By Chloe Cook
One of my biggest guilty pleasures is eating out or ordering in. Getting to eat great meals without the hassle of cooking or cleaning up — count me in! However, this luxury often comes with a hefty price tag not suitable for my feeble student budget, so I decided to make a resolution in the new year to stop wasting so much money on food that I could make at home. I did a trial week of cooking all my meals at home and compared it to a regular week of eating out. Here’s how that went:
While eating in obviously saves a lot of money in the long run, I found that there were a few challenges with doing so. Firstly, there was a serious lack of variety.
I found myself consuming so much lasagna that I never want to hear the word again — perhaps this is an indication that I need to take some cooking classes. Secondly, there was the social aspect of not being able to go to a restaurant with friends. I found myself cancelling plans in order to eat at home or inviting people over and force feeding them lasagna in an attempt to get rid of it. I think that overall, eating out is great — in moderation.
In 2020, I am going to be a lot more conscious of my spending habits and I will definitely not be eating out nearly as much as I did before. However, I won’t set such strict boundaries on going out with friends in the future. I just need to delete the UberEats app off of my phone and hopefully that will snuff out my desire to order in.
