Cost of Eating in VS Eating out for single or married w/o kids

[Romaneats]

Someone else actually posted this school of thought on their lawn maintenance...

So say if that guy were to make $100 per hr and needs to work in the labor cost and work plus energy cost, machinery cost etc..

Then it may not be worth doing that labor yourself.

So same with cooking vs eating out.
How much are you worth for your time, the energy cost, utensils wear n tear, materials cost for food etc..
And if you actually like cooking.

Just another way of looking at it.

[tassity22]

Cooking and eating at home does cost money, contrary to what most people believe.

[Caligula1]

Eating at home is for the most part always going to be cheaper.
If your eating out with a family of four, you are really paying for five or more when you factor in the tipping..

It also depends on what you are eating, it's probably going to be cheaper to order pizza instead of making it yourself.
Cheese and toppings are expensive, making dough is very time consuming.

If your talking down home comfort food such as meatloaf and mashed, it would be cheaper to eat at home..
It's not cheap to shop and cook anymore, I manage but I'm very frugal with my food budget and look at prices carefully.
My meal plans tend to revolve around what's on sale or can be had on the cheap.
Sometimes this does not make for the healthiest eating as I refuse to buy fresh produce if the prices are up there.
I very rarely if ever buy boxed stuff though except maybe yellow rice, an occasional box of stove top, tater tots that sort of thing.

[in_newengland]

We mostly eat at home. Yesterday we went out to an Indian restaurant for lunch-- things are cheaper on the lunch menu. My husband was still shocked by the bill.

We each had a small curried lamb dish with rice. There was that naan bread with some delicious sauce. He had an Indian beer. We shared ice cream for dessert (too much for one person.)

The bill was about $30.

Each meal was about $9.99. Lamb is expensive and I could not have cooked this meal at home but the bigger problem is that he had the expensive beer and we had dessert. Thus, it came to $30. It was fairly reasonable but dh hadn't factored in the beer and dessert. Then the tax and tip added to the $30.00.

So we will go out for something we enjoy and can't/won't make at home. For something like pancakes, I can make them better at home and serve them with real maple syrup and real fruit. Flour is cheap, eggs are pretty cheap, some oil, baking powder, milk. Frozen blueberries are cheap when you buy a huge bag.

At the little townie place down the street three pancakes are $5.50. You do NOT get maple syrup; you get some cheap "topping" flavored with either strawberries or blueberries but no actual berries in it. Then you might want coffee=$2.00. So $7.50+tax+tip is more than it costs to make something better at home. It would be about $10 by the time I got out of there--and I HATE not getting real maple syrup and being stuck with some fake flavored "topping" instead.

They charge $3.95 for one poached egg. Yes, it's free range but I can probably buy a dozen free range eggs for $5.00. It takes water and heat from the stove to make a poached egg.

It gets complicated but if you are just using the top of the stove to poach an egg or make pancakes, you aren't using much electricity. I can't really compare how much a roast beef dinner would cost although I could calculate the ingredients--it's the cost of electricity that is hard to factor in.

[Ohky0815]

Originally Posted by SpeedyAZ

pound of hamburger (smallest size), 6 hamburger buns, some chips, and a 2 liter of soda...the cost easily exceeded $10. I could easily eat out on that if I wanted.

1lbs hamburger is $3 here, buns are $1, chips are $1 and 2l soda is $1. =$6. There are cheaper options too.

[CAjerseychick]

I fed both of us tonight with $6 worth of beef strips pan fried with some onion and frozen broccoli- I would say it came in right at about $10 for two people!
O and some rice but thats darn cheap- maybe $12 for the two of us.