Choosing to eat out can easily cost you $200-300 a month. This figure can vary greatly, depending on your frequency and price range. After it is said and done, there is  simply a premium in  having someone else prepare your food and clean up after you.

Unfortunately, albeit logically, when eating fast food you sacrifice quality and nutritional value for price and convenience. The U.S. culture is addicted to convenience and it is making the majority of our citizens obese.

It seems that a lot of people avoid cooking because it is too intimidating and eating out seems a lot more of a comfortable option.

However, by learning to cook your own meals you can save your bank account and your waist line…

Stop Eating All Your Hard Earned Dough

Learning to save money can help you gain leverage on almost any aspect of your life. It creates more independence and options.

How much do you spend each month eating out? If you are anything like me, you will be very surprised if you track one month’s spending. If you look at long term costs, spending on eating out can easily exceed several thousand dollars per year.

I recommend using Mint for keeping tabs on your money. It allows you an easy way to track your spending, manage your funds, and its FREE.

After you discover the true cost of dining out, you can begin to develop a saving strategy based on eating cost efficient, easy, and healthy meals at home.

Learning to Cook

Cooking can be very  intimidating to the kitchen newbie. But, if you can follow directions, most recipes can be knocked out step by step. Check out All Recipes for a variety of recipes with tips, tricks and comments from others.

Having the proper cookware is important. Non-stick pans, a measuring cup, a variety of utensils, a colander, some sharp knives and a casserole baking dish will get you started pretty nicely. You can buy new, or save dramatically by using craigslist or scouring yard sales to find the cookware you need.

You will recover the cost of investing in the cookware very rapidly if you make an effort to cook at home as much as you can.

Saving money and eating healthy does not require elaborate cooking… You can cook eggs for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and pasta or a casserole for dinner.

Cooking and eating on your own terms also makes it easier to track your calorie and nutrient intake, which is paramount to proper dieting.

You will often have left-overs from dinner. This is great because you can use it for other meals; saving you more time and money.

The benefits of left-overs can be maximized by batching your meals… You can find meals you like, make a large batch, then eat off it for the whole week. Most food items come highly discounted if you buy in bulk. Thus, batching is the best way to save time and money from cooking.

Ultimately, the key to becoming a proficient chef is experimentation and trial &  error. Don’t be too discouraged if your first few attempts are sub-par. Keep trying!

Fringe Benefits

There are many benefits to cooking your own meals.

Beyond saving money and being healthier, cooking is very appealing to the opposite sex. I have never met anyone, man or woman, who has complained that their significant other is too good of a cook.

What would you do with an extra grand or two in your bank account after a year? You could us it to travel, pay off debt, or any other life growing endeavor.

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Give cooking a chance, you will be pleasantly surprised how fun, delicious and valuable it can be!

People tend to be loss averse. Meaning that we do not want to waste our resources, or feel like we are.

We often form emotional attachments to our decisions and commitments. For example, if you spend a significant amount of time on a project, an emotional attachment to this project will begin to form. This isn’t a bad thing, it just happens. We tend to form bonds with the things that we spend our resources on.

We feel compelled to recover our investment, even if it requires spending MORE money, time or happiness.

From an economists point of view, this emotional attachment to a past cost can be irrational, illogical and negatively affect our future. This has been coined as the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

The idea is that the past, or previous investment, should not be considered when making a decision. It is a sunk cost, it has already been incurred. Since it can not be recovered, it should not factor in to the decision.

There are only two things that should be considered. Current and future costs and benefits.

For example, Imagine you are half way through watching a movie and realize it is terrible.  If you force yourself to continue and finish the movie because you had already spent time/money on it, you would be committing the sunk cost fallacy. You could be investing your time on something better.

Trent at The Simple Dollar, explains it better than I do in this article.

This emotion based fallacy can often be seen in dysfunctional relationships. When an unhappy couple stays together longer because they’ve been together for so long already. They allow their fear of feeling like they’ve waste their time to make them waste even more time.

Moral of this story: Make now-based decisions. Ask yourself: Is this the best decision to make now? Will the next course of action or investment required worth the risk and subsequent benefit?