Meal Prep vs Eating Out

Is Cooking at Home Actually Cheaper?

Financial gurus constantly preach that cutting out restaurants and coffee shops is the secret to wealth. And while it is undeniably true that buying groceries costs less cash than paying for a restaurant meal, that calculation ignores the most important variable: Your Time.

The Hidden Cost of Cooking

Meal prepping isn't just the 30 minutes you spend at the stove. It is the time spent planning meals, driving to the grocery store, wandering the aisles, waiting in line to check out, unpacking the groceries, prepping the ingredients, cooking, and finally, doing the dishes.

If you spend 5 hours a week doing all of this to save $50, you are essentially paying yourself $10 an hour to be a personal chef and dishwasher. Depending on your hourly wage, you might be losing money in opportunity cost.

When Restaurants Win

If you are a high-earning freelancer or an entrepreneur, an hour spent cooking could have been an hour spent billing a client at $100/hr. In this scenario, spending $20 on a healthy, fast-casual takeout meal is mathematically superior to spending $5 on groceries and an hour of your time. You "lose" $15 in cash, but gain $100 in billed time, resulting in an $85 net profit.