Anonymous wrote:OP here - our HHI is high but we're near retirement and want to save as much as we can. However, it's always been like this for us. I do like cooking - and am a better baker than cook but I never realized how many don't know HOW to cook. I grew up poor (so did husband and on a farm with no restaurants in town) so this is normal for us I suppose. I didn't eat at a restaurant until I was 10.

I don't think you are really high income. However whatever you think is your reality to you just keep keeping on.

Spending 1,000/mo on eating out isn't going to break our retirement plans. That expense is a line items that amounts to nothing, but noise.

You're gonna freak out, but my kids love a night out at a French restaurant by our home. It's a fix prix menu and usually $100/pp+ and this doesn't include wine. Their favorite steak place is The Palm. We don't do this every week, bit certainly a few times a year. This will not prevent me from retiring at 54.

Eat out st least 2xs a week. Pizza once a month.

We generally eat at home Sunday though Thursday, and about 50% of Saturdays. Fridays we get takeout; Saturdays we'll either go out or grill, depending on the weather.

I really like to cook, but not so much on weeknights, when it's all about getting food out quickly with as little prep time as possible. My spouse is a good but indifferent cook. We generally split cooking duties Monday through Thursday; I cook on Sunday.

I try to make a meal on the weekend that we can have for two nights during the week, or one night and stick another full meal in the freezer. I'll also make a big batch of gravy and put it in the freezer, as well as sausage and meatballs, for easy weekday meals. At any given moment, we have about 10 meals in the freezer that can be made with a minimum of prep time (just boiling pasta or cooking rice, for example).

We do takeout a little more than 2x/week on average. 2x most weeks, but 3x or even (rarely) 4x when we're busiest. Pre-COVID, it was about half takeout/half eat in the restaurant.

DH and I both enjoy cooking and are good at it, have plenty of quick/easy recipes at the ready. We have one kid in ES, and our income is MC by DCUM standards (~$140k).

I think we get restaurant food so often for three main reasons, perhaps all of them related to the fact that DH and I both have ADHD diagnoses!

1) We like to mix it up and eat a variety of foods/cuisines, including ethnic cuisines we can't make as well AND as cheaply as we can buy them. Pupusas and pho!

2) We have pretty terrible executive function skills and time blindness. Actually, we have come a long way with hard work, but this is an area in which it often catches up with us, usually at least once a week (we do plan a regular takeout night, as well).

3) We live in an urban area and have a million easy choices at the ready-- even within walking distance. For good or ill, there are a ton of options at our fingertips.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Every Wednesday because we can't make dinner that night and it's our groceries day: rotisserie chicken or quiche from Whole Foods. Also premade pizza crust for a pizza.

Once a month: Japanese or Chinese take-out.

What does your grocery day have to do with anything?

Not the PP, but on the day you buy groceries, you can pick up something premade to eat for dinner that night. Like, my mom always has rotisserie chicken for dinner the day she shops at Costco (and then makes enchiladas or chicken soup or something with the leftovers later that week).

We probably eat out around twice a week. Once during the week when we are driving the kids to their activities and just pick-up something on the way home. And normally one night a weekend we actually go out or order delivery.

Historically speaking, having one person cook for a nuclear family every day is not really the norm. In ancient Rome, people routinely purchased food from commercial kitchens (early food truck culture!). Wealthy people hired cooks for their household. Other people often had communal cooking, or lived with extended family and one person cooked for the whole group. People lived in boarding houses or dormitories or barracks. The idea that every woman (and it's always the woman) is expected to be a good cook and cook daily meals for her nuclear family is a culturally specific idea. Or even that every meal had to be cooked, rather than people eating bread and cheese or fruit, or whatever premade thing they had.

Certainly, not everyone likes cooking, or was taught how to cook (especially how to cook nutritious, balanced, affordable meals on a schedule for a family every single day), or has the time to cook. There are probably people amazed that you don't know how to change your own oil or install your own plumbing or grow your own food or whatever thing it is that you outsource.

Anonymous wrote:When we lived in London we would have takeout a couple of times a week and eat out a couple of times.

But the options in Bethesda are so bad it is more like once a month for takeout now. We eat out a couple of times a week, maybe once for dinner during the week and once for lunch at the weekend.

Pre-covid I would buy lunch out, usually a salad or sandwich, every work day. But I work from home now so no need.

I enjoy cooking and prefer my food to most restaurant food. My family may disagree!

Ain't that the truth. The vast majority of our takeout comes from DC, or Rockville.

Anonymous wrote:I do pickup almost every weekday.
I have noticed that people who mostly eat at home and cook a lot are immigrants (most of the time).
It is very rare for Americans to cook many meals. At least that’s my experience. I mean cooking from scratch of course.

This is quite something. And not in a good way.