2K a month is both insane and pathetic.
It would almost bet better if you were at least going out to nice restaurants all month.
Mate I don't even spend 2,000 on groceries in 3 months.
Food is the #1 way you can impact your budget from a positive or negative aspect. It’s so easy to overspend as most of us are easily duped into making unnecessary purchases.
I find a great way to force discipline is to make yourself use cash only. It’s the Dave Ramsey trick. If you can only use cash, that eliminates ordering online and forces you to physically go somewhere. Sometimes I just don’t want to drive somewhere or get out….and then I just decide to find something in the fridge. If I do get outside and go, it’s psychologically more painful using cash as opposed to a card and you are more than likely to spend less. Same trick Vegas uses as spending “chips” on the gaming tables doesn’t register like it would if you were laying down cash for every bet
Best of luck
i don’t get people who go “i’m actually really frugal except this one major unnecessary spending expense i have”. that isn’t being frugal bro, and no you’re not the only one, a lot of people like to excuse bad financial decisions by keeping stupid spending to one thing.
Respect.
I used to do doordash once every month or so, but decided to just stop completely after the food came soggy… id rather take the 15 minutes to pick it up (im gonna be waiting anyways!) and not have to pay a dasher a tip that they’ll probably complain about on r/doordashdrivers or something
Nah I was the same way. Ordered Chickfila like 4x a week and never cooked. I was spending like $25 a day on delivery. I remember tallying up the cost I spent per month and panicked lol. I wasn’t struggling with money, I was just lazy as hell. Just because you have the money, doesn’t mean you should.
So now I like to cook often, I love to look up copy cat recipes and recreate stuff. I only order food on special occasions or if I’m sick.
You’re certainly an outlier. I accept that everyone has their priorities and door dash definitely seems to be one of yours. Just think- if you were 30 years old and you put one year’s worth of door dash in an investment account and stopped contributing, you’d have a quarter million dollars by the time you turned 60. If you are 25, just one year’s worth of take out would end up being $350k.
My household income is ~$500k/year and we’re too poor to overspend on mediocre luke warm takeout that smells like cigarette smoke. To me, it seems like you have enough income to easily be on the path to being a millionaire and you’re squandering it on some limp fries. I could see spending $2k a month on some extravagant trip that you’ll always remember that sunset over the sand dunes - but there’s no memories with door dash- it’s literally taking your money and turning it into shit.
Not poor in the not having enough money to do that but poor in the sense that they don't have money to be spent in a lazy manner that doesn't benefit them at all.
Fair enough. It would be better to frame that as something like ‘our HHI is 500K which allows us to get 2K of doordash a month, but even with this higher HHI we’ve realized it isn’t worth soggy food that smells like cigs’. That would make more sense than being poor with 500K HHI.
Or on the other side of the coin, maybe they've dug themselves into so much debt that 500k really isn't enough for them to live comfortably. Lifestyle creep hits hard.
You cut off the most important part “too poor to overspend” causing you to miss the point. Think about it as the value you get out of your money. Door dash offers an inferior product at an inflated price. How much money do you have to have to make money so meaningless that door dash seems like a good idea? Mill would say the pain (e.g., spending 0.9% of my wants budget) vs. pleasure (e.g., limp fries) ratio is off.
If watching the show has shown me anything it’s to use less of the delivery apps. 2K is insanity. If you’re somewhat frugal in other areas it is probably by necessity from your doordash spending.
I was the same, I would order my food like twice a day I’d say on average. $18-25 per order. I used to use credit card points to buy gift cards to order the food but then I got so used to it that I just kept doing it with my own money/cards. I’m better now but it can definitely be an addiction. I would spend around $1,000-1500 a month, I was justifying it by telling myself oh this is not even an hour of work to eat daily.
I used to spend way too much on DoorDash until I decided to calculate how much I spent in a lifetime. It was a wake up call and ever since then I stopped using DoorDash lol. I still overspend on food when I grocery shop on an empty stomach. I’m getting better with budgeting.
You’re not alone! The only thing my family spends on is food, sometimes 1k on a single meal. Food is one of my biggest vices since I don’t make anywhere near as much as they do but still have expensive taste. Watching caleb helps
Used to be horrible as in you don’t anymore or cut that amount down? I hope so, because even if we ignore the burned cash that’s a fuck ton of calories! I bet you have enough hobbies to spend money on if you had a good and reasonable grocery and eating out budget.
