And that’s about what we do - I love to cook, and grocery shopping is kind of fun, especially when I spot a particularly good-looking steak. I end up spending a

And that’s about what we do - I love to cook, and grocery shopping is kind of fun, especially when I spot a particularly good-looking steak. I end up spending about 500 EUR/mo on groceries for my family of 3, and at least 100 of that is very elective. I’ll go out to eat for the sake of socializing, but we rarely go out to eat as a family, because cooking at home is easier, along with being cheaper and frankly better than most restaurant meals that cost well over double what I paid for higher-quality ingredients. I’d rather have a friend come over and make lasagna with her than go out to a restaurant where it’s too loud to talk and the waiter comes over to see “if there’s anything we need” every 15 minutes. Preferences can be cultivated. A preference for cooking and reading library books is less expensive than one for going to restaurants and the movies and maintaining the range of streaming subscriptions required to have access to all the currently-popular shows. I’ll leave more subjective judgments out of it.