[yalurker]

I don't think eating out is really "conspicuous consumption" (unless maybe you're dealing with very-high end, trendy "see and be seen" destinations).

What you've presented seems like a perfectly rational choice: by moving to a lower-rent apartment they have more money to allocate towards their food budget. If a $5 burrito saves me 30 minutes of cooking, that's a great trade for my time/cash budgeting.

[petervandijck]

My parents treated eating out as an event, to be had a few times a year, maximum.

Of course they didn't have fast food, then.

ps: Making a burrito takes 5 minutes with leftovers, not 30.

[InclinedPlane]

Eating out is definitely conspicuous consumption if done on a regular basis.

Consider a perfectly ordinary example: a couple eats at a restaurant twice a week (call it at least $15 per person), they both have their starbucks coffee morning ritual (call it $4 per person per day), and one of them regularly eats out for lunch at work (call it $8 a day). These are all very low estimates, and they are not at all unusual examples. However, all of this money adds up.

How much does it add up to you ask? Over 7,000 dollars a year.

That's a decent used car, every year, or a new car every 2 years. An iPad every month. A laptop every 2 months. A trip for 2 to Hawaii (or the Bahamas) every season. Or buying one or two albums on iTunes or Amazon MP3 every single day, even weekends. If you had a coworker who spent $600 a month on consumer electronics you would definitely consider that conspicuous consumption.