the matthew Z project

We all know how to have fun without having to spend money!  It’s like riding a bike. Sounds easy enough right?  Well why don’t we do it often enough to have it make a difference on our wallet?  I think it’s because we’ve become too complacent with instant reactions and outcomes (elevators, Internet speeds, drive thru lines, etc) .  We have forgotten that when we were growing up, things took a little time.  But now if we’re hungry, we’d rather drive our car to an ATM, then sit in a drive-thru line for 5 minutes to receive a sadly inferior (to homemade) meal, and then drive all the way back home to eat it.  What we could have done is head to the local market and bought a pound of ground beef, some buns, a 2-litre soda, and a 5 pound bag of spuds for less than $10.00.  From here we could have cut and cleaned the potatoes and made good ole home fries.  Made our burger patties and fried them up. Butter the buns and toast them for a minute.  So now lets do the math.  A large value meal from a fast food place, we’ll say $4.90 + 6.0% sales tax equals $5.19.  One meal.  Now lets look at the market version.  1 pound ground chuck, $2.24.  2 liter of soda, $1.19 + $.10 deposit.  5-lb bag of potatoes, $1.49.  Buns, $1.29 (for 8!).  For a grand total of $6.31.  Read more…