Can you survive on cereal, salads, and frozen dinners? Well sadly, that’s about the extent of my cooking skills and I certainly can’t! Okay, I’m exaggerating a little as I also know how to make spaghetti and steamed veggies, but that’s really about all I’m good at. Well, that and burning things, making gross looking casseroles, and finding things in the fridge that have grown legs. (I happily went out to eat at a lovely restaurant to enjoy the delicious seafood hotpot you see in the picture. There’s no way I could make something like that!)
After spending about 3-4 hours at a time trying to read, prep, and cook a few fancy meals in the past and not even being that happy with the results, I decided to no longer spend my life cooking. It’s just not something that comes naturally to me and with my crazy schedule I’m really not interested in trying to get better right now. I’d much rather scarf down a bowl of Spaghetti O’s and then get to work on a blog post or watching a movie versus wasting half of my evening running around in the kitchen.
Conventional wisdom says that eating in saves you a lot of time and money. But that just doesn’t work for me, especially because I’m a crappy cook! Plus there are so many fabulous restaurants and take out spots in SF that have good portion sizes. Prices are fair and delivery is usually free too, which I’m so thankful for.
Perhaps I’m the oddball here who hates to cook, but I can’t imagine I’m the only one who prefers eating out and take-out vs cooking at home. Here’s why I think ditching the kitchen can actually save you some money and increase the quality of your life and your family’s. It works well for me!
The World Of Specialization
Henry Ford invented specialization when he first decided to build his Model T Ford. Every factory worker had a specific role they did well to create the ultimate motor vehicle. If one person or several people decided to build the entire car from scratch, it would take too long and probably fall apart after a short while.
Chefs are specialists in the cuisine you seek. It is highly likely they know how to cook way better than you, especially if you go up the ratings scale. For me personally, I have no doubt that every working chef out there is better than me! That is unless they’ve landed on Kitchen Nightmares. Come on, you donkay’!! as Gordon Ramsey loves to shout.
Most couples and families have one person who takes on the majority, if not all, of the cooking duties. But that doesn’t mean they’re any good at it (sorry mom). Since everyone else in the family gets to kick back and free load, chances are they’re also fibbing about how the food tastes at least some of the time.
I know I snuck many portions of my mom’s cooking to our dog hiding under the table over the years. I’d be polite and always say thanks for the food, but I was secretly dreaming of Chinese food, fajitas, or Red Lobster instead. If the primary cook in your house is bad like my mom and I, everyone eats better and is happier when the cooking is done by the pros.
Your Time Is Worth More Than You Think
Let’s say you earn a healthy $80,000 a year, which equates to roughly $40 an hour if you work 40 hours a week. That meal you spent two hours prepping and cooking doesn’t just cost the price of the food items. The meal’s cost also needs to include the $80 in forgone salary time you gave up by not working harder to get a raise and promotion. (Click to learn how to ask for a raise in 10 easy steps)
You might be rolling your eyes because you don’t agree that time after work counts as salary time. But I think it is valuable time, especially for part time bloggers like myself who use our evenings and weekends outside of our day jobs to side hustle. Plus I’ve earned all of my promotions by working extra hours and getting ahead of my competition. For me, spending more of my time working and less of it preparing meals has helped me earn a lot more money over time.
–> So you see it’s not just about the cost of preparing a meal yourself vs the cost of a meal made at a restaurant. The cost of the time that you give up comes into play too. For me, spending a few extra dollars on delivery and having extra hours to work on and earn more money on my side business works out much better financially.
If you ask any entrepreneur who works around the clock what their time is worth, it could be worth hundreds of dollars an hour because they are banking their entire future on their entrepreneurial endeavors! When you’re busting your chops you have to really cherish your time, and also avoid these 40 excuses entrepreneurs in order to succeed (take the quiz and see how you’re doing!).
Saving Relationships And Sanity
After a long 10-hour day, the last thing I want to think about is going home to cook. I’m sure a lot of you feel the same way. If you have people at home depending on you, it can be a big burden trying to juggle your career, your family, and being in charge of getting food on the table.
In fact, if that is what’s expected of you, you’ll probably build up resentment over time and risk a blow up if someone criticizes your overcooked peas. Let’s say you have the luxury of not working. It’s still not easy being a homemaker if you have the most important responsibility of keeping the house in order and the family fed and happy. Your family’s expectations of you can actually go up as a result of you being a stay at home spouse/parent and that’s a lot of pressure!
