One example is bread. I was baking bread the other day, and obviously the cost of the ingredients I put in the loaf are less than the cost of buying a loaf at the supermarket, but that doesn’t include the cost of putting the oven on.
Or dry beans vs canned beans; does the cost of boiling the beans actually bring the cost up to be equivalent to canned beans?
I know that everyone’s energy costs are different so it’s not possible for someone to do the calculations for you, but I’ve never bothered to do them for my own case because bills I get from the energy company just tell me how much I owe them for the month, not “you put the oven on for 30 minutes on the 17th of June and that cost you X”. It sounds like a headache to try calculate how much I pay for energy per meal. But if someone else has done that calculation for themselves I’d be interested to read it and see how it works out. My intuition is that, in general, it’s cheaper to make things yourself (e.g. bread or beans like above), but I couldn’t say that for sure without calculating, which as I said seems like it would be a pain in the ass.
You also have to factor in the cost of your time. If it takes longer with one or the other that needs consideration too.
I kind disagree. I admit that e.g. growing your own veg will never be cheaper than buying it at a supermarket - it would make financial sense to spend a few more hours working instead, and just buy the veg, but that kind of misses the point. Gardening, cooking, DIY… they all have a certain satisfaction and self-sufficient pride to them that money can’t buy
deleted by creator
Yeah, that’s a factor that is fairly easy to calculate though. And for myself, I’m happy to spend more time within reason. I cook fairly high-effort meals if I think the effort (and time) will pay off. I was mostly asking about energy costs as that’s something I feel is quite hard to quantify properly. With time you know exactly how long it takes and can ask yourself whether or not it’s worth it for you.