An Investment that is both Delicious and Nutritious

I have to admit, I've been looking forward to this post for a while now. This is one of my favorite ways to save money AND be healthier. What is it you may ask? COOKING AT HOME. According to this article on CNN, in 2010 the average consumer spent about $2,300 eating out in one year! I did the math, and I could budget my ENTIRE year's worth of groceries at my current spending rate for that. A whole years worth of food in comparison to about 82 meals according to the same article. I know that this data is a little older, but the same principle still applies today--eating out is WAY too expensive to justify doing it more than once or twice a month. Then raises the complaint that cooking takes "too much time" or "I'm a terrible cook, I can't make anything decent to save my life". Newsflash--nobody came out of the womb wielding a spatula and whipping up amazing recipes. Being a good cook is not a talent or God-given gift, it's a lot of practice that yields both excellent, decadent successes and smoky, disastrous failures. I'll admit that cooking at home and making things as complicated and tasty as a nice restaurant meal takes some time, but this time should not be something that you feel annoyed or put off by. First of all, the time that you take to stay home and cook a meal (let's say a $28 dine-out dinner bill) can be equated to almost 3 hours of working pay at $10/hr or a little under. I have to admit, I never spend more than an hour or two preparing and making dinner, so I'm already increasing my pay to about $28/hr. Secondly, this time spent cooking at home is not only an investment as far as money goes, but it is an investment in health. I have always been a strong believer that to get restaurant food that is as healthy as what you can make at home, you have to spend WAY more.

Let's take a look at a case study from the dinner that I made last night--some delicious, vegetarian curry. I looked up the menu for our local Thai restaurant, and to order two plates of veggie curry at this place would be $20 ($9.95 each) without any sides. Here's how much mine cost:

Rice: about .50 worth

Coconut milk: $3.95 for the can

Veggies: (one sweet potato, two peppers, 3 large carrots, half an onion, and a handful of snow peas) about $1

Spices and other things: So minimal that I didn't even try to calculate them.

Side of fresh steamed brussels sprouts: about $1

Water to drink: practically free

Adding all of this up, I spent about $6.50 to make my curry recipe and the brussels sprouts. Here's the catch....it's even cheaper than that per serving, because my recipe made a TON of curry. I'm going to be eating curry literally for the next 3 days. Based on how much it made, I will get about 3 meals for 2 people out of this recipe...so six servings. According to that math, I've saved my self the time of cooking two more dinners AND each serving only cost about $1.10 as opposed to $9.95!!! There is no question here---cooking at home is both cheaper and much better for you (in almost every case). I don't know about you, but I want to live until I'm 95, and I want to go down kickin', and eating super healthy is going to help me do that. How am I going to sustain myself financially until I'm 95 though? Oh yeah, I just have to keep eating at home instead of going out and accruing MASSIVE savings because of it (which I will promptly invest in my Roth IRA* to make even more money!). So, stop complaining about the time or that you're a terrible cook. Get in the kitchen, roll up your sleeves, and make some mistakes. They won't be nearly as costly as hopping in your car to drive down to the nearest restaurant. ;) 

*See earlier article Investing: Seriously simpler than you thought

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