We all know that cooking your own food is a great way to save money. However, in spite of the fact that we know this, we often don’t do it, preferring to eat out, both at work and at home. Why is that?
The Time Factor
The first issue with cooking your own food is quite simply, the time factor – it takes time to prepare food and ordering out means that you save that time for other 
things. Now, while this is certainly true (and we’ll share some ideas for minimizing the amount of time required in a moment), you need to do some basic math and decide just how much your time is worth.
If it’s going to cost you $500 per month to prepare your own food or $1,500 per month to buy readymade stuff, is it really worth the extra thousand dollars a month or twelve grand a year to save some time? The answer is a definite…maybe. For some of us, our time is truly valuable and the couple of hours we need in order to prepare food is worth paying the money for someone else to prepare it. However, in most cases, the amount of time you’d spend doing this is simply not worth the added cost.
The Taste Factor
Another issue with preparing your own food in order to save money is that there is a taste factor involved. This is especially true of brown bag lunches. The hot meal at the local fast food joint often sounds like it will taste better than the mushy sandwich you bring from home and keep in the company refrigerator. However, that doesn’t have to be the case. It is possible to bring along healthy, good tasting food which will save you money too. It just requires being a little more creative.
Making Lunch at Home
Let’s start with the issue of preparing your lunch at home and brown bagging it. The traditional lunch, a sandwich and a piece of fruit is a really boring thing to take for lunch when compared with a hot meal which you can buy from the cafeteria or a local restaurant. There’s no doubt about that. However, who says that a homemade lunch needs to be a soggy sandwich?
Make the Sandwich at Work
If you want a fresh sandwich, there’s really no reason that you can’t brown bag the ingredients and then put them together on the spot. For example, a tuna sandwich, a classic of the brown bag set is generally a soggy mess when you take it out a few hours later.
So, instead of taking the sandwich readymade, wrap the bread in foil, put the tuna salad into a small container and take the lettuce and tomato in another container. Then, combine all the ingredients at work when you’re ready to eat. You save money and get a sandwich that actually tastes good.
Similar ideas can generally be found for most other food products that you may bring from home. You just need to be creative about it (for example, you could take readymade food in separate containers, heated in the microwave which can be combined on the spot to make for fresh, hot food). And don’t forget that there’s no reason that you need to stuff an entire tray of food into the microwave either – you can selectively heat up different parts of the meal so that the parts that should be served cold are served cold.
Dealing with the Time Factor
With the hectic lives we all lead today, it’s true that we often have less time available to cook our meals. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t prepare food at home and save money in the process. There are several ways to get around this problem:
Prepare Double or Triple Meals and Prep in Advance
On the weekend, when most of us have more time, it’s easier to prepare lots of food which can then be reheated during the week, when we need it right away. Prepare a few lasagnas for example and you can easily defrost them in the morning and heat them in the evening. Also, when you do cook a meal, prepare a double or triple meal and put the remainder of the food away in the refrigerator. Then, you can reheat the food the next day, saving the cooking time.
Use a Slow Cooker
Another great way to save time on food preparation is to use a slow cooker. The quintessential crock pot, which was a staple of American kitchens in the 1970s is still a great way to make cheap, healthy meals. The idea is that you throw all your ingredients into the crock pot in the morning, set it to low and come home to a hot, ready to eat meal. There are even books which can show you hundreds of great crock pot friendly recipes which will take you around 5-10 minutes to prepare in the morning before heading off to work.
Don’t Forget the Take Out Counter
Finally, while you won’t save as much money as you would by making food at home, you can still save money over the cost of eating in a restaurant by buying food at the supermarket takeout counter. The prices are generally around a third of what you’ll spend in a nice restaurant and you don’t have to pay for a tip either.
Bottom Line
If you’re willing to be creative about it, it’s definitely possible to save money by cooking meals at home. You just have to be willing to think outside the box a bit when doing so.
George Gallagher is a personal finance and frugality writer. He works with students to manage their finances and find Florida student loans.