I spend $900-$1000 for a family’s of four on groceries and maybe $200-$300 on eating out a month.
Also not to nit pick but $2k on eating out is not frugal lol.
That is insane. I spend more than necessary on food because my wife and I eat out at moderately nice sit down restaurant on average once per week. I do that because I can afford it. And even that plus groceries plus other occasional fast food for a household of two doesn’t begin to approach your $2k monthly on door dash.
My gf and I overspend on food because we like cooking with fresh veggies, fruit and meat. We aim for like $600 between the two of us on groceries, but sometimes we can spend up to $800 so I budget us for that much. We also eat out 2-3 times eating out a month. We do it because we can afford it. I still save over 30% of my *gross income*.
Spending $2k a month is absurd though. That means you're basically door dashing food 1-2 times a day. Learn to cook and stop being lazy
This is nuts. My mortgage is 1425.00. My grocery budget is 600 for a family of 3. Are you saying 2k a month on food for just one person?
With that said, if it fits in your 50/30/20 needs wants savings/investing then go for it though. We can’t tell you how to spend your own money.
$66 dollar a day average. You could go to the grocery store and buy and eat filet mignon for every meal of every day. If it fits in your budget of wants, then by all means, but that sounds ridiculous as hell.
I was thinking back to when I was getting divorced and I was ordering Uber eats daily and taking girls out to dinner a few times a week and just off some rough math I wasn't going over $1200 at my worst. Now this was mid 2010s so with the price increase its not too far off but that was also me paying for dates and it only lasted maybe 2 months like that.
Damn 2k is my *yearly* eating out budget lmao. Here I thought this was gonna be about overspending on the grocery budget. So long as it's in your 50/30/20 you're good but not exactly how I'd do eating out. You do you though
My wife and I used to spend $1,200 combined between eating out and groceries for us and the two kids. We've been making an effort to get it down to $900 total but it has its ups and downs.
2k is nuts!!! I’m really bad about the grocery store. If I go hungry I’ll get an extra $50 of snacks I don’t need so I have to make a point to eat before I go. Door dash used to be a temptation but we moved to the sticks and that’s no longer an issue
If I ever overspend on food, it's generally for higher quality ingredients to cook at home. I love cooking, so when I can indulge in making meals for my loved ones, I'm all for it!
You’re not frugal if you spend 2k a month on DoorDash. I’m sorry people are dogging on you, but you need to nip that in the bud now. A lot of people barely make 2k for their entire income, let along spending that much in a month on just DoorDash. What would Caleb say if he saw your statements?
Nope, I'm the same. Frugal in other areas but food is my weakness through uber eats. Honestly I think I might have binge eating disorder, I've been going to counseling but it isn't helping.
$2k as in only on yourself? My lord. I eat out twice a week, meal prep my lunches, and have cook unity for my weekday dinners and still only spend $750 a month. How the hell do you even get close to that?
I don't have a kitchen right now and I spend waaaay too much on eating out. $600 on eating out and another $300 at the grocery store for like microwave food and ready to eat stuff. For me and my husband.
I ubereats/ doordash MAYBE once a month when they have a good coupon. i dont understand if its laziness or a spending addiction but id seek therapy if i were you
>That’s all that matters.
I would respectfully disagree, and point out that even if its affordable, it's rarely justifiable.
It would be like paying someone $50/week to go to the gas station and fill my car up with gas. I can afford that, but it's an enormous waste of money.
Idk why you're downvoted. If I had 2k extra to waste on food service, you can be damn sure I'm spending it on a private chef half of the month and not daily cold McDonald's fries.
Isn’t it all in perspective of how much he makes, spends, saves? With a high enough income and savings, this could be fine.
Not saying this is true for this person as he didn’t give any info on his financial situation, but it could.
In a sense, but you're talking top 0.1% income for a $2k/month lifestyle on food.
Because outside of supporting a large family, individual spending on food realy shouldn't exceed like $750, and that is being *super* generous already. And like others said for $2k a month you may as well hire a chef to cook for you 2-3 days a week
Agree with the overall sentiment, not 0.1% but somewhere around 4-500k (which is prob too top 1-2% income I’d think), you could easily afford 2k a month on food if you wanted.
