"Food" For Thought

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Twitter asked so it happened.

Money Meals contains 10 easy preps you can make for $5 or less per meal.

Stop spending your entire check on expensive food, and get your copy of Money Meals.

Quote

“The trick is to stop thinking of it as ‘your’ money.” – IRS auditor

“Food” For Thought

How much do you spend on food? Don’t know? Then settle in for a couple of minutes, and bust out your grocery list.

Today we are going to talk about how much people waste on food, and how you can eat healthier for less.

Not only will getting control of your food spend improve your finances and leave you more money to buy VOO, it will probably make you healthier. (We like win-wins around here).

Let’s get into it. 👇

Where People Spend The Most

Take a guess…

I’ll give you a hint, it’s not buying groceries. So there is one other option, eating out. People spend a ton of money on restaurants, fast food, sandwich shops, etc. Don’t believe me, check out this chart by business insider showing the average check per person at 22 chain restaurants.

I’m no angel either, once I began tracking my spending I was able to save over $200/month by simply cooking more at home. Post-workout Smoothie King runs, teriyaki chicken and beef broccoli bowls from Panda (these slap), and of course, enough Chipotle visits to warrant a visit from the CEO, ya boy was throwing dollars at food.

If you do one thing after reading this email, track your food spending for a month. My guess is you will be quite…stirred up. I use the EveryDollar app and enter it manually, but you can set it up to auto-track from your credit card.

Not Bland Food Hacks

Have you seen those bomb meals I’ve been dropping on Twitter lately? Then you know where this is headed.

Meal prepping is one of the greatest ways to save a pan full of money. Don’t ask me where it came from, but someone started the idea that it’s impossible to eat healthy on a budget. News flash, you don’t need the most expensive lean raised-organic-Instagram approved food for it to be healthy.

You just need to buy from the outside isles at your grocery store.

What Food Costs You

Now we know where you are likely spending the most on food, and an effective way to reduce that cost. To make it stick here is an example of the numbers.

Chad enjoys meal prepping for at least a handful of meals. He’s not crazy about it, but typically makes about four premade meals and eats out once during the workweek. Depending on what he whips up in the kitchen, these cost him anywhere from $3.50 to $6.00 per meal. We’ll call it a $4.75 average. Doing some high-level calculations $4.75/meal × 4 days + $20 = $39 a week on lunch.

His coworker, Kyle, always asks him to go out for lunch. He pops his head in, “Chad come on man, that lunch prep looks like nursing home food.” Chad declines, and Kyle heads out to one of the local restaurants and spends an average of $20 per meal. $20/meal x 5 days = $100 a week on lunch.

That’s a difference of $61/week, $244/month, $2,928/year. Chad has that extra cash to invest, save, build a business, or heck just spend doing other cool things.

Conclusion

People spend an outrageous amount of money on food without even noticing. It’s hard to blame them, food is delicious (and also required for life). And come on, we all enjoy a nice dinner every now and then at a fancy restaurant we have no business being at.

The main lesson is to just be aware of this number. Bonus points if you track your food spend and give meal prepping a try.

Till next time, Chef Cade.

Cade's Finds

The Three ETF Portfolio By Age - Video describing how your ETF portfolio should be allocated based on age.

The Ultimate Productivity Tool - Article describing how to use the Eisenhower matrix to be more productive. (I printed this for myself, and my 9-5)

Best Memes

Shout out to these G’s for the feedback on last week’s Day Trading post!

Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research. Thanks for reading, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc. about the email don’t hesitate to send me a reply.