Food is one of the top three expenses in the American household right next to housing and transportation. There are a few good articles on this topic that can be found HERE, HERE ,  HERE, and HERE.

Due to the restrictions and shutdowns during, well…you know when, cooking at home has increased by 6.4% and eating out decreased by 10.4%. The gap is most likely filled with home delivery services like Grub Hub and Uber Eats which enables many people to eat at home, but not cook at home. In September 2021 there was a 20% increase in Fast Food Consumption…so we are now seeing a return to “normal” in this area of life. Below are the % statistics on fast food consumption based on a CNN Health Study that can be found HERE..

Breakfast 22.7% ; Snacks 22.6% ;  Lunch 43.7% ; Dinner 42%

That is nearly a 1/4th of the population in the US shelling out BIG $$ for breakfast and snacks and almost HALF of the population at lunch and dinner. THAT IS AN INSANE AMOUNT OF MONEY being spent on food EVERY DAY!

THE COMPARISON CHALLENGE

Lets look at a comparison scenario based on my family of five and how much we would spend eating at home most of the time compared to eating out. 

Since two of our boys are at our house 50% of the time, I will reduce the number of family members to 4 just to account for the time discrepancy.

The last time I went grocery shopping  (1/14/2023), it was a big one because we were out of almost everything…breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack foods, plus vitamins, paper goods, cleaning supplies and personal care. This is also at the height of the big inflation on food prices. My bill from Walmart was $425 and some change…this is for a two-week period. So, lets take $50 off for the non-food type items. That takes the total down to $375 for 14 days with 4 people to feed. Lets crunch some numbers…

$401/ 14 days = $28.64 per day 

Now, divide that amongst my 4 people.  $26.79 / 4 people = $7.16 per day 

Now, divide that by 3 meals a day for each person. $6.69 / 3 meals = $2.38 per meal.

That seems really reasonable and I didn’t even include snacks. So even if we included one nicer meal out for all 5 of us, which we did this past weekend and broke it down to a daily amount, I am still looking at less than $5.00 per day, per person. Our dinner out cost right around $90.00 including a tip.  That is roughly $18 per person just for one meal…maybe two if we all took leftovers, which we didn’t (only 2 of the 5 of us had leftovers). One meal out is 3 times the amount of money per person as eating groceries at home for a whole day. 

Don’t shoot the messenger…I’m not saying not to eat out… I LOVE EATING OUT! I’m just crunching the numbers here…and saying that reducing the amount of times consumers eat out would greatly improve our cash flow and our health.

OK…now for the eating out scenario based on the above mentioned study, we know that a TON of people eat out multiple meals and even snacks per day…so lets see how much they or we could be spending in the same 14 day period.

The average prices of fast food are as follows; breakfast is $4.33, lunch is between $4 and $7, and dinner is between $6 and $10. We will err on the side of mid to low range with our prices for this scenario and we will not include snacks since we didn’t in the eat at home scenario.

Breakfast out $4.00 + Lunch $5.00 + Dinner $8.00 = $17.00 per day

Now, multiply that by 4 people . $17 x 4 people = $68.00/per day

Now, multiply that by 14 days. $68.00 x 14 days = $952.00 for two weeks

TWO WEEKS OF EATING OUT = $952.00

TWO WEEKS OF EATING AT HOME = $401.00

THAT IS A DIFFERENCE aka SAVINGS OF $551.00

Ya’ll, in a month, that would be a savings of $1154.00 which is MORE than my house payment for our house and 17 acres of land. Literally, I could make my house payment, go get an hour massage and a pedicure… just by eating most of my meals at home. 

I challenge you to look at your meal plans and do some number crunching…how much could you save by grocery shopping and eating in a bit more?

Until next time…Laters & XOXO