Ask Lemmy

Usually delivery and eating out ends up being much more expensive in the long run than cooking at home where you can buy things in bulk when on sale and store Ina fridge or freezer until you need it, but you need the space to store a lot of food which many apartments don't have.

So you're saying you're constantly broke. Getting delivery all the time is hella expensive

3 kid family. Food is expensive. Wife learned to cook very well by her mother when growing up. She cooks most nights. We only go out to eat or have it delivered/takeout for 3 reasons: 1) she’s exhausted, 2) we’re traveling, 3) special occasions. Unfortunately, she’s such a good cook that we rarely eat at a place that made the dish better and it leaves the kids wishing she just made it at home which is awesome for me since it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.

So:

1. Cooking at Home
2. Eating Out
3. Delivery/Takeout

Single guy, single family home with two teens just leaving for college

1. Cook at home
2. Takeout (because chipotle exists)
3. Eat out

I essentially never do delivery, it’s too expensive. You’re paying extra for eat out food but don’t even get to eat out.

Chipotle has an excellent group order function in their app! I can send an invite to my kids while they’re out so they can add to the family order and have them grab it on their way home.

Plus I love cooking. I need to find some sort of group for sharing meals. In fact I have a 12 lb pork shoulder ready to go on the smoker tomorrow but it’s just me. Who wants some pulled pork?

Edit for the folks at !fuckcars@lemmy.world , as the last breakfast before my little one left for college, we walked about a mile, half on trail, to an old-style diner for breakfast.

I'm poor. I rarely eat out and I think I ordered delivery once in college.

Cook at home every time, I could happily never have fast food again. The only reason I ever eat it is when in a group and someone else decides that is what we are doing.

My partner and I are mid-40s, and our meals go like this:

1. Cooking at home
2. Delivery
3. Pick-up/take-away that we pick up from the place ourselves and then eat at home
4. Eat out at restaurant

Reason being for all this:

I enjoy cooking

Partner and I both have no issue eating the same thing for dinner ever day for a week or more, so I make a huge portion and then we eat it for an entire week/until it's totally gone

Delivery costs are expensive, even before tip

Partner and I both have dietary restrictions that make ordering from somewhere difficult when they're not clear about what ingredients they're using

We save a ton of money by cooking at home

1. Cooking at home
2. Take out (not delivery)
3. Eating out (sit down)

Keep track of your spending. Don't just eyeball it. Dining out and delivery are very expensive.

Like a couple weeks ago I ordered dinner to eat with a friend realized the bill was like a whole week's food budget all at once.

Rice, beans, vegetables, cheese, wraps? Like $5. Ordering two similar burritos? $30. That savings adds up.

Anyway, to answer your question and stop giving unsolicited advice: I almost always cook at home. I don't have the income to do otherwise. When I had a high paying job I would order more food delivered.

I live alone and I get meal kits delivered so I can cook at home

Always cook at home, eating out as a treat once in a while and never use delivery.

Haha I wish I could afford that! I live alone and I'm in my mid twenties. Instead it's more like:

1. Quick meal (requires little prep and little cooking time, maybe some garlic spaghetti)

2. Big meal (a big stew I made a few days ago and put in the fridge)

3. Porridge (super reliable, very cheap, incredibly fast to prepare, add frozen blueberries)

And then:

5. Eating out (a good treat for a special occasion)

6. Delivery (it always ends badly)

Pad with rice if ever possible. Eat some beans. Frozen vegetables with seasoning salt.

Holy moley, the expense of that

I envy your financial situation that you can afford to do that.

My weekly grocery budget (single person household) is £25 (~US$34), which is about the price of a decent meal for one person in a low-end restaurant here. Seven days food and other household supplies for the price of one meal. Stop and think on that for a bit, maybe.

Family do help me out from time to time, but they're not exactly rolling in money either, so what they provide would otherwise be covered by that budget. They just help me stretch things a bit further.

Could I afford to spend a bit more? Possibly. But I like to keep a little extra put by for that inevitable disaster where I have to hire someone to fix what neither I nor my family can handle.

Perhaps importantly here, I like to know that I could get by without family help, and I'm pretty sure I could. Can you say the same?

Eating at a restaurant easily costs 4x+ what I can make at home, even fast food.

I've done the math many times. My average plate at home costs no more than $2 (and I eat pretty much whatever I want).

Let that sink in. Calculate the difference over a week, a month, a year.

Delivery: never, too expensive when we can just take the car and get what we want.

Eating out: mostly me on her, oh you mean food, nah, only ever on date nights, which with two kids is maybe once a month if we're lucky.

Cooking at home: probably 345 days of the year. Cheaper, tastes better, more healthy, setting a good example for the kids.

I almost exclusively cook at home because it is much cheaper for a warm meal. Same when i am with my girlfriend.

Cook at home is the default; even the lunches our kids eat at school are packed from home.

We never get delivery; we get takeout sometimes when it's getting late and we're tired, but usually that's just the mains and one of us still makes the starch and the veg sides at home while the other goes to get the takeout.

Eating out is pretty much only special occasions and when company is visiting town.

Couple with kids, very small SFH in Chicago but it was the same when we lived in an apartment. If anything we are at home more, because taking young kids to a restaurant is risky at best.

So nobody's going to bite on the "moved out with your partner at 16 with your parents' blessing" thing? You guys have way more self-control than I do.

I have always cooked at home more. At this point I can make food as good or better than what we get at restaurants so only go out to have a good time. Once every two weeks or so we do get takeout (or more precisely, husband gets takeout) because I won't have time to cook, and about once a month we go out to a restaurant.

Work lunches half leftovers and half restaurant, there is a Panera across the street from work and a cafe in the building that has a grill, a fully cooked meal, and a sandwich line, so not like fast food.

ETA: Mid 50s, work full time and then some, husband and still 2 kids at home plus usually the girlfriend of one or the other of them (the kids not husband, lol)

We would go out once in awhile when back when but that sorta transitioned to pickup as we found our home just much more comfortable. We were doing it pretty often but inflation has us almost always cooking now.

Who can realistically life off eating out or delivery in 2025?

The math don't math for 80% of population unless you can get every meal under 10... Which is nearly impossible