on 11/11/2019 - 11:43
    +1

    my weekly food groceries is $50 a week covering 5x breakfast meals 5x Lunch Meals, 5x Dinner Meals. So just ur lunch calculation is already more

  • R4 on 11/11/2019 - 12:49
    +1

    Take away coffee is the biggest scam. I Work with people who buy 3 a day - just under $15 or $75 a week.

    Each to their own, but no thanks.

  • Nobby47 on 11/11/2019 - 12:50
    +3

    Just wasted far too much time reading this thread when I could have been making my lunch.

  • DaveT217 on 11/11/2019 - 12:51
    +2

    Right, so are you only eating out lunch, cook at home breakfast and dinner? Or you mean you don't cook at all? Or you only eat lunch and skip the breakfast and dinner? Because you only calculated eating out lunch. What really makes the differences between eating out and cook at home is the amount of ingredients you can use the leftover for something else too. Yes it does take time, but if I spend my time cooking, I make around 2-3 portions at a time, for dinner and lunch the next day. And yes, I worked in a number restaurants before, trust me, nothing will be fresh, especially for anything less than $15 a meal, even at a fancy restaurant, they won't be fresh as well. The only exception are buffet, and super fancy restaurants.

  • Bad Company on 11/11/2019 - 12:57
    +1

    Congratulations - you're saving $30 a week by eating in. That's about the average person's full-time hourly wage. How long would it take you to prepare the meals yourself, heat them up, and clean up afterwards? Probably more than an hour.

    For someone on hourly pay with a busy lifestyle, accounting for overtime rates, that extra hour could've been spent at work which would yield you at least $45. So accounting for time (which is just as valuable as money), you're almost better off buying your lunch if you can do it strategically.

    The assumption is that extra hour can be spent on making income, but for people with fixed salary the extra hour does not mean extra income.

    Not to mention, when you have a family, making your own lunch simply means making a bigger meal so you have left overs to take into work the next day.

    Also don't forget that saving $30 means pocketing the entire $30, working an extra hour for an extra $45 means the government takes away half that.

    • TEER3X on 16/11/2019 - 17:32

      He's obviously trading crypto in that spare hour, it's a much more lucrative side gig than delivering fat food

  • cynicalmike on 11/11/2019 - 13:07
    +2

    eating is such an inefficient waste of time and money

    recommend op becomes a breatharian

  • ESEMCE on 11/11/2019 - 14:56
    +1

    Firstly, $15/week for water and electricity is a massive overestimate..
    Power is 40c/kWh (at most), so your $15/week is more than 15 hours worth of "Oven On" time just to prepare your lunch each week?
    Water is fractions of a cent per litre and the vast majority of water is used washing your clothes and body, water for cooking and cleaning is a rounding error!

    Even so, running with your own numbers, saving $30/week over 52 weeks = $1500 in the bank!
    Using realistic numbers you're looking at easily $2000 per person!

    • SlavOz on 12/11/2019 - 19:10
      -1

      I guarantee that every single person in this thread can easily save over $1500 a year by making simple, everyday adjustments. Most people won't because they'd rather have the convenience. But if the total savings were more like $15,000 - that's when people would sit up and take notice.

      So at $1500 for eating out, it's hardly something to gawk at. Compared to smoking, drinking, or opting for the newest iPhone versus the cheaper Nokia, eating out is hardly the massive money-wasting epidemic it's made out to be.

  • Phreakuency on 11/11/2019 - 19:43
    +1

    It's much cheaper preparing your own.

    Common sense really.

    You're paying for the food, the preparation, the staff wages and building rent when eating out.

  • nurbsenvi on 11/11/2019 - 22:04
    +1

    I really hate the whole process:

    Driving to Coles waste fuel, time and add milliege on your depreciating asset.
    Finding a parking spot hoping that some careless kid smashes door on your deprecating asset.

    Grab a 900 pound trolly.

    Find items that are deliberately scattered around the big arse warehouse in hopes to attract you to buy something you don't need.

    Waiting at the checkout cue where you will be greeted by a cashier who can't give two farks about 200s customer which is you.

    Oh shit you forgot reusuable ba
    Pay for the plastic bags

    Blah blah cleaning up after you cook cleaning up after yiu eat

    Shit show if you ask me.

  • newjerseydamo on 12/11/2019 - 06:20
    +1

    It’s not a matter of thinking, it’s a matter of knowing.
    Mathematics is a wonderful thing.

    As many have stated, you clearly have no understanding of utility costs.

    And based on your responses, you have no interest in hearing any other point of view.
    So basically, you were only after validation of your own thoughts and beliefs.

    So just keep doing you.

    • SlavOz on 12/11/2019 - 19:02

      If I responded, then it means I must have read the different points of view against me. So can't really claim I wasn't interested in other opinions.

      Disagreeing with an opinion doesn't mean I'm not interested in it. I've enjoyed this thread and have definitely gotten some good insight. I could just as easily claim that those who disagree with me "don't care about hearing other points of view" but that would be a stretch.

  • Dr Prepper on 12/11/2019 - 10:34

    I agree with the cook in bulk and freeze crew. That is what many take away places do as well.

    When I was poor I would make 4 or 5 meals from a single bbq chook from Woolies when they would reduce at 8pm then freeze for the week.

    Other good ways to stretch your $$$ are no name powdered milk. 1/2 price bulk rice. Always buy seasonal vegetables otherwise frozen will do.

