Cooking at home is always one of those things that we, as Newlyweds, have always planned on doing. People who we know, including other newlywed families, may not have had this same agenda, or have simply not done enough to follow this plan. Yet, I still hear the complaints and the justifications just about everyday about debt.
As a newlywed, I have always heard of people trying to scrounge around for money because they just don't have enough, don't make enough, or just don't have the time. I don't come from a well-to-do family and only had about $1000 to my name when I started college. My mother was a single mom who worked for little pay, but she always said it was a good thing to treat your self every once in a while.
This is something that has stuck with me still, even as my wife and I take the time to save just about every cent we make. We keep a budget of nearly $80 a week for food. Why so high, you ask? The reason is because we don't really eat out. Occasionally we'll get a pizza or go out somewhere to try something new. We're not sitting at home eating ramen and rice all week. We're also not each $5 pizzas everyday. There are still ways to scrimp and save, but there's also a quality of life to maintain. Still, each week, we manage to eat things like cordon bleu, boneless chicken wings, and a lot of the rest of things which we adore.
If you calculate out the cost of creating the meals that you are buying from scratch, you'll find that you are mostly paying for the time of the cooks. The day I was sitting at home and was craving some boneless chicken wings, it didn't take long for me to get online and look up the nearest Buffalo Wilds Wings. There menu prices showed that it was somewhere around $20 for a large order of wings, which includes that there will be atleast 24 or something included (I once got over 30 on my plate!).
When I got to thinking about it, there was a bag of frozen chicken breasts in our freezer that we had bought for $8. I was trying to think about how many of Buffalo Wild Wings wings I could make from a single breast. When I realized that there was 7 wings that I could carve out of each breast and that there was 7 breasts in the bag, I became well aware that I was wasting my money. I busted out the pot and oil, went online for some wing sauce recipes, and started cooking. The first time I tried cooking these, it took well over an hour to finish, though were delicious. Recently, I've been able to prepare dozens of wings in nearly 15 minutes. That means I'm making the same meal for a third of the price! Now, I love Buffalo Wild Wings. I've found their service to be generally good and their wings to be delicious.
One of the places that I've loved to eat in the past is Olive Garden, mostly for the breadsticks that they serve; however, my wife and I have stopped going almost entirely. Why is that? The reason is that the cost of the meals, apart from the appetizers, are so expensive that my wife and I could make the same meals for nearly a half of a price, if not less! Occasionally, when we receive a gift card from family or friends, we nearly always get the fried calamari, something that we don't make or haven't made yet. The amazing thing is, people are paying out their eyes for pasta which they can buy for $1 at the store, maybe a little more for higher quality. But the thing is, after you prepare the same meal, you'll be able to do it at least one more time afterwards.
There are times when it is nice to not cook when family comes into town, or being able to have different meals when people have different tastes; but it shouldn't break your bank account to do it. I would just recommend looking beyond your first glance to decide to not waste your money. It seems that people accept these bloated prices out of convenience or the inappropriate justification that these are just what the prices are. In a sense, it's true that the prices probably won't change much just because you stop going to these places, but that won't be your problem anymore.
It's amazing how much food you can buy with the same amount of money that you eat out with, but I will say this, if I find a meal that I just can beat, I'll fork out the money. It just has to be worth it.
