Tried meal prepping for 2 weeks straight and my grocery bill jumped $60

I live in Austin and decided to give meal prepping a real shot after my coworker swore it saved her $200 a month. I bought all the containers, planned out five days of lunches, and stuck to it for 14 days. The math surprised me: my usual weekly grocery run was around $110, but the prepping weeks came in at $140 each. I even factored in eating out less, which I did, but the extra produce and portioned proteins just cost more upfront. The real kicker was that I only finished half the meals because I got bored by day three of eating the same chicken and rice bowl. So now I'm wondering if anyone else hit this wall where the system works but your wallet and your taste buds just don't agree. What do you do instead that actually keeps costs down without making you feel like a robot?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel14022d ago

Wait, did you actually calculate the cost per meal you ate, not what you bought?

mason_lopez22d ago

$60 extra and you only ate half of it, so really that's like $120 of wasted food for the pleasure of eating sad chicken rice for a week straight. I did the same thing last year, bought a whole stack of those glass containers that were supposed to change my life, and now they're just fancy Tupperware holding leftovers I forget about until they grow stuff. My hack now is picking two meals max and accepting that lunch is just fuel, not a culinary adventure. That way I'm not spending $15 on kale that wilts before I even open the bag. The real savings came when I stopped pretending I'd ever enjoy eating the same thing five days in a row.