How Much Money Do You Spend on Fast Food?

The fast food industry makes lots of money. If you are looking for ways to save money, you need to ask yourself how much money you spend on fast food. You would think the amount is rather insignificant, but the reality is that most people spend more money on fast food than they realize.

How much do you spend on fast food each week? The answer depends on how much you eat at fast food restaurants, and what you eat when you are there.

On the one hand, there are certain items on fast food menus which are rather inexpensive, such as the items you find on the "value menu". Most of these items cost less then $1, and help you stretch the dollar. So, if you stick to the value menu when you eat at fast food extablishments, you aren't going to be spending a very large amount of money. However, when you order items that are not from the value menu, things can get costly.

For example, suppose you eat fast food once a day for lunch, 5 days a week, and you always order a "combo meal", consisting of a burger, french fries, and a drink. Depending on where you order your fast food, this is going to cost you $4-5 a meal. Multiply that times 5 days a week and you get $20-25 a week or $100-125 a month, just on fast food, for only one meal a day. If you order fast food for lunch and dinner, 5 days a week, this turns into $200-$250 a month, and this is only for two meals a day.

Now, eating fast food is not exactly the healthiest thing to do, but for comparison purposes, how does the cost of fast food stack up against the cost of food at a grocery store? The results may astound you.

For starters, compare the cost of beverages at fast food extablishements to the cost of beverages at the grocery store. For example, you are usually charged about $1 (and in many cases more) for a medium sized fountain beverage, about a third of which is ice. Yet, if you go to the grocery, you can usually get a 12 pack of the same beverage for under $4. So, that same 12 pack of soda pop at the grocery store is going to cost you $12 at the fast food establishment!

But that is just soda pop, what about beef? Well, you can get a hamburger by itself for about $3 at a fast food establishment, which usually has 1/4 pound of beef. If you deduct a little for the price of the bun, you are paying about $10 a pound for the beef alone when you go to a fast food restaurant. Since you can buy 1 pound of beef for $2 at the grocery store, you are spending about 5 times as much for the same amount of beef at the fast food establishment compared to the grocery store.

If you want to save money, stop spending so much money at the fast food establishment, and start spending more at the grocery store!