The Mounting Cost of Convenience Buying
I get a lot of flak about convenience foods now and again, mostly about how convenience foods cannot possibly be THAT much more expensive than making things from scratch so?
Challenge accepted.
Let’s take your standard issue potato salad as one simple example. I don’t expect anyone to love my recipe over their own because potato salad is one of those recipes that is intensely personal and often harkens back to childhood tastes and preferences. Even so, the math is the math as we frugals like to say so let’s dig in.
The type of ready-made potato salad my partner would often buy when I wasn’t around is from our local grocery store and costs $5.99 for 32 ounces. That is about 18.5 cents an ounce. Sounds like a pretty good deal, right?
But let’s break down what it costs to make my potato salad:
Four potatoes cost me about $.32 since I got a 5 lb. bag for just $.99 on sale
Two (hard boiled) eggs cost me roughly $.22
Four Gerkin pickles cost me $.34
Half of one purple onion cost me $.30
Mayo and mustard? Let’s say $.70 because mayo is pricy
Salt and Pepper, I’ll call it at 0.5 cents although that’s being generous
So grand total? $2.04. And my recipe makes far more than 32 ounces. It makes roughly 60 ounces. That comes out to about three cents an ounce. Again, the store-bought version costs 18.5 cents an ounce.
Doing this over and over and over tends to add up. A LOT. The cost of convenience is a lot.
My partner loves his BBQ. This is an expensive food to love, trust me. Real, smoky savory BBQ takes time. A lot of time. Say 24 hours or more depending on how it is made. That means the cost of labor is passed on the consumer. The same for other convenience foods. The cost always goes down when you make it yourself.
Confession: I love a good produce department, but it is not without its money minefields where you will also find all the well packaged, convenience produce, cut up and packaged neatly in containers and bags. I bypass this money trap every single time and hit the open bins of greenery. Loose produce is far less expensive than any that has been bagged, cut or in any way altered. Stick to the basics. Once you get home cut, chop and prep what you need for at least a few days. Make it part of your grocery shopping efforts. Over time you will save money. The only thing that is better is growing your own and more on that as my summer garden progresses.
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the house behind 