[Jtsummers]

If you strictly want to maximize your money, you're probably making the best choice for yourself.

For many of us, time with family, friends, hobbies, is a relaxing and physically/mentally/emotionally healthy thing to engage in, rather than trying to exploit every waking hour for income.

[jpetso]

You're not wrong, however the parent was specifically replying to a post that justified home cooking with financial considerations and didn't even go into the quality-of-life aspect at all.

I think the takeaway is that if you prefer coding over cooking then that's justifiable from a financial and time efficiency point of view. If you prefer cooking and the presumed family quality time over (even more) coding then that's also very reasonable.

[Jtsummers]

Unless you're spending all your waking hours maximally, the time savings of not-cooking versus cooking is not a well-considered trade off in the GPs post.

Just the transit time for a meal out is already going to cost them a great deal more productive time than cooking would. They don't mention Soylent or frozen meals, which are really the only viable way to spend your time more productively than either meal prep or eating out.

[chefkoch]

The whole math changes if you either don't live in silicon valley or cook for more than one person (or cook for more than one meal).

[aianus]

So instead of spending time with the family, friends, and hobbies you'd rather slave away in front of a stove to save $600/mo?

[Jtsummers]

I don't slave. It takes me 30 minutes or so to have a complete meal most nights. But only, perhaps, 10 minutes of my time. I start the rice as soon as I get in from the gym. Meats and vegetables get prepared after my shower. If it involves the stove, they're done in approximately ten minutes for most of my recipes. If it involves the oven, I may spend up to ten minutes in total on prep before tossing them in to bake.

I guess I don't make the most involved meals, but they certainly taste good.

EDIT: Besides, why can't the time I spend cooking be with my family or friends? Not like my home is big, if my girlfriend doesn't want to be in the open floor plan kitchen/living room/dining room and would rather hide in the bedroom, I guess she can. Would be awkward. Similarly for when friends are over. It's not like I need intense concentration while I cook, just enough to not burn/cut myself or burn the meal.

[Grishnakh]

So you'd rather spend all your time in the evenings transiting to a restaurant, waiting around for a table, waiting around for your order to arrive, getting hurried by the server so they can get a new customer in, then transiting back home?

Eating out at a nice sit-down restaurant takes a huge amount of time. I can cook myself a meal at home and eat it in much less time than going out.

The only way it's faster to eat out is if you get fast food takeout, which is absolutely shut nutritionally and will put you into an early grave.

You sound like all the dummies who think I'm wasting time by changing the oil in my car myself. It takes me less time than making an appointment, driving all the way to the dealership, then sitting there and waiting for them to do the work (which probably takes longer than me because they have a bunch of cars to work on and their scheduling isn't perfect, just like a doctor's office), then driving back home. I can do it myself in my garage in 15 minutes. I can't even drive to my nearest dealership in that time. On top of all that, you have to figure how much work time I'm missing in the process, since auto shops aren't open weekends or evenings usually (and especially not dealerships).

[criddell]

What do you do with your old oil?

[Grishnakh]

Any auto parts store will take it. They have a giant metal vat in the back room; you just bring your old oil in, and they tell you to go dump it yourself. I have an Autozone next to the grocery store I normally go to, so it's easy to just swing by and dump it while I'm already out.

[pvdebbe]

Not gp, but I store the old oil in a closed can, back of the shed. While usually there's a waste management charge for oils, in Finland there are occasional events when it's free to deliver oils and whatnot. So I take the few cans then.

[criddell]

The place I take my old oil to they are happy to get it because they sell it. I figure since I'm going to have to take it to them anyway, I might as well let them do it all.

[baq]

preparing food is one of the more social activities and one which people have been doing together since before they called themselves people. maybe you should try changing how you go about it?

[criddell]

In my calculation, it was $600 per week savings for my family of 4. That's $2400 / month.