As the price of living continues to increase, many of us keep pointing out how expensive our food seems. Our food is indeed costly, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s easy to default to going out to eat or ordering in, but these options cost us far more than we may realize. Take a step back and consider whether your eating patterns are costing you more for your future than you realize.
Eating Out: Convenience at a Premium
Eating out may provide convenience and social benefits, but the higher financial cost means it’s something that should be limited where possible. Here are some things to consider:
- Higher Meal Prices: restaurants charge for the food, preparation, ambiance, and service. This means that the total price for the same amount of food can be substantially higher.
- Additional Costs: Tips and taxes are almost always added on top, leading to even higher prices. Worst of all are the delivery fees if you order your food. These additional costs can build up dramatically.
- Frequent Dining Out: Doing this often can quickly add up, making sticking to your budget harder.
Nutrition
With more and more people focusing on their health and wellness, the drawbacks to eating out become even more apparent. If you’re trying to step towards a healthier lifestyle, limiting the amount of food you know nothing about is essential. Eating out leaves you with none of the nutritional information that at-home meals can provide.
Smaller Items
While we might think of full meals as the biggest expense when eating out, it’s very frequently the smaller purchases that add up. Take Coffee, for example. It’s a relatively cheap single purchase, but if you buy your coffee at a cafe every morning, you're spending orders of magnitude more money in the long run. Consider making it at home if possible. It’s an investment that absolutely pays off long-term.
These all seem obvious and simple, but sometimes, we just need to make the conscious decision to change our habits.
Eating Budget Friendly
No one is saying you should never go out to eat. It’s a way for people to connect, and there’s nothing wrong with spending extra on entertainment now and then. As we’ve discussed in our Budgeting and Saving blog, there’s a place for eating out. However, if you’re still in a relatively unstable financial position, especially if you’re young, it's far better to put this extra money towards your other goals. Here’s a couple tips:
- Meal Plan: Consider planning out your meals at the beginning of your week. This increases transparency and can make budgeting easier, but also reduces the temptation to go out to eat when you don’t have to.
- Use Meal Prep Services: If you’re someone who hates cooking, there are plenty of meal prep services out there, both local and online, that can offer easy-to-eat meals that are still significantly cheaper than eating at a restaurant.
- Redirect Towards Goals: If you’re banking with Old Glory Bank, take a look at the Goals section in the mobile app. Set some financial goals you’d like to meet, like a new phone, and then redirect the extra money you would’ve spent on delivery or eating out to those goals.
- Make the Small Things Too: Remember that coffee, small breakfasts, smoothies, or other small things you might buy on a daily basis can almost always be made cheaper at home. The markups on these items are especially large, even compared to meals, so there is an even greater potential to save money here.
Conclusion
Ultimately, there’s a variety of different ways you can tackle budgeting for food. The key is just being conscious of how you do it. Many people go through life not considering the outsized costs they’re paying for their food. You can cook every meal, subscribe to a meal prep service, or even grow your own food if you really feel like it. It’s not a matter of doing a specific thing but just making sure that your food consumption is aligning with your broader goals.