    • SlavOz on 12/11/2019 - 19:00

      We're you legitimately poor or just being ultra frugal? It's not right that someone in a land as plentiful as Australia should have to get by on waiting for reduced chicken every night. I grew up in an ultra poor, proper "third-world" country but when I go back there everyone is fat and stuffed. They struggle financially but they don't skimp when it comes to eating.

  • dji1111111 on 12/11/2019 - 11:36
    +1

    Your estimate of electricity and water are so far off.
    $15 per week just in electricity and water to cook lunch? Are you serious?
    That's $780 per year. That sounds like a reasonable estimation for you?
    Depending on how you organise your lunch, you may not make a massive saving but most definitely you will eat better quality meals.
    If you're cooking in bulk or cooking for a family, you will definitely make a massive saving so I think you're very wrong.

  • Bills22 on 12/11/2019 - 12:52
    +2

    Cost benefits aside. The cost of making such and such will be a certain value over a certain period of time vs. what the restaurant sells and provides. I tend to go and dine out where I may not be able to make an item on the menu or I just want to enjoy myself. Usually it's a combination of both - not because of the cost.

    If you are looking at it from a frugal point of view - eating out is not worth it. You can do the costings from there and will most likely stay on the positive.
    If you are looking at it from "can I make this type of food point of view" …then you may need to go figure out further.
    If you are looking at it from a enjoyment point of view, sure it is worth it.

    Maybe we could do a item and menu comparison, then work out the costs and see if you'd be better off making the dish at home (not exactly the same final dish) vs. just eating out.

    I tend to cook at home more as I find it more fun trying out different recipes and cuisines.

  • Eeples on 12/11/2019 - 14:13
    +2

    Spending $20+ on a pasta meal seems like a joke to me.

    I also think when 1 person goes to a restaurant they ought to be given the best seat. After all they have chosen to come to that particular restaurant for the food (as opposed to others who come in groups who have typically come for a variety of reasons).

  • superValue on 12/11/2019 - 14:26
    +3

    @SlavOZ you could write a book.

    Why eating out is not a waste of money
    Tips on how to improve you life and well being

    • SlavOz on 12/11/2019 - 18:53

      lol LOVE IT!

  • b0rnwithabeard on 13/11/2019 - 14:29

    you're confusing the mindsets - someone who's baulking at the thought of spending $20 on a pasta dish or who just generally considers going out to be a waste of money is obviously saving money for something or simply doesn't have it and would rather make a bulk purchase of something else that will be divvied into smaller meals. And for those people, they enjoy the food prep, so the "time spent" is something they indulge in.

    Also your location is super important too. You say that "You can get a decent lunch deal for $10-15" - my building happens to be smack bang in the middle of a massive tourist area where everything has a huge premium on it. So getting a decent lunch in my area, with the free time that I have, for $10-$15 is almost impossible for me.

    And what about uni students? They would hardly blow $15 on lunch every day - or at least I didn't have the means to.

    not to mention that some people don't like going out, or are not motivated at all by food, so the thought of spending $20 on a meal is just silly. But maybe instead of saying they don't want it, saying "i can't afford that" is an instant out for that person without having to justify their "why".

  • baskinghobo on 14/11/2019 - 10:36

    I used to spend $65 a week on groceries and products for two people before i went keto. I've found that eating out usually costs around $12. So that's more than a third of my grocery budget for a meal for two people. Granted i was ozbargaining pretty hard using prichipster but once you learn what your staple items are / which brands are the cheapest while still good quality / buy specials in bulk and have a good sense of what foods should only be bought sparingly it isn't that hard to spend $65 a week. I was eating delicious food too (japanese food). The initial learning curve is the hardest part. I wasn't even trying to budget, i just found out when i started using pocketsmith that i would usually spend $65 a week on groceries over a 1 month period. Although i do go to coles almost everyday instead of shopping for the entire week like most people but that's just because i enjoy going out and i believe that it helps stop me from wasting food and only buy what's necessary.

    I will agree with you though that cooking can be time consuming. Time is my biggest annoyance with cooking and it can take a long time until you master it. But since cooking is something you will be doing your whole life, you might as well start now and it does get better. Learn the shortcuts, get better pans and learn to cook in bulk which will all contribute in reducing the amount of time spent cooking. I've learnt over the years that i should avoid cooking or at least make simple meals when i have a busy day as the busy days becomes weeks and i've spent most of my limited free time cooking when i was hoping to do something more productive.

    Also once you go keto, you will realise how shit eating high carbs can make you feel, which fast food is loaded with. So your wasting time in other less noticeable ways - by lacking energy.

    • SlavOz on 14/11/2019 - 18:43

      I've done keto before. You're right about how crappy carbs make you feel. You don't realize until you go off them how much better your body does. And I always found keto meals are so easy to cook. A steak on the grill with some veggies - no time wasted peeling potatoes or rising and boiling rice.

  • wishart on 15/11/2019 - 10:52

    Some MealPal meals are just $5 but during weekdays lunch time and in City/North Sydney only. How affordable is that? Saving even more

  • coffeelover19 on 20/11/2019 - 10:37

    Well cooking at home is not only cost effective but the most important thing is it's much better for your health since you know exactly what goes into your body. I assume that you probably never worked in a restaurant to know the definition of "fresh" there. I am not saying No No to eating out, I did eat out a lot when I can't manage cooking but it should not be the replacement for home cook foods at all.

  • Kenvin on 20/11/2019 - 10:39

    lol

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