I think you are having a too black and white opinion on the issue. As a founder it is actually cheaper for me to spend 1000$ on restaurant and take-out food per week than wasting time cooking for myself. Plus you support local businesses by eating out
It is cheaper to spend 1000$ on a restaurant than to take an hour or two to cook a very low-effort food that takes max 2 hours to cook and lasts for 3 days? I'm genuinely baffled.
Personally I would not call it a waste of 2 hours.
Either way, if you can afford it, then Godspeed. :D
I definitely do not have 1000 USD per week for food. I do not even have 100 USD per week for food.
I personally don’t get takeout or eat at restaurants but there are certainly many cases in the US where it would be (far) cheaper. You say 2 hours for 3 days (so 40 mins/day or about 5h/week) which I think is on the low side. If you spend an average of 90 minutes a day on everything related to food (grocery shopping, recipes, cooking, cleanup, dishes) that’s 10.5 hr/week. In any case, that’s between 5-10h/week or $75-150/week at $15/hr, enough to pay the extra over groceries for cheap fast food. At $100/hr you could easily buy nicer food with the time savings, much like the GP comment.
But of course the math is different for everyone. Some people love to cook and some hate it. Some people like things that are fairly hard to cook (Korean, Japanese, Indian.) Some people need a different dinner each night and some are happy eating a giant pot of one bulk-cooked thing across days or weeks. Personally, I occasionally cook elaborate dinners, but for weeknights I find that a rice cooker plus frozen vegetables is a nice middle ground. Variety, hot fresh food, nutritious, and also very little time required. That, and eating with friends and family and trading off cooking.
Speaking of, I have difficulties gaining weight. I would have to eat a lot. The only time I could gain weight was when I spent most of my day eating. I am not sure how other people do it. I do not have that amount of time to eat food.
While homemade rice and pinto beans is $9.26 ... when you add in the time for shopping, travel, prep, and cleanup it has an it has an effective cost of $41.80
If you take off the cost of going to groceries or that someone can spend the time to cook rather than work (or relax), then that $9.26 is the price you see.
Similarly, homemade chicken dinner is $13.78 ... or $46.32 with additional costs of living factored in.
McDonald's is $27.89 (in 2011... it's more now ... but then all the above numbers are too)... but the total cost is $36.03.
If you could get paid $16.27 rather than doing grocery shopping and the time spent cooking or cleaning then it is cheaper to eat at McDonald's than to have a home cooked meal.
For many people, cooking (and cleaning) is only economical if the time spent doing it can be completely discounted. If I have to spend 30 minutes in front of the stove not do other things, or 5-10 minutes cleaning up afterwards, that's time not doing other things that I'd enjoy. For families with kids, that sometimes means that young children are left unattended for an hour (not always viable). Getting fast food, on the other hand is has no cooking or time spent cleaning and furthermore has a good chance of having something that the kids want to eat.
"Just learn to cook" isn't always an option for every household.
Eating out for every meal isn't $1000 per week. If I went to the local diner, that would be about $200 / person / week. If I got pizza every day that would be down to about $100 / person / week.
At Whole Foods prices, $4.29 gets you 8000 calories of rice. Beans are more expensive per calorie but still very cheap. $9 would get you more beans and rice than a family of four could eat in an entire day.
I have a friend who, once he started steadily making mid-high six figures in Silicon Valley, began taking the HOV lane on his commute into work, despite driving alone. The calculus was easy. Assuming $500,000 salary (I think he made more), 8 hour days, 50 weeks a year, that's $250/hour. As a manager, he couldn't shuffle his schedule around very easily, unlike when he was programming and could come in late and leave late, or when you're a young programmer and come in early and leave late (or just sleep under your desk). The 30+ minutes saved during his commute each day was well worth the amortized cost of some tickets, and that's before accounting for the stress saved, marginal value on the dollar, additional personal time, etc. Though, when he told me this he hadn't yet accumulated many, if any, tickets, and I don't think automated occupant detection had been installed.
In the past couple of years there's now a toll option for some HOV lanes, which is how it should be. He's generally a very conscientious person, but time is money, particularly so when you're well remunerated.
