Originally Posted by
cardsqc
As a result for me, I did a lot of eating from home. I've also done more fast good restaurants than I'd prefer. But as someone that did a lot of eating at restaurants, one side benefit to me ended up being that we've been able to spend this time period actually working on cutting down our debt to a much more acceptable level. The cost cuts because of the inability to really go out and do much have been something that while I have no interest in going through this type of situation again, at least in our situation we've been lucky enough to take advantage of to help improve that debt situation. Although it also means that while I'm more likely to go to restaurants a little more now that the situation is easier, I'll probably still be holding off some on that, because we still have a couple months to go to reach our zero debt (besides car and house) goal.
I remember reading here or somewhere else sometime since the "great recession" that it used to be people in the U.S. rarely if ever ate out unless they were on the higher echelons of the economic strata. Then came the chain restaurants that made dining out (relatively more) "affordable" for those on the lower end. The great recession wiped out a lot of these chains when people went back to home cooking to save/cut down debt. One wonders if the same (great wipeout) will happen again. I don't/have ever patronised these places so don't know if they've disappeared or not.
Before the COVID shutdown, my wife and I rarely (5x a year at most) ever ate out (including fast food, not due to not having money, but finding very poor value where we are than what we were used to). We've been tracking our budget and expenditures on everything spent for over half a decade. Food (basics, we pretty much make everything from basics) expenditure is USD 16 per day on which we (2 of us) eat very, very well.