In my opinion, it depends on where you would eat if you ate out. But if you have a nice size family, it is best to cook from home. I enjoy cooking, and my family loves leftovers for later in the day. If you shop with coupons, sales and watch what you buy.. you can do a great dinner from home.
If you think about it, many of the dishes sold at restaurants are designed to be made very quickly and easily. Most of what you enjoy eating out, can likely be made for a fraction of the cost at home with little effort. I can make a kick butt Chicken Marsala or Chicken Picatta at home for a couple dollars, vs. paying like $17 for it in a restaurant, for example.
That's dependent on what you eat. In most cases, if you're buying food in bulk it will be cheaper to cook up your own food. But with the way prices can vary there may be those moments where eating out is cheaper. But keep in mind it's not exactly healthier.
She must eat at unhealthy places. I always thought it was cheaper to make your own meals and eat at home, rather than eat out for every meal. I imagine that would get really pricey. I wonder where she is eating out at. Well, at least she found something that works for her. Me, I prefer eating in the comfort of my own home. I rarely eat out. Maybe once every few months or so.
Exactly, if the same meal at the restaurant is cheaper than you could cook at home, you can bet that restaurant is cutting costs somewhere you don't see, probably the quality of the ingredients and things like oil, seasonings, etc. I think it's always healthier to eat at home.
It's definitely cheaper to cook than eat out. You will save a lot by doing so. Just ordering drinks outside apart from your meal is already a lot of money.
I find very hard to believe that anyone can save money by eating out instead of cooking our own meals, come on, there's no point in that. It's the same price for the products, gas/electricity, so you save your time and you pay for someone else's time to cook, wash, restaurant (...) and even so it is cheaper? I don't think so.
The price to eat out vs. to make your own food greatly depends on how much you are spending and where you are eating at. If you look at many of the restaurants by your house such as Red Robin or Macaroni Grill you will see that they are ultimately expensive to dine in and this leads us to eat at cheaper places such as Mcdonalds or Taco Bell. Mcdonalds and Taco Bell have a value menu, where you can eat starting at $1.00. Eating at home would be more expensive because the food at the grocery stores add up when trying to get all the ingredients for your meal. Lets say you wanted to make a Spaghetti, the ground beef would be around $10.00 and the noodles and sauce would be around $6.00. That adds up especially depending on how many people you have to feed. An alternative though to the grocery stores would have to be Dollar Tree or Dollar General and also Family Dollar whereas the price for items are not that expensive. At Dollar Tree everything is literally $1.00 each and you can't go wrong with that. So I say you can eat for cheap both ways, it just depends on where you shop/eat at.
If we are talking about the same kind of food then eating at home is obviously cheaper. Take hamburgers for example... I can make a nice big juicy one for less than 2 euros. The fries? I believe around 3-4 euros per kg.. so less than a euro per serving. Add a bottle of coke... you've got a meal for less than 4 euros. And it's more healthy, tastes better and there is a lot more to eat. This is cheaper than any decent meal in a fast food place around here... roughly 30% cheaper. Obviously if you make home made food such as a nice lovely steak, some salmon starters and drinking expensive wine with it, it's going to be more expensive than McDonalds. It however won't be more expensive than eating that same meal in a high end restaurant.
I think you will find that this was an isolated case and the woman was scouring the internet looking for deals such as restaurants that offered free tastings on opening night. I believe eating at home is a much cheaper option for the majority of us.
It really depends what you are eating. Eating outside requires you to spend money every time while eating at home I can save money buying at bulk. Buying in bulk is good so I would say that probably staying in at home is cheaper. Glad I can help.
It is by far cheaper for me to make a home cooked meal than to take the family out to eat. I consider myself to be very frugal. I sale shop all the time and stock up on things that are a really good deal. When cans of soup go on sale for 50 cents a can, I buy a whole flat. When the bread gets marked down to 50% off due to the expiry date, I buy at least 6 and freeze them. We have a small store just down the road here where they always have great deals on meat since they can buy it wholesale. So I can buy a whole chicken for about 5 dollars. Lean ground beef goes on sale in the club pack, so I buy it at 99 cents a pound then seperate it up and freeze it. They also usually have the large 50 pound bags of potates for 10 dollars or the huge bags of flour for 20 dollars. I store them in the basement. In this way, I can easily make a meal for my family and spend under 10 bucks to feed all 4 of us. If I have roasted a chicken in the oven, there's usually enough chicken left over on the bones for me to boil the carcass to make a broth, use the chicken from the bones and add some veggies, spices, etc. Then we have a whole other meal of stew or homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade bread in my breadmaker. Once you know how to shop, and where to find your sales, it really is much cheaper to eat meals at home.
You can most certainly eat out cheap; there are take-out deals everywhere. Sure, you can go get a big meal from McDonald's for $7.00, but you're getting very little nutritional intake. It's important to eat right, so cooking at home can be great for both your health and your wallet. You have a higher grocery bill value than at the fast food location, but you could make multiple meals out of the ingredients you buy. If you like cooking, there's many ways to be financially aware while eating right. For example; my husband and I bought a whole chicken and roasted that with potatoes and vegetables. The next day, we used the remaining white meat for chicken salad sandwiches. For the remaining bones/meat, I made a soup (carrots, celery, onions, etc. are cheap, and most people have them around the house). So sure, the chicken cost $12, but it provided three meals for two of us.
