Confession time. I have to admit that one of my weaknesses in this journey to a more sustainable lifestyle is my addiction to restaurants especially fast food. When I am tired and don't want to cook, it is too easy to travel or stop by these places to get a quick meal. I am doing much better and continue to strive to overcome this problem but sometimes it is easy to slip back into it.
Yesterday, I was paging through a magazine that my parents had passed down to me called Countryside. It is a great magazine but one article hit me hard. It was titled Stop Eating Your Way Into Debt!. It took no hostages with our addiction to cheap fast food. Not only did it talk about fast food but also the sodas, snack and vending machine food that is also not usually counted. Here are some statistics fron the article to make you think.
1) The average American "consumer unit (2.5 people)" spent about $6300 (about $525 per month) on food in 2009.
2) Of this $2600 of that was spent on eating out which averaged about $216 per month.
Her suggestion was to take a week (or more) and write down the amount of anything that goes into you and your family's mouth. Take that and multiply it by 4 to get your average monthly expenditure on food. Next, total how much you spent on buying food out and impulse buys. Compare that to how much you spent on food prepared at home. The figures may surprise you. Remember not only is eating out hard on your budget but it is hard on the environment.
I continue to work on my "easy" food purchases and impulse buys. This article gave me extra motivation to work on this area even more.
Yesterday, I was paging through a magazine that my parents had passed down to me called Countryside. It is a great magazine but one article hit me hard. It was titled Stop Eating Your Way Into Debt!. It took no hostages with our addiction to cheap fast food. Not only did it talk about fast food but also the sodas, snack and vending machine food that is also not usually counted. Here are some statistics fron the article to make you think.
1) The average American "consumer unit (2.5 people)" spent about $6300 (about $525 per month) on food in 2009.
2) Of this $2600 of that was spent on eating out which averaged about $216 per month.
Her suggestion was to take a week (or more) and write down the amount of anything that goes into you and your family's mouth. Take that and multiply it by 4 to get your average monthly expenditure on food. Next, total how much you spent on buying food out and impulse buys. Compare that to how much you spent on food prepared at home. The figures may surprise you. Remember not only is eating out hard on your budget but it is hard on the environment.
I continue to work on my "easy" food purchases and impulse buys. This article gave me extra motivation to work on this area even more.
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