Keeping Track of Food Costs

This is mostly because (1) I love tracking things (except our mail which has turned into a joke. Right now I have four packages somewhere and three of them say “delivery date unknown” because no one seems to know where they are!) and (2) I’m hoping to show Vince how much more it costs to go out to eat. I think if we went out to eat once a month and went somewhere nice, with a bit of “atmosphere”, I wouldn’t mind but going to fast food places and loud diners . . nope . . I do not like it at all and do not enjoy it at all.

It’s going to be a bit of a guessing game. The first home cooked meal I tracked was pancakes and bacon. The bacon was easy – one pound of bacon is $4.29 at Aldi. We ate about 1/4 pound so I counted that as $1.25. Pancakes – 2 cups flour (18 cups in a 5 pound bag that costs $3.50 so that’s about .40 ), 2 eggs (I pay $2.50 for a dozen eggs so each egg costs about 21 cents so that’s .42) , 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, butter. Then add syrup. I guessed at $1.50 to make the pancakes and 50 cents for the syrup so that’s $2 but we will get two breakfasts from the pancake batter so I’m only counting it as .75 to make the pancakes.

The pineapple juice I made from a can of frozen concentrate that costs $3 and we drank about half of it. I won’t go through the math each time and I’ll probably over estimate the cost for home cooking. So breakfast was broken down as follows:

• Pancakes – .75
• Syrup – .50
• Milk for pancakes – .50
• Butter for making pancakes – .44
• Butter for on top of pancakes – .20
• Bacon – $1.25
• Pineapple juice – $1.50

I’m not going to count the cost of gas or electricity to cook, or water to clean up because I’m quite sure the cost of gas to drive to the restaurant and back is more than the utilities and I’m not getting that picky.

This probably isn’t something I’ll do forever but I think it will be rather enlightening for Vince to see how much more it costs to eat out than to eat at home.

Here’s my start – just eating out Thursday for breakfast and then eating at home yesterday.

The eating out does not include the tip and we usually tip 20 to 25%.

Also, I get my food prices for comparison from the Walmart App. Sometimes we pay less at Aldi; sometimes we pay more somewhere else so I figure the Walmart prices are a good average and this doesn’t have to be that precise.

Any time we track our spending, we’re surprised at how much it costs. We have to eat but we don’t have to spend a fortune eating – especially when I love to cook and don’t like to eat out and Vince seems to like my cooking and he never has to do any work – no helping with the cooking; no clean up. He does plenty around here so I’m not complaining but cannot figure out why he’d rather go out to eat than eat at home.