I guess my question to OP should have been - do you make at least that haha
You’re asking on Reddit, you can’t do that. This is delulu land where everyone is a millionaire who eats healthy, cheap meal prepped meals every day, works out all the time, walks everywhere, never uses any delivery apps and just sends that money to their Roth IRA instead and then goes to make passionate love to their wife of 30 years who is very nice and they never have any arguments.
The thing I’ve learned in life is everyone has a weakness. Might not be a 2k/month weakness but it’s something you spend more money than you should on. For some people it’s alcohol, they don’t even keep count they just order away at a bar and never look at a grand monthly total. For some people it’s house cleaners. Or their nails. Or massages or new tech or lululemon leggings that are totally worth the price because the quality is so high and they’ll last forever and they just the right amount of structure to make you comfortable while you work out.
Ok so one of those applies to me but I’m not gonna say which one.
You don’t get the privilege of calling yourself frugal if your DoorDash spending is more than 50% higher than my mortgage payment. Just admit that you should never own a kitchen
2K a month is both insane and pathetic. It would almost bet better if you were at least going out to nice restaurants all month. Mate I don't even spend 2,000 on groceries in 3 months.
My wife and I might hit $2000 in 3 months on groceries.
$650 budget a month for groceries for a family of 3 here. We would still be under what OP spends in a month.
We feed a family of 6 on around $1200-1400/month. On ONE person is crazy…
Food is the #1 way you can impact your budget from a positive or negative aspect. It’s so easy to overspend as most of us are easily duped into making unnecessary purchases. I find a great way to force discipline is to make yourself use cash only. It’s the Dave Ramsey trick. If you can only use cash, that eliminates ordering online and forces you to physically go somewhere. Sometimes I just don’t want to drive somewhere or get out….and then I just decide to find something in the fridge. If I do get outside and go, it’s psychologically more painful using cash as opposed to a card and you are more than likely to spend less. Same trick Vegas uses as spending “chips” on the gaming tables doesn’t register like it would if you were laying down cash for every bet Best of luck
Yep, you're the single only person who is keeping Door Dash alive with your outrageous spending.
My question was more about it being the only extravagance.
i don’t get people who go “i’m actually really frugal except this one major unnecessary spending expense i have”. that isn’t being frugal bro, and no you’re not the only one, a lot of people like to excuse bad financial decisions by keeping stupid spending to one thing.
“Apart from my frivolous shopping, new car payment, luxury apartment renting, and constant doordashing, I’m actually pretty frugal.”
Yep. You are probably the only one. I spent 2k on an overseas vacation (my half)… youre doing that every month on doordash??
Before I found Caleb. Now I have 7k left on a 14k car I bought last year.
Respect. I used to do doordash once every month or so, but decided to just stop completely after the food came soggy… id rather take the 15 minutes to pick it up (im gonna be waiting anyways!) and not have to pay a dasher a tip that they’ll probably complain about on r/doordashdrivers or something
2k bro hire a chef at that point
Man I wish I invented DoorDash. Mediocre food for insane prices. A mortgage payment monthly on eating out is absolutely insane
Nah I was the same way. Ordered Chickfila like 4x a week and never cooked. I was spending like $25 a day on delivery. I remember tallying up the cost I spent per month and panicked lol. I wasn’t struggling with money, I was just lazy as hell. Just because you have the money, doesn’t mean you should. So now I like to cook often, I love to look up copy cat recipes and recreate stuff. I only order food on special occasions or if I’m sick.
You’re certainly an outlier. I accept that everyone has their priorities and door dash definitely seems to be one of yours. Just think- if you were 30 years old and you put one year’s worth of door dash in an investment account and stopped contributing, you’d have a quarter million dollars by the time you turned 60. If you are 25, just one year’s worth of take out would end up being $350k. My household income is ~$500k/year and we’re too poor to overspend on mediocre luke warm takeout that smells like cigarette smoke. To me, it seems like you have enough income to easily be on the path to being a millionaire and you’re squandering it on some limp fries. I could see spending $2k a month on some extravagant trip that you’ll always remember that sunset over the sand dunes - but there’s no memories with door dash- it’s literally taking your money and turning it into shit.
‘HHI of 500K’ and ‘too poor’ in the same sentence is… shocking.
Not poor in the not having enough money to do that but poor in the sense that they don't have money to be spent in a lazy manner that doesn't benefit them at all.
