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The Real Cost of Takeaways
We rarely had takeaway but we paid off our mortgage in just over fourteen years.
And we retired early.
Now please don't get me wrong. Eating out gives people, including me, a lot of pleasure and we all need pleasure in our lives. Maybe you need the pleasure once, twice or three times a week; I don’t know your needs. I just worked out what the 'real' costs of these choices were going to be for me.
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And again, instead of buying lunch every day over my working life, at a cost of just $10 per day (coffee and salad,) I took it from home. I saved at today’s prices $70,000 over my working life. ($10 per day x 40 weeks per year x 35 years)
And when other family members did the same the savings were even greater.
​​I learnt ways then, of eating well and cheaply, out of necessity. But years later, after things improved, I kept the same organization in place because I'd realized how much time, money and health we'd previously been wasting.
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Takeaway is really convenient. But it's also possible to make quick home-made healthy meals in the same time it takes to go out for takeaway.
I suppose in a nutshell I found
no takeaway tastes as good as freedom...
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The following planning links may be useful:
How many years of your life are you working for takeaway? Seriously...
It's not unusual for people who are working to eat takeaway, or eat out one, two or three times a week. Often more if you count lunches as well.
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At a cost of just $70 per week for takeaway meals, you are looking at over $145, 000 over your working life.
And if you eat out as a family of four just once a week (& not somewhere fancy,) and have a takeaway as well, these costs increase yet again to something more in the vicinity of $208, 000. But some of us will spend much, much more.
Imagine instead if the money had been used to pay off a mortgage, or for family holidays.
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Have you ever kept a record of how much your family might be spending on takeaway food?
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If you kept a record over three months you might be surprised when you factor everything, (and everyone,) in.
E.g.: Going out for family and friend's birthdays, takeaway coffees, holidays, catching up for lunch, special treats, movies, in addition to the sanity saving takeaways when you're too exhausted to cook.
Something we did was, instead of regularly eating takeaway we invested our savings into superannuation. And that's how my husband and I retired early. We have a nice home on a huge block near the sea, and we managed to put two children through university.
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We've had lots of lovely holidays for extensive periods of time. And we also had some very difficult financial times that spanned years after my husband had a life-changing accident... That we never thought would happen to us.
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