Does it Ever Make Sense to Eat Out Financially?

This will be a short post, mostly just some simple math. My wife made salmon cakes tonight along with a side of Brussels sprouts that were seasoned with cayenne pepper and some balsamic vinegar. The salmon was canned and cost $5.52 and the Brussels sprouts I ate were probably from a package that cost about $2.50 and we ate half of that bringing it to a cost of $1.25. The cayenne pepper and and balsamic vinegar I’ll roughly estimate the portions used cost about $.30 (and that’s probably on the high end). With two servings (unsurprisingly, my daughter did not eat this meal), that brings the cost of this meal to $3.54 per serving, rounded up. That does not include the cost of using the electricity for my stove, the water I drank, nor the napkins I used.

 

This made me think, what was my average cost of meals for the current month? So far, this month, we have spent $218.48 on groceries (this number does include napkins, but not water) and $88.32 in credit and $11 in cash on dining out for a total of 16 meals (that’s 8 different times we have dined, but was split 16 ways among myself, my wife, and my daughter) totaling $99.32. I’ll subtract this number from the total number of days so far (18) multiplied by 3 meals per day by 3 people, so (18x3x3)-16=146. My wife and daughter were also gone for 2 of those days with family, where they did not purchase groceries nor spend our money to dine out, so we will subtract 12 meals for them that weekend (2 people x 3 meals/day x 2 days) = 12 meals. So our grand total of dining in is 134 meals so far this month.

 

So let’s compare these numbers now. For dining out  $99.32 / 16 meals = $6.21 per meal.  For dining in: $218.48/ 125  =$1.63 per meal. That is crazy! We are literally spending 3.81 times the amount it costs us to dine in to eat out! Now, of course, there were some things that had to be done: my wife and daughter traveled to see family for a weekend this month, which necessitated some airport food purchases. As a family, we took a 1 day mini vacation at a nearby city and we ate out for lunch and dinner, which was bit of a splurge, but one that was planned. But the others? Probably laziness because we didn’t want to cook or something. I also imagine that the disparity will increase as the number grows since we recently went grocery shopping and it should last us at least several more days.

What does this number mean to me? Assuming I don’t care about my health or the quality of the food, it means that dining out meals that are at or under $1.63 per person are at least the same price of what I’d pay to eat at home, on average. I’d even be willing to bump it up to $2 after having to account for my electricity and water use to cook, drink, and then clean my dish and glass. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of options to eat out that are quality food at $2 per person. Looking at my dining, I see that our pizza orders, priced at $6.40 come the closest, because between the 3 of us we usually get 5 meals out of it (all three of us eat two slices or so for dinner, and then usually two of us get 1 slice each for lunch the next day, for a total of 5 meals) thus making each meal $1.28. A plain bagel my wife ordered in the airport for $1.37 also qualifies. Not much else does.

 

Just some food for thought. 😉