[DeezNutz]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Those steakhouse places serve a good steak, but the prices are ludicrous.

This got me thinking. My wife and I used to eat at restaurants a lot, like 3 or 4 nights per week. The past few years we've settled down and probably only do it once or twice per week, but if you figure that maybe we're averaging $60 per visit with tip, that comes out to about $500 per month on average.

Actually, we charge most of our restaurant meals, so I just went and looked at our annual statement summaries. In 2011, we charged $7,440 for "dining". Now, some of that is meals and vacation and some of it is social lunches and stuff, so actually $500 per month sounds about right.

I was wondering if we spent enough to afford a cook to come over once or twice a week and cook us a gourmet dinner at home, but I'm not sure that's enough. Roughly $110 per week over the course of the year - by the time you spend $30 or so on the food, that would be about $70 per week for labor. Would a person come over twice a week and cook us a meal and clean up for roughly $300 per month? Eh, I guess it's possible.

At least three hours of work per evening...so...looking at about $12 per hour. Yeah, that should be enough for gourmet.