We had expected to be away for about four nights this month, due to some home renovation, but circumstances changed and we only spent one night away in San Diego with a friend. Our evening meals at home were about 20% more expensive, due to our tendency toward nature raised proteins. Last month was mostly above average, but we had some really inexpensive meals to balance it out, but not this month.
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.43 ($2.15 in January)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $11.36 ($8.79)
- Dinner eaten at home: $6.55 ($5.52)
- Dinner eaten out: $10.00 ($10.00).
Our lunches at home average in a fairly narrow band and this month’s average is up a little from from last month.
We ate ten of 64 meals that were prepared outside the home (all but one lunch).
Our most expensive meal for the month was lunch at The Country Deli at $23.29 per serve.
This month, lunches at home cost 21% of the cost of eating lunches prepared outside the home. Using last month’s dinners out as a reference, dinners at home cost 33% of those prepared outside the home.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $329.44 per person in January. We actually spent $46.10 for lunches at home plus $102.20 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $148.30 in total.
Had we purchased every evening meal out and prepared none at home, it would have cost us $290.00 per person. We actually spent $170.23 for dinners at home and $10.00 for dinners out, or $18.23 in total.
This month’s savings from preparing most of our food at home is $290.91 and we had a lot more control over what we eat.
Over the month we prepared 23 different recipes for evening meals.
