Why eating out is unwise when trying to build a cash reserve
When you are trying to build a cash reserve you ought to have the mentality where you ask yourself what your needs are and what your wants are. For 95% of us eating out is a want and not a need. Wants are what get people in trouble. Not being able to live within your means (not spending more than you make) is what leads to debt. In America, the average credit card holder has carries balances in the thousands of dollars. Millions and millions of people feel overwhelmed by the debt that they carry. Many of these people do not know how to get out of that debt. The answer is to change your routine. By changing the way that you spend your money you may be surprised to find that you can live on a lot less than you thought was possible. Let's start by talking about why eating out is unwise when trying to build a cash reserve.
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Eating out is unwise when trying to build a cash reserve for a variety of reasons. First of all, no restaurant, fast food or otherwise, is going to sell a meal at a price lower than what it would cost you to buy the ingredients yourself and cook that meal in your own kitchen. When you eat out you pay for much more than food. You pay the waiter, the cook, the busboy, and the custodians. Part of your money goes to pay the lease on the building that you are eating in, the investors who gave the capital money to the individuals running the business and the business owners themselves. Most of what you pay for when you go out to eat is going straight into someone else's pockets. Sure, you may have saved yourself the efforts of making something yourself, but you are not saving time and you are certainly not saving money.
The average couple spends about $30 for a sit-down dinner in an average restaurant. Consider this: if you eat out one less time each week at $30 a meal, you can save $1,560 a year. If you are a pizza lover and somehow think that you are cutting back by ordering delivery instead of going out to eat, ordering one less delivered pizza at $20, can save you $1040 per year. In just these two examples, you can see how quickly the costs of eating out can add up. In just these two examples, you can save more than $2,500 a year! Imagine how much more you can save if you cut out a day of eating a $4 lunch (it would be a savings of $208). Cut out eating lunch all together during the week and you are looking at an average savings of another $1040.
Giving up a meal out is challenging for people for a number of reasons. Some people feel that they do not know how to cook or that they have a certain place that they love to go and eat at for reasons that are not limited to the food that is served. Some feel that their living space is insufficient for the kinds of foods or the number of people that they hope to cook for. The point is that these are all excuses we use because we fear change. However, this kind of change does not have to be scary, it is exciting! With all the money that you are saving by not eating out, you can afford a cooking class or two. You could even afford a modest kitchen renovation so that you can be better suited to cook for yourself.
