In many posts, we have discussed economies of scale. Whether you cook more at home, eat out more, or use a mix of these, is based on a value system. For most of us, a value system is tied to money. That is how we think about economies; money in exchange for other’s goods and time. There are other facets here that can help optimize not only our pocketbook but also our time. To quote Ben Franklin, ‘Time is money…’ so we will explore this topic a bit.
There’s No Accounting for Taste
Before we start, let’s recognize and acknowledge ‘There’s no accounting for taste’. It has been a mission of ours for over a year to understand how to be frugal with food without compromising quality. Taste, and quality, are different for different folks. That being said, we have found what works for us and a level of quality of food that we are comfortable with. To produce it, in general, we don’t rely on premium products with a few exceptions.
Definitions
We will start by giving some definitions for context. These are our definitions and how we approach the tradeoffs we see between money, time, and waste. Waste is an important concept in economies. We will touch on that after we give some definitions.
- The Economics of Scale are places where you can lower costs by buying more. We often see this in membership warehouse stores such as Costco or large-scale retailers such as Walmart. In their cases the volume of buying power allows them to negotiate lower prices.
- The Economics of Time ( also considered Convenience) is how much time a person invests to use, make, or do something. These are usually things like trade-offs between making food and eating out where we weigh the amount of our time to something against the purchase cost.
- The Economics of Zero Waste (or simply Waste) comes from the idea of zero-waste living. For economies of scale and time to be optimized we want to limit waste. If we don’t limit waste, we are losing money and time for items that add no value which negatively impacts economies of scale and time.
Do You Care?
Maybe? Maybe Not? We found these three concepts are a guiding rubric for balancing budget and life. They lead to feeling better about how we spend our time and money by providing a logical way to gauge purchases. There are times when we have more money than time and vice versa. Everyone has their value systems, and they change over time as our lives change.
By being conscious of what is important to you, you can save time, money, and waste so they are good to know. That may sound obvious but know it is easy to lose track of goals and focus when life is busy. We will look next at how these three themes affect our personal home economics.
The Big Three
Scale
If you choose to make more food at home, you can leverage the economics of scale to your advantage. Many people may know this coming from large families but in general the more you buy, the cheaper the price. In essence, you are mimicking the same idea of purchasing power as any large retailer would but on a personal level.
We are all used to seeing sales where we get 3 steaks for the price of 2 or buy one get one for a dollar more. That is simply marketing to average out a value that entices us to buy more than we usually would. Due to that, you may choose to cook steaks over pork chops that night. Getting a deal is great but buying cooking staples in bulk usually is not the same concept. You may choose to buy
You can spend less money by weight for items like oil, flour, spices, etc. as you increase the quantity of your purchase. Those are the economies of scale we are discussing. As the weight increases from say a quart to a gallon, your price will go down per oz. In many cases, the prices will go down even more. Spices also follow this model. I have paid the same or more for 1.5 ozs of the same spice in a jar as I have for a 14 oz large plastic restaurant container.
Time and Convenience
Time, and its partner, convenience is also a critical cost measurement. As in any economy, we are trading specialization and using money as a common way to value our time. The more money we make, the more time we can free up through purchasing time through convenience. This is exactly what happens when we order food regularly. Sometimes makes perfect sense to order out to save some time or as a treat. Ordering out isn’t the only time and convenience vs money trade-off.
Some recipes are multi-step, and labor-intensive food to produce like lasagna. It is here that we need to start thinking about our time and the outcome of it on a per portion time cost. We can buy a lasagna we like, that is about 85% as good as homemade, and that saves us 2 hours in a kitchen, for about the same cost as homemade for 10 portions. That is not the same as when we make a soup or bread in which we get better quality for 30-60 minutes of active involvement.
That being said, we struggle when it comes to going out for a sandwich, hamburger, or tacos. Making them at home gives us the ability to control our portions, use items on hand, and have roughly the same outcome as dining out quality-wise. Further, we can make them cheaper and in roughly the same amount of time, we would take to eat out.
Waste
Waste is where the idea of saving time and money can become casualties. The idea behind economies of zero waste is to reuse, re-purpose, and not throw out anything salvageable. In terms of food, this means when eating out or in. Where this resonates with us is the idea of not wasting just food but time and money.
When you choose to go out, you are paying a premium in money for your food as it has been created through others’ work. You are usually paying a premium time-wise for those portions. For events, celebrations, etc. that may be the intent. If you then have leftovers and don’t take them home, you are creating additional waste which doubles the effective cost in time and money.
This also occurs in home cooking. If you buy ingredients that are one-off or go bad before you can use them you are creating waste. It means you spent a premium for one meal. Why? If you buy say, fish sauce for $10, use two tablespoons, then let it go bad after a lack of use, you spent $10 on a single part of a single meal.
Putting It Together
Let’s try and talk through how this works in practice from what we did. We decided to cook at home more than eat out to control our calorie budget. This initially meant spending more time and was less convenient than eating out. In essence, at first, we lost time however, we immediately saw a decrease in monetary cost and waste.
We then found portion control to be problematic and stored too much food. This created a different set of wastes for us through freezer burn. The lack of variety also made us stumble and go back to eating out more again which was more wasted time not only in going out but time sunk into making things we didn’t eat.
Where we landed was understanding, for us, what we did well at home. For example, we will go out for Thai or Chinese as we don’t want to store what are one-off items and ingredients. Further, because we specialize in certain areas, we know what we can buy in bulk. This has led to optimizing through getting good at a wide variety of things we can produce quickly. It has also kept the cost down as we buy things such as flour, cheese, butter, etc. in quantities that allow us to buy cheaper.
We Aren’t Anti-Local
There is a perception that large retailers such as Walmart, Amazon, etc. destroy local community stores. There are tradeoffs to having them for sure. Our point in this post is not to guide you to them instead of other options. It is the opposite. We use both types of retailers as needed and use them for what they each excel at.
We see each as a specialist in an area. I see no reason to spend a premium on bulk canola oil at a local grocery store. It’s cooking oil, nothing more and nothing less. Conversely, for example, in our small-town Walmart, there aren’t any specialty meats or local flavors. In those cases, we are always willing to pay the premium to a local business. It’s your conscience and value system so you should do you. That is an economy that deals in personal beliefs we don’t dare touch it.
Wrapping Up
We have discussed several economies and rubrics around their use. By learning what is important for you, you can reduce costs in both time and money while reducing waste. This is only an initial post on this subject. We will tie this into how having chosen to keep items on hand and investing in learning opens more options for cost reductions.