Restaurant Tabs Kill Budgets! Start Making Meals At Home

Hey single people, I get it … eating out all the time is great if you can afford it!

It gives you a chance to spend some entertaining times with your wild gang, and maybe find a few love interests along the way. Unfortunately, it’s also going to tear a huge gaping hole in your budget if you’re not careful. So, my advice is to start eating in with a little, self-made home cooking (that you’ve prepared yourself from scratch) before the wedding bells, the house, the kids and their expensive college tuitions come along. With a little practice, you’ll be more than able to make some sweet, restaurant-quality meals for a mere fraction of the cost. This will save a few thousand dollars a year (of which, you’ll need for that other stuff. Desperately, I might add). So let’s get started, shall we? Good …

There are many ways to learn how to cook — from the cookbooks you can pick up at any garage sale, to maybe fitting in a course or two at the local community college (or go back to your alma mater if you’re too good for the Poorman’s College, rich guy). Also, some of the world’s best cooks will tell you that they learned from helping their parents and grandparents in the kitchen while growing up (go give mom a call. She’ll help you out). Then there are those who have learned through trial and error (my style, to a T) from what they picked up along the way (ok, from Rachael Ray, but don’t tell anyone).

Good news for all: most adults have the capacity to learn rather quickly after actually caring enough to give home cooking a shot, so it may be beneficial to enlist a couple of those spendthrift friends, who are blowing their money right along with you, to find some new friends who can willingly offer up some free training sessions (just make sure these new guys know how to cook).

If you need some more helpful advice to start your journey through this unknown territory, then the following three short tips will probably be enough to get you going on the right path:

The best cooking resource is the internet (just don’t tell your mom that). For example: YouTube videos are great because they let you see both amateur and professional cooks offering up some great advice and simple instruction on how to cook anything from simple microwavable dishes to hoity-toity five-course meals.

Buy items in bulk to save money. Go ahead — take advantage of those sales. Just make sure it’s stuff that you will really use, because allowing it to go to waste won’t save you in the long run. Then, keep a list of what you have, and always remember to label and date all the containers you’ll be cramming everything into.

Most cooks, who know their way around a kitchen that is, will tell you that the best way to gain experience is by doing it yourself and messing up along the way. Start with some simple meals that anyone can cook, while gradually working your way up toward re-creating family and restaurant-style favorites.

My friend, learning to cook is one of the most valuable skills that an adult can master in their life. One of the best ways to cut a family budget is to learn how to cook your meals from scratch as opposed to relying on the convenience (which definitely comes with a price) of either tasteless prepared foods or eating out. Did you know that when you buy pre-cooked foods, much of the cost goes towards the packaging and not the ingredients themselves? That’s horrible right (if you answered “NO”, I’ll let you in on a little secret: you should have answered “Yes”)?

So, in wrapping up: whether you’re just trying to save a little dough in this current economic crisis, or you really want to start making some serious budget restraints (which is going to help you save for a lot of other things, including your own retirement), then why don’t you find a way to learn how to cook, while saving money at the same time? It’ll be pretty hard at first (I won’t lie to you) but after a while you’ll be in a much healthier place, both physically and financially!