Fuel for Thought

Eating Solo

At the Expedite Expo the topic of food budgets came up during a conversation. One person mentioned that they spent $300 a week on food. My jaw hit the floor. The person then proceeded to do some mental arithmetic and changed the estimate to $200 a week. My jaw remained on the floor. I’ve always used $50 as my weekly food budget, but the conversation raised my curiosity to run the real numbers. August seemed like a typical month, and it was the first full set of numbers since the expo. I was in service most of the month with only about three days out of service. The $50 guess came from me rarely spending more than $25 a week for the fries & milkshake, and Panera Bread kind of stops. The rest was fudging for all the other things I stockpile like jerky, granola, juice, cheese… My August receipts came to $179.11, which breaks down to $5.78 per day or $40.44 a week. The restaurant orders came to $56.00 for the month, and the rest went into the piles of food I keep in the van. Ice cream subtotal, not to be confused with milkshakes, came to $16.12.

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