Plus when you are preparing meals, you don’t really have time to sit down, relax and communicate with your loved ones. You’re most likely always worried about how the food tastes, whether the veggies are getting cold, hoping that you didn’t overcook anything, and feeling frustrated when your kids refuse to eat. I feel stressed just thinking about it! All that worrying and pressure can cut into your family time and leave you feeling unappreciated.
So if you’re the main cook in your household, don’t forget to give yourself a night off on a regular basis because you deserve it. And if you’re lucky enough not to have primary cooking duties, treat your spouse to delivery or dinner out once in a while and let them kick their feet up for a change.
This frees up time for you to communicate with each other more and feel more relaxed at meals. I would lose my sanity if it wasn’t for eating out and ordering delivery. So now you know why I believe ditching the kitchen saves money, relationships, and sanity. How about you?!
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Updated 2/16/2015
I don’t like to cook either, but I’m fortunate that my husband does. However, I did promise him that I’d learn to cook 3 meals this year. I’m working on grilled cheese – don’t laugh, I’m serious. It’s a start. :)
Sydney, I have to disagree with you on this one. While I totally understand and appreciate your argument, there are some things in life worth more than money to me. Eating food we’ve cooked ourselves, using our creative capacity to try new recipes and combinations, and being sure that I’m eating healthy are all benefits of cooking at home, for me anyway. Plus I have a wife and two kids to feed, so there’s that. :-)
And what about grilling?!! Nope, sorry, gotta have grilling.
Sounds like you guys really love to cook and turn it into a family event, that’s cool. And if your kids like your cooking that’s always a good sign you’re doing something right. Ha yea, I don’t think I’ve met a guy who doesn’t like grilling. :)
Sorry you are such a crappy cook. :) You won’t get better if you keep eating take out food though. I like cooking. It’s fun to create something delicious from all sort of ingredients. Nobody starts out as a master chef. You just have to keep learning and experimenting to get better.
I know my food is much more healthy than restaurant food. The chefs are trained to cook food that taste good, but I think they don’t consider health as much. There are a ton of salt and fat in restaurant food. It’s not a big problem when you’re young, but as you get older, you’ll have more problem.
Sure, we go out once in a while, but eating at home is much better for our health and budget.
That makes two so far who like to cook! I just have a hard time getting into it. Perhaps if I had a lot more time on my hands. I dunno. I tend to order healthy choices like salads, grilled foods, and organic meals because I agree a lot of restaurants cook w/ fat and a lot of salt.
I hate ordering salad at restaurants. It’s such a bad value. :)
It’s hard to come home after a long day and cook.
I have to disagree as well. I picked up an interesting read a few weeks ago that deals with this very issue — “Cooked” by Michael Pollan. Michael’s investigative style is a great read for anyone who is interested.
Long story short, cooking is integral to our humanity, and we’re slowly losing the skill. While it’s definitely not easy for me to cook every day with two kids and a demanding job, I also believe that delicious food doesn’t have to be complicated. Using the right methods, you can make something from 3-5 ingredients that’s out of this world.
I think shows like Rachel Ray’s week-in-a-day, or whatever it’s called, are onto something. Batching cooking effort in one day is not a bad idea for busy people that still allows you to cook at home.
Food for thought! :)
Another cooking fan! I’m definitely the oddball here. I used to watch Rachel Ray’s show when my work schedule wasn’t so crazy. Basic ingredients are definitely my preference if I do have to cook.
I rarely cook. In our household, that responsibility falls on my wife (she generally enjoys it). I don’t hate cooking, but I don’t get much satisfaction either. Unfortunately, when it comes to being able to use that “saved” time to earn more, it still doesn’t work out that way. Instead, my time is allocated to doing the dishes, vacuuming, watching after our 1 year-old, etc.
Yeah having to do dishes and vacuuming isn’t fun. I have to multitask like listening to a podcast with those kind of chorse. At least you’re saving money in a way by doing that stuff yourself.
I do almost all of the cooking in our house because of my wife’s work schedule. We eat evening meals at home on average 6 times a week. Eating out is quite a challenge and pricey for us because we have four children. If we can keep it under $35 per meal we are doing good but not eating very healthy. Healthier restaurant options push that per meal total much higher. Plus I have an ulterior motive for wanting to eat at home…it give us family time around the dinner table for 30 minutes each day. For me, that adds value that’s tough to beat. You don’t get quite the same experience of togetherness at a restaurant. In that setting, we are more focused on kid management than communication.
