Super size your savings

I conducted an experiment with my two sons the other day—an experiment, I mean, in addition to the GRAND human experiment of somehow doing everything in my power to keep them alive and, simultaneously, wanting to throttle them every hour on the hour. Is this a prank? For the record, I am ready for someone to jump out and yell, “Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!” Really. Totally ready. I’m done. Haha! The joke’s on me!

When does school start again?

But yes, an experiment. We are at Mommy Math Camp after all. As all good experimenters do, we started with a question—namely, Is it worth it to buy a cheeseburger and fries at a restaurant versus making them at home?

Exhibit A:

First, some background. My kids love love LOVE going out to eat. After school ended in June, they wrote out a list of everything they wanted to do during the summer. I kid you not—the list was 90% restaurants. Given that they neither pay for the food nor wash the dishes at home either, this preference is … odd.

We have crayons and drawing paper and kid-sized glasses! Shoes (and pants) not required! There’s even an impatient, cranky lady taking their order! I’d give them a (very little) bit more credit if they at least ate something different at a restaurant—say a non-potato vegetable—than what they’d normally eat at home, but a million grilled cheese sandwiches later, I remain unimpressed. And slightly alarmed.

What do you think is the biggest ROI change you could make to your spending? Put another way, what’s going to give you the biggest ratio of dollars saved to effort involved? Housing is often a large expense, but moving is onerous at best (still worth considering). It’s easy enough to switch all your light bulbs to energy-saving LEDs, but the utility savings aren’t enormous (still worth doing). My pick? Eating out. Winner, winner, chicken (nugget) dinner!

But don’t take my word for it. Ask my son Evan.

Evan, in our experiment, how much did it cost us to make a cheeseburger and fries at home?

$0.82 (LBYM’s note: it only cost this much because he insisted I add in the cost of the two tablespoons of oil I used for baking the fries. This is what we call Putting Your Thumb on the Scale.)

How much was the cheeseburger and fries from McDonald’s?

$2.94

Were the McDonald’s cheeseburger and fries worth it?

No. Even if the McDonald’s cheeseburger is better (LBYM’s note: see what I mean about throttling them?), it didn’t have a lot of meat and that’s a lot more money you have to spend so you should just eat at home.

There you have it, folks, straight from the mouth of someone who really wanted a different outcome. Poor kid—even he couldn’t justify a 3.6x difference in cost. And this was versus a meal off the value menu. Imagine—or even better, calculate—the savings from grown-up food with grown-up prices, multiplied over days and weeks, meals and meals. Even you sticklers who want me to add in the cost of the gas for the oven (umm, gas driving to McDonald’s?) and the cost of my time cooking (umm, time getting kids presentable, time driving to McDonald’s, time waiting for a seven-year old to figure out how to order from the new touch-screen kiosks? Bahahaha!) have to admit the math doesn’t lie.

If you’ve decided you’re ready to take some little steps to save some big money, buy a bag of rice and a bag of lentils, and learn how to cook. Unless you’re literally adding in the cost of that new sous vide vacuum sealer to the cost of that one meal, that dish you love? It’s going to be cheaper—and maybe even better—made at home.

Pants optional.