Groceries and eating out: avoid paying for the same meal twice

Count the meals in each setting

Start with the household’s normal week and assign meals to home cooking, work canteens, restaurants or delivery. Include drinks and snacks where they genuinely belong. A grocery budget built for every meal at home cannot simply be combined with a second full eating-out budget without checking overlap. The objective is to model your routine, not to prescribe one.

Use an incremental comparison

Illustration: replacing eight home lunches using 4 of ingredients each with eight bought lunches at 10 raises the modeled food expense by 48, not 80, if the ingredient purchases really fall by 32. If food is still bought and wasted, that saving does not occur. Delivery charges, tips or other required charges must follow the actual local quote and your choices.

Keep frequency as an adjustable input

Compare a mostly-home week with your likely social week, preserving the number of people. Record which meal quotes and grocery quantities support each scenario. Restaurant averages are not a reliable substitute for your chosen meals or locations. If Lifovra’s result includes only groceries, add eating out separately and label it as a personal addition, not a newly measured city category.

Sources and further reading

• Lifovra — methodology and limitations