Money Saving Meals

First, I would like to say I am a simple home chef.  I do enjoy cooking for my family, but we are definitely not fancy.  Also, I am not a food photographer.  I do the best I can with what I have.  The goal here is to help people understand the cost of a meal, and how eating and cooking at home is so much more affordable than eating out. So we will go over briefly the recipe and ingredients and the total cost of these ingredient and the total cost of the meal and then break it down per serving.  

Disclaimer: I plan to pull the cost of the items from Walmart.  I know that different areas of the country will have different prices on items, you may have to compare them in your area.  I also acknowledge that prices can change rapidly.  The purpose of this post isn’t to inform you of an exact cost, but to show you how to calculate.  As well as compare the cost of making a meal at home vs eating out.  I am pulling these prices as of February 2024.

Ingredient Pice List

1 lb Ground Beef, All Natural 73% Lean, 27% Fat $4.77

1 15 oz Can of Kidney Beans Great Value Brand $0.82

2 10 oz Cans of Red Enchilada Sauce Great Value Brand($1.00/ea) $2.00

1 pkg 10 count Flour Tortillas Great Value Brand $1.98

1 bag 8oz (2 Cups) Shredded Cheddar Cheese $2.22

Total Cost $11.79

This makes an average of 10 enchiladas for me if you divide the total cost of the whole pan $11.79 by the number of enchiladas it makes you would get the price per enchilada. 11.79/10= $1.18 per enchilada which would be your unit price.  So, if you have a 4 person family and each person eats 2 enchiladas the cost per person would be the unit price x the quantity consumed. 1.18 x 2 = $2.36 per person.  Even if you were a two-person household and between the two of you, you consume 5 enchiladas at dinner and the remaining 5 are taken for lunch the next day.  Your dinner for two costs $5.90 and your lunch for two cost $5.90.   

More Ways to Save

So you can see this is an affordable meal, but I will say there are ways to make it even more affordable!  A lot of tips out there advise you to buy in bulk, and sometimes that is good advice. Not always good advice but usually it does save money.  Sometimes buying in bulk sounds intimidating.  But it doesn’t have to be, sometimes it simply means buying the larger package.  Because again usually when we buy larger packages the price per unit cost is lower. 

So for example in this meal lets examine the ground beef and the shredded cheese.  If you buy the 3 lb package of ground beef the price per pound goes down from $4.77/ lb to $3.82/lb.  That’s almost a dollar a pound cheaper, $0.95 to be exact.  That’s a pretty decent savings. 

The price difference on the cheese isn’t as drastic.  The price per ounce on the 2 cup bag is 27.8 cents, the price per ounce of the 8 cup bag is 23.4 cents per ounce.  That is only a difference of 4.4 cents per ounce.  Not a huge difference but every little bit helps!

I will advise you to watch the price per unit, because bigger doesn’t always equal cheaper per unit.  Most retailers will calculate the price per unit as you can see in the snip from Walmart.  I highlighted the price per unit in yellow.  When comparing products by unit price and trying to figure out which is the better deal make sure that the units are the same.  You wouldn’t want to compare a price per ounce to a price per pound.  That would, as the old saying goes be like comparing apples to oranges.