★My colleague who lives alone eats convenience store bento for every meal. People say that it’s cheaper than cooking because there are no utility bills, but is that really true? When living alone, food options are important. If your colleague says, “Convenience store bento is cheap and doesn’t cost you anything in terms of utility bills,” you might wonder if that’s true. Convenience store bento is easy and convenient, but it’s not necessarily the best when it comes to cost and health. In this article, we will compare the cost of convenience store bento boxes and cooking at home, and give you some tips to help you find the eating lifestyle that suits you best. Comparing the costs of “convenience store bento” and “cooking at home” According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Statistics Bureau’s “Household Survey: Income and Expenditures, Single-Person Households, 2023,” the average monthly food cost for a single-person household is 42,049 yen. Using these prices as a reference, let’s compare convenience store bento with cooking at home. First, let’s look at the cost of convenience store bento. The price of a single convenience store bento meal is around 400 to 700 yen. If you continue this for a month, eating three meals a day, your monthly food expenses will be approximately 36,000 to 63,000 yen. On the other hand, what if you cook at home? If you subtract the 9,690 yen for eating out, the 7,618 yen for prepared foods, and the 3,238 yen for sweets from the average monthly food cost of 42,049 yen for a single-person working household, the food cost comes to 21,503 yen. Calculate the utility costs for cooking at home According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Statistics Bureau’s “Household Survey: Income and Expenditures, Single-Person Households, 2023,” the monthly utility and water costs for a single-person household are 13,045 yen. Looking at the breakdown, electricity is 6,726 yen, gas is 3,359 yen, and water is 2,239 yen. The proportion of utility bills used for cooking is approximately 10% for electricity, 20% for gas, and 15% for water. Using these figures as a reference, if we calculate the utility costs for a single person cooking at home, electricity costs are approximately 627 yen, gas costs are approximately 671 yen, and water costs are approximately 335 yen, meaning the total utility costs for cooking at home for one month are approximately 1,633 yen. If we add the food expenses for a single person calculated earlier of 21,503 yen to the utility costs of 1,633 yen for cooking at home for one month, the total comes to 23,136 yen. When comparing these results with the cost of convenience store bento, cooking at home is around 12,000 to 40,000 yen cheaper. (Link below) *Previous thread.
>>1 If you’re a beginner at cooking, it’s ridiculously expensive to buy ingredients each time you decide on a dish like “Today I’m going to make XX,” and then you end up wasting ingredients. I start by buying 2000 yen worth of ingredients and dividing them up into a week’s worth of menus, so cooking at home is cheaper.
I buy half-price bento boxes for dinner that day and lunch the next day in a loop. Sometimes when I have a bit of a hole in my wallet, I cook my own food or eat out.
I used to cook for myself for a while, but I would often have to go on a sudden business trip and end up wasting ingredients or rice I had cooked for a reservation. The worst part was when I was on a business trip in the middle of summer and there was a power outage due to a traffic accident, and the contents of my refrigerator turned into gruesome images, so I had to throw out the whole refrigerator. This caused me to give up on continuing to cook for myself. I’ve started buying ready-made meals from supermarkets and convenience stores.
When renting, the price varies greatly between properties that are designed for self-catering and properties that only have a kettle and a minimum of water boiling capacity. You can also save a lot of space to move around and floor space for counters, etc. You can also downsize the specs of the refrigerator and microwave if you decide not to cook your own meals. You don’t need to buy pots and knives.
Check out Syria instead of bento. I recommend Bakudan’s YouTube channel. This time, Trump and Türkiye’s Erdogan teamed up to attack Syria. Assad will be gone by the end of the year at the latest. Russia dries up.
If you cook at home, the average monthly cost for a single working household is 42,049 yen for food, 13,045 yen for utilities, 5,301 yen for smartphone, 863 yen for device, and 70,000 yen for rent. So far, the total is 131,258 yen.
>>18 There are very few supermarkets that are offering half price items. Even if they are, they are usually only the ones that are left over right before closing time. They are hard to come by.
Convenience store bento boxes have a weird taste. Is it because they have preservatives or something? They taste so strong that sometimes I feel sick when I eat them.
If you eat only convenience store bento and convenience store prepared foods on a daily basis, you’ll develop a dumb palate that prefers ramen with a lot of synthetic fats like Jiro.
I cook my own lunch every day and even bring it to work. I’ve been living like this for a long time so it doesn’t bother me. My food expenses are under 20,000 yen.
That’s not true. I keep a detailed household budget, but the bread my husband buys from the convenience store every morning is a waste for our household. He should just eat plain bread.
In terms of cost alone, cooking at home is cheaper. However, if you factor in the time it takes to cook at home, convenience store bento is less cost-effective.
You have to buy cooking utensils and seasonings, and some ingredients end up being thrown away before you use them all. Convenience stores are out of the question, but fast food is cheaper than cooking at home if you use discounts. When you cook at home, you tend to not get enough calories and end up eating sweets.
A convenience store bento and paper tea cartons are the best value for money for the poor. Cooking the same menu of one type of vegetable every day is a chore.
There are a lot of people who only look at the cost of ingredients for cooking at home. Utilities for cooking, cleaning up, storing, etc. It’s often cheaper to buy prepared food.
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