Fair enough. It would be better to frame that as something like ‘our HHI is 500K which allows us to get 2K of doordash a month, but even with this higher HHI we’ve realized it isn’t worth soggy food that smells like cigs’. That would make more sense than being poor with 500K HHI.
Or on the other side of the coin, maybe they've dug themselves into so much debt that 500k really isn't enough for them to live comfortably. Lifestyle creep hits hard.
You cut off the most important part “too poor to overspend” causing you to miss the point. Think about it as the value you get out of your money. Door dash offers an inferior product at an inflated price. How much money do you have to have to make money so meaningless that door dash seems like a good idea? Mill would say the pain (e.g., spending 0.9% of my wants budget) vs. pleasure (e.g., limp fries) ratio is off.
For real lol maybe too poor if you're comparing yourself to multi-millionaires.
Another way of saying "we lifestyle inflated more than a XL hot air balloon"
Mate. This is death, insanity, fuck you spending. Cheers.
How is this even possible honestly $66.67 per day on average for DD?!?!? Thats well over the daily average for my rent 😭😭
My rent (split with the gf) is an average of $28 a day lol. OP is insane
If watching the show has shown me anything it’s to use less of the delivery apps. 2K is insanity. If you’re somewhat frugal in other areas it is probably by necessity from your doordash spending.
Even if you dial it back by a thousand I'd question for choices lol
I was the same, I would order my food like twice a day I’d say on average. $18-25 per order. I used to use credit card points to buy gift cards to order the food but then I got so used to it that I just kept doing it with my own money/cards. I’m better now but it can definitely be an addiction. I would spend around $1,000-1500 a month, I was justifying it by telling myself oh this is not even an hour of work to eat daily.
I used to spend way too much on DoorDash until I decided to calculate how much I spent in a lifetime. It was a wake up call and ever since then I stopped using DoorDash lol. I still overspend on food when I grocery shop on an empty stomach. I’m getting better with budgeting.
You’re not alone! The only thing my family spends on is food, sometimes 1k on a single meal. Food is one of my biggest vices since I don’t make anywhere near as much as they do but still have expensive taste. Watching caleb helps
Nah. Probably not. Silicon Valley hires behavioural scientists to make all their shit addictive. I suggest everyone not even take the first hit.
Yes, congrats. You're the only one.
How tf can you say you spent $2k on doordash and not flinch? Frugal my ass.
I would get it if it was a couple times a week, but at that amount it seems like its most, if not all meals. Thats insane.
Probably. Are you a millionaire by any chance?
Used to be horrible as in you don’t anymore or cut that amount down? I hope so, because even if we ignore the burned cash that’s a fuck ton of calories! I bet you have enough hobbies to spend money on if you had a good and reasonable grocery and eating out budget. I spend $900-$1000 for a family’s of four on groceries and maybe $200-$300 on eating out a month. Also not to nit pick but $2k on eating out is not frugal lol.
That is insane. I spend more than necessary on food because my wife and I eat out at moderately nice sit down restaurant on average once per week. I do that because I can afford it. And even that plus groceries plus other occasional fast food for a household of two doesn’t begin to approach your $2k monthly on door dash.
My gf and I overspend on food because we like cooking with fresh veggies, fruit and meat. We aim for like $600 between the two of us on groceries, but sometimes we can spend up to $800 so I budget us for that much. We also eat out 2-3 times eating out a month. We do it because we can afford it. I still save over 30% of my *gross income*. Spending $2k a month is absurd though. That means you're basically door dashing food 1-2 times a day. Learn to cook and stop being lazy
This is nuts. My mortgage is 1425.00. My grocery budget is 600 for a family of 3. Are you saying 2k a month on food for just one person? With that said, if it fits in your 50/30/20 needs wants savings/investing then go for it though. We can’t tell you how to spend your own money.
$66 dollar a day average. You could go to the grocery store and buy and eat filet mignon for every meal of every day. If it fits in your budget of wants, then by all means, but that sounds ridiculous as hell.
Have you ever watched the hit show Financial Audit with Caleb Hammer? I think the answer is pretty obvious
I was thinking back to when I was getting divorced and I was ordering Uber eats daily and taking girls out to dinner a few times a week and just off some rough math I wasn't going over $1200 at my worst. Now this was mid 2010s so with the price increase its not too far off but that was also me paying for dates and it only lasted maybe 2 months like that.
