The Cost of Convenience Foods
Here's an article where somebody does the math on the cost of convenience foods for you. You'll want to be sitting down, probably carefully holding your head in your hands for support if you buy some of this stuff:
A friend of mine, for example, bought pre-marinated, individually vacuum-packed chicken breasts for $1.67 per four-ounce portion. It never occurred to her this is $6.68 a pound! Boneless chicken breasts were selling for $3.29 a pound. If it takes 5-cents worth of seasoning and one minute to season a pound's worth (do it in the morning and leave it in the fridge to marinate), you pay $3.34 per minute for this "convenience" or $200 per hour! ...Another example? Microwave popcorn. The cheapest nine-ounce bag at the store was $1.19. It takes three minutes to prepare in the microwave. A 32-ounce bag of popcorn kernels costs the same $1.19. I brought that bag home, clicked off my trusty stopwatch, slapped a pot on a burner, poured a tablespoon or so of oil in it, threw in three spoonfuls of kernels, popped them and checked the time. Two minutes, fifty seconds. Allowing twenty seconds to wash the pot and put it away, I saved only ten seconds. Yet the oh-so-convenient, time-saving microwave popcorn costs 3.5 times as much.
Working parents are some of the biggest losers when it comes to buying convenience products to save time:
Think about it. Say you're paid $12 per hour. Buy $60 worth of "time saving" products that save you a single hour of time, and you've just worked five hours to save one hour! (Actually, it costs more, when you factor the bite taxes out of your paycheck.) Insane.
So ignore the commercials and marketing claims. Estimate the cost-to-time-saved ratio before you buy. Chances are, you'll save money, quite possibly a lot of money. Then maybe you can afford to work less, and that's the best way to save time.
Popcorn is one of those convenience foods that costs 4 to 13 times more than making it from scratch, according to the The Complete Tightwad Gazette
But People are funny. Where our second daughter used to work, people made a very small salary, and she knew both her co-workers had very tight finances, often in the hole for the next paycheck a week or more before it arrived. But they went out for lunch or bought convenience foods to microwave and eat there.
Recently I met a lawyer who gets paid 200 dollars an hour, charges a five thousand dollar retainer fee, and his wife packs him lunches like leftover spaghetti to bring to work for lunch. He reheats it in the microwave in his very snazzy office. He's proud of his homemade lunches.
11 Responses to “The Cost of Convenience Foods”
October 26th, 2012 at 6:22 am
I had all three copies of the Tightwad Gazette and I have been frugal all my life as I could be; do you know if the Tightwad Gazette has been updated at all to include such things that have changed in the years that have passed since 1996? (And also, Amy’s season’s of life too) It would be interesting to see how she’s handled retirement, etc. and other issues of later life.
October 26th, 2012 at 7:40 am
“Think about it. Say you’re paid $12 per hour. Buy $60 worth of “time saving” products that save you a single hour of time, and you’ve just worked five hours to save one hour! (Actually, it costs more, when you factor the bite taxes out of your paycheck.) Insane.”
This is why it often makes more sense to live on one income. People are often too tired to cook, even a little, and it does take time and preparation to do things from scratch. Even finding the recipes is part of the work. My mom is one of those who works all week and spends ridiculous amounts of money on food that should could be making herself. But she never learned how, and never has the energy to put into learning. It’s illogical, but when were people ever logical?
October 26th, 2012 at 7:40 am
should could=she could
Ugh.
October 26th, 2012 at 11:26 am
I take exception to the popcorn example. I’ve done air and stove popped corn. We don’t buy micro for time saving, but for taste. I’ve tried a dozen ways to make real popcorn flavorful and none of them work.
October 26th, 2012 at 11:47 am
Try using coconut oil on popcorn instead of butter.
Absolutely delicious!
October 26th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
I love mixing up melted butter with a little hot sauce, salt, chili powder and a few other seasonings for chili popcorn. Microwave popcorn tastes yucky to me. The texture is kind of off, too. Could just be that whatever you’re used to is better, I guess, but yuck on the microwave stuff.
October 26th, 2012 at 1:26 pm
In response to the question about Amy Dacyczyn: there have been a couple of interviews published in the last few years, and also a 2009 You-tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUFyD-FTf-E . Longer version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNWcCGnXmfk&feature=related . She doesn’t appear in that one until about 9 minutes in.
October 26th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
I think microwave popcorn is an acquired taste and it’s possible to unacquire it- I don’t like it myself, and find it leaves a film on the inside of my mouth.
We pop it in coconut oil, and I sprinkle some seasoning salt in the hot oil while popping.
October 26th, 2012 at 5:14 pm
I bought each of my daughter-in-laws a slow cooker when they first set up house. Now there is no reason to worry about having to run out for convenience foods. And my youngest son and his wife figured out that they can save way more by her staying home when they had their daughter, even over the costs incurred for them to work different shifts.
I grew up before the microwave was a fixture in kitchens, I never got used to microwave popcorn it’s just gross to me.
October 27th, 2012 at 11:56 am
[...] The Cost of Convenience Foods from Frugal Hacks. She breaks down how much it really costs to use easy-to-prep foods. Kind of eye opening! [...]
October 29th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Another word about the microwave popcorn–you can make your own microwave popcorn with a paper lunch sack (costs about 1 cent), add a scant 1/2 cup popcorn kernels, fold over the top (but don’t staple) and microwave for about 2 minutes (adjust to your microwave). Immediately spray with a bit of butter-flavored oil spray and dust with popcorn salt. Way less fattening than regular microwave popcorn, and waaay less expensive.
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