I’m happy to say that this little starter blog has been featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance #168! Head on over to One Caveman and check it out!
On another note, I was reminded yesterday of just how much I overspend on food. On the way back from the theatre (Job #3, freelance lighting designer) I stopped by Harris Teeter to pick up some lunch, thinking that I should spend $10 on a bucket of chicken for 2-3 meals instead of $6 on one meal at McDonald’s. Good thinking, even though I actually ended up spending $30 at the grocery store. It’s ok, though. Stouffer’s frozen dinners were on sale 4/$10, so I picked up eight frozen dinners for $20, plus a jar of peanuts, a bag of chips, a soda, five yogurts and a meal from the deli. That $28 pretty much covers my meals for the week, as I typically have a yogurt for breakfast, then frozen meals for lunch and dinner.
It’s not that my wife can’t cook, or that I can’t cook. But we have issues with portion control, and a frozen dinner diet actually helps us lose a little weight. We can cook on weekends when we have the time to do so, and through the week we can eat small and cheap with frozen dinners. A couple of Stouffer’s meals and a yogurt make it really easy to keep to a 1,500 calorie diet (as long as I stay away from the sodas and beer), and I can typically eat for about $7-8 per day, as opposed to $20 or so if I eat out both meals. So if I can eat for most of a week on $30, that’s a huge savings, and the biggest leak in our spending.
So it might be that if you lead a busy life, microwave meals could help you trim the waistline and the food budget!