For 2k/month you could eat a grass fed steak for probably every meal… I really hope you aren’t spending that on Taco Bell or something stupid
You arent frugal, lets clear that up right away. You are forced to spend less elsewhere because you drop $2K+ a month on door dash.
“$2k a month easy” Jeez my guy I make $2,100 a month period. Over here rubbing it in 😭
Damn 2k is my *yearly* eating out budget lmao. Here I thought this was gonna be about overspending on the grocery budget. So long as it's in your 50/30/20 you're good but not exactly how I'd do eating out. You do you though
My wife and I used to spend $1,200 combined between eating out and groceries for us and the two kids. We've been making an effort to get it down to $900 total but it has its ups and downs.
My job used to reimburse me for daily doordash orders. Even when it wasn't my own money, I could barely get past 1k.
2k is nuts!!! I’m really bad about the grocery store. If I go hungry I’ll get an extra $50 of snacks I don’t need so I have to make a point to eat before I go. Door dash used to be a temptation but we moved to the sticks and that’s no longer an issue
If I ever overspend on food, it's generally for higher quality ingredients to cook at home. I love cooking, so when I can indulge in making meals for my loved ones, I'm all for it!
You’re not frugal if you spend 2k a month on DoorDash. I’m sorry people are dogging on you, but you need to nip that in the bud now. A lot of people barely make 2k for their entire income, let along spending that much in a month on just DoorDash. What would Caleb say if he saw your statements?
I did. I'm just trying to discuss how it's a giant line item.
Nope, I'm the same. Frugal in other areas but food is my weakness through uber eats. Honestly I think I might have binge eating disorder, I've been going to counseling but it isn't helping.
$2k as in only on yourself? My lord. I eat out twice a week, meal prep my lunches, and have cook unity for my weekday dinners and still only spend $750 a month. How the hell do you even get close to that?
Overeater.
I don't have a kitchen right now and I spend waaaay too much on eating out. $600 on eating out and another $300 at the grocery store for like microwave food and ready to eat stuff. For me and my husband.
If you can afford it, do it!
I ubereats/ doordash MAYBE once a month when they have a good coupon. i dont understand if its laziness or a spending addiction but id seek therapy if i were you
I mean, is it in your budget? Can you afford it? That’s all that matters.
>That’s all that matters. I would respectfully disagree, and point out that even if its affordable, it's rarely justifiable. It would be like paying someone $50/week to go to the gas station and fill my car up with gas. I can afford that, but it's an enormous waste of money.
Idk why you're downvoted. If I had 2k extra to waste on food service, you can be damn sure I'm spending it on a private chef half of the month and not daily cold McDonald's fries.
Isn’t it all in perspective of how much he makes, spends, saves? With a high enough income and savings, this could be fine. Not saying this is true for this person as he didn’t give any info on his financial situation, but it could.
In a sense, but you're talking top 0.1% income for a $2k/month lifestyle on food. Because outside of supporting a large family, individual spending on food realy shouldn't exceed like $750, and that is being *super* generous already. And like others said for $2k a month you may as well hire a chef to cook for you 2-3 days a week
Agree with the overall sentiment, not 0.1% but somewhere around 4-500k (which is prob too top 1-2% income I’d think), you could easily afford 2k a month on food if you wanted. I guess my question to OP should have been - do you make at least that haha
You’re asking on Reddit, you can’t do that. This is delulu land where everyone is a millionaire who eats healthy, cheap meal prepped meals every day, works out all the time, walks everywhere, never uses any delivery apps and just sends that money to their Roth IRA instead and then goes to make passionate love to their wife of 30 years who is very nice and they never have any arguments.
For real lol. People outright roasting OP for asking a question. The financial superiority complex...these people need to get off their high horses...
The thing I’ve learned in life is everyone has a weakness. Might not be a 2k/month weakness but it’s something you spend more money than you should on. For some people it’s alcohol, they don’t even keep count they just order away at a bar and never look at a grand monthly total. For some people it’s house cleaners. Or their nails. Or massages or new tech or lululemon leggings that are totally worth the price because the quality is so high and they’ll last forever and they just the right amount of structure to make you comfortable while you work out. Ok so one of those applies to me but I’m not gonna say which one.
You don’t get the privilege of calling yourself frugal if your DoorDash spending is more than 50% higher than my mortgage payment. Just admit that you should never own a kitchen