Cut Your Monthly Food Bill

A recent Fortune magazine article revealed that "fast-food patrons have upped their monthly visits from 14 in 1999 to 17 [in 2006]" on average, nationwide.

Want to hear a quick way to cut your monthly food bill? (Not to mention your waistline, cholesterol, and risk of heart attack. But this is a financial blog, not a health blog.) Learn how to cook!

I went down to a local drive-thru to do a little "research". Here are the numbers:

17 visits per month * $4.50 (average) cost per value meal = $76.50 per person per month

That's a lot of money to be tossing down the hatch. Cut that down to twice-weekly visits and you could save $49.50 per person per month. Almost $200.00 for a family of four. You could almost feed that same family of four for the entire month on the savings alone.