Day 11: The cost of Breakfast Tacos

My family loves breakfast tacos. Prior to moving to east Texas we resided in the valley (aka: Rio Grande Valley) where the best breakfast tacos were at Valero Gas stations with a Laredo Taco Company inside. They were made by Hispanic/Latin grandmothers who sometimes chided me when I would try to order in Spanish.

Sidenote: If you find a Valero/Laredo Taco Company anywhere north of San Antonio, I make no recommendations for the quality. One opened up in Tyler and the vibe and quality is not the same. It was a bummer for sure.

Well, Sunday mornings are breakfast taco days in our house.

I have started the process of figuring out what our meals actually cost to find the baseline grocery cost and see if there are areas we can improve. I’m not including natural gas or storage costs. Too meta at this moment.

$10.74 for a meal for 5 people? Over the course of a month = $42.96

Not too bad but the interesting thing is if we used the whole bacon package the cost goes up to almost $15. Over the course of a year to just use the second half of the bacon package….$156.

We could save money by changing the bacon or perhaps the tortillas or eggs. The rest is store brand so not much savings room there unless we go bulk.

Trying to get the cost of groceries under $1000/month. This past year was way above that (not including restaurants)

If there are 30 days in a month and 3 meals per day that is 90 meals total needed which means my cost per meal should generally be below $11.11/meal.

So this “Standard” meal fits the bill and I know now to not just flippantly use more bacon than needed even though I absolutely want to.

The takeaway

This 30–45 minute exercise has the potential to save our family $156 over the course of the next year on a single meal.

89 meals to go….

Thanks for reading. Enjoy your end of read treat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6ngiUxfrpc&feature=youtu.be