My wife is the main cook in my house. Funny, I used to own a restaurant and enjoyed those occasions that I cooked for just a few people, but I still do not have the confidence to do very much at home. I can cook some things, but no enough to matter. I think I am lucky that my wife enjoys cooking. I try to help out by cleaning up most nights. BTW, I am terrific at salads! I could not eat out all the time. We do have 2 dinners out a week though.
Dinners out twice a week is a nice balance. I didn’t realize you used to own a restaurant! That’s very cool. Nice one on your yummy salads. The fanciest I’ve made was butter lettuce, thinly sliced celery, fresh corn, and bottled dressing.
Hey Untemplater. I cook most nights and enjoy it but I’m with you in terms of valuing your time and using it in ways that serve you best. I’m happy to cook at nights but I’ve recently started getting help in the house with cleaning and I don’t regret it for a second – it gives me more time to write and earn money doing what I’m good at. For me, financial freedom is all about gaining time. If for yuo that means not cooking, I’m with you!
Ah…. cooking….. I’m trying to get away from cooking every day, without eating out, but I have to eat!! So, my theory, cook, when you’re too tired to do anything really productive! That’s why we eat dinner at 8 pm :) The other strategy, when my husband cooks, I’m really happy and encouraging and he’s a great cook! So I do whatever it takes to get him to cook!!!
I like that – cook when you’re too tired to do anything productive. If only I had a higher tolerance to hunger. I get so hungry when I get home from work it’s hard to concentrate on anything. That’s awesome your hubbie is a good cook.
I’ve never bought the “time is money” argument. You aren’t getting paid for the time you aren’t at work, and the time you spend in the kitchen you probably wouldn’t have been spent earning money. And if time was money, then your annual income would have to be divided by ALL of the hours in the year, not just the hours spent at work. So a $80k annual income works out to $9.13 per hour. Two hours in the kitchen would then be over $18 in labor costs. I’ve left tips larger than that!
Also, if you are a Ramsey fan, check out “The ‘F’ Word.” Like me, he isn’t a big fan of people claiming they can’t cook.
When you work side gigs, time is money. Never heard of that TV show. Ramsey has made a lot of money being on TV and stuff so I’m not too surprised he has another show.
But my point is that you aren’t working all of the time. And there is a time cost to eating out as well, many times even more time cost than simply cooking at home.
The “F” word is actually an older show from back before he started doing shows in the US.
Well at least you know your are a horrible cook and are not trying to force your food on others. I think I would rather have someone who know they cant cook. Though I still think you can practice and get better if you want or had time to do so. For us it doesnt make sense to buy food when you have a family of 5 to feed. And the working more hours instead is not an option. Those two hours still are at home time and other things could get done.
I never cooked before I got married, but I’m pretty decent now. What kind of fancy recipes are you trying? There are some really easy recipes out there that each a crappy cook can’t mess up and which taste good. It really is all in the sauce/spices you use. Cooking can be easy…give it another shot. And eating out is not only more expensive…it’s also not as healthy.
All the cooking analogies aside, I have to agree on some level. Our time really is worth something if we perceive it to be. Many hourly workers who could make 1.5 times their pay gladly trade their Saturdays for an extra shift at the factory. Even though people like myself are not paid by the hour and instead receive a salary, we still go the extra mile and put in extra hours at the office because we know it will lead to bigger bonuses and opportunities to raise our income.
However, I would take this concept even further and argue that our time is worth even MORE than what we think it is. Going back to your example of the $80K employee, is all his time is ever going to be worth is $40 per hour? Absolutely not. If that person was truly entrepreneurial or wanted to really challenge the limits of their potential, they could start a business or create an eProduct that makes $250,000 per year. Now how much is their “time” worth? That may sound like a stretch for some of you, but click on some of the blogs you see here in the comments. A lot of these people have created successful side hustles that in some cases out-paced their own employment income and eventually replaced it. My point is that we should not bound our minds to what our current employer pays but instead let ourselves explore the full potential of how much return we could really make on our efforts. The results might surprise some us.
One final note: Be cautious not to apply this philosophy to everything. There are plenty of times where I might be hanging out on the beach with my family and watching a movie with my wife. I don’t view my time in the same way here because I don’t want to fool myself into thinking that I’m losing money just because I’m not producing. I am in fact producing in a way that is meaningful to my wife and kids – just more in an intangible way.
I definitely see your point on this. Although I really enjoy cooking and use it as a way to unwind, I am seriously contemplating getting a cleaner to clean my house once a fortnight as I hate doing and truly believe I could be using that time more productively. Once my freelance writing and blogging gets to a point that my hourly rate equals the hourly rate of a cleaner, I’m going to go for it.