For an upcoming story on NerdWallet, I’d love to hear from busy working professionals who regularly make use of food delivery services — DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, etc. — for the convenience and time savings. Does what you spend on delivery each month add up to a surprisingly large portion of your budget? (No judgement here… I work from home, have a small baby and overpay to have hoagies delivered all the time.) About how much do you spend per month? Does adding it all up give you pause? If you’re interested in chatting about your experience for the piece, please send me a brief email with your name, city, occupation and a note about where food delivery falls in your budget. For more about me and my work, please visit https://www.nerdwallet.com/author/tommy-tindall.

Hi Tommy, I usually prefer not to check how much I spend on home delivery because it always gives me the creeps. But the last time I looked, it was once 500 Euros and another time 700 Euros. Still, it saves so much time, which helps me stay productive. Yes, it did make me think about my expenses, so I tried another strategy: ordering meal sets from HelloFresh. I had tried premade meal deliveries before, but after a week they started tasting like plastic—maybe I didn't heat them properly—so I went back to traditional home delivery. With HelloFresh, though, it made a difference. I pick meals with up to 20 minutes of cooking time, all ingredients are included, and I usually cook when I need a break, so it's efficient too. Of course, when I'm too lazy, I order pizza, Chinese, or work from a restaurant or cafe. Personally, I think it's good to combine different ways of getting food. Cooking from supermarket-bought groceries is the least efficient and still more expensive than ordering HelloFresh. — Robbert Bink from the Netherlands (Zoetermeer) Founder and main recovery expert at CryptoRecovers, a crypto recovery company based in the Netherlands PS Everything here was written by me—I just like using ChatGPT to proofread the grammar.

I am the founder of The Happy Food Company, a rapidly growing gift hamper company. Often, I find myself juggling early mornings, late nights, and a constant stream of customer orders. I consume food delivery services, such as Uber Eats and DoorDash, at least 8-10 times per month (mostly for quick lunches on production days, or for late dinners after a packaging run). I spend around $250-300 on delivery food on average every month - and when I added it up, I was surprised to realize that I was spending as much as my monthly grocery budget. I get it - there's value in convenience: no meal prep, no mess, and more time to focus on knocking out order fulfillment. But sitting down to add it all up definitely made me think again. It has given me the opportunity to re-evaluate how I use delivery. In the future, I will reserve delivery for true "time-crunch" days, and plan easy, ready-to-heat meals for all of the other days. I still appreciate the time savings, however, I have been intentional about my delivery (which keeps my spend from creeping too high).

I DoorDash once or twice a week for my cheat meals. But I don't really spend that much. Why? Because I use the PayPal debit card for groceries. I get 5% cash back. So the extra cost of using the service is covered by the cash back I get from buying groceries. Not the entire cost, but the difference between visiting the place or using the app is covered. It's a win-win for me. I work from home and prefer not to keep unhealthy food in the house.

As a real estate entrepreneur, I noticed I was spending around $275-$325 per month on food delivery, which is basically the cost of staging a property for showings. At first, I brushed it off as a convenience, but once I saw the total, it made me rethink how often I lean on it. Now I reserve delivery for nights when I'm stuck late negotiating deals or traveling between properties, and that small shift has cut my monthly spend nearly in half.

My business is built on helping clients avoid costly blunders, so I was floored when I realized I was spending over $300 a month on food delivery--my own little financial horror story. That amount could easily cover a home warranty I'd gift a client at closing. Now, I treat it like any bad deal; I cut my losses by aggressively using pickup options and only ordering on days with back-to-back closings.

Hi Tommy - thanks for the opportunity to contribute. My name is Ben, and I'm an entrepreneur/startup founder of CashbackHQ. I'm based in NYC. Bootstrapping a startup solo, my time is quite hectic, and food delivery becomes a budget item whether I intend it to or not. I spend an average of $250-300 a month on DoorDash and Uber Eats between late work shifts and not wanting to leave my computer desk. When I sat down and tallied up my spending, I was horrified--my spending was well above all my utilities combined (Wifi, cell phone, electricity, gas, etc). That realization gave me pause. The advantage here is that I am an obsessive online discounts/promos optimizer, and have been able to cushion the impact by piling up cashback deals. As an example, I will place my orders via a cashback portal that will earn me 5-7 percent back on DoorDash and combine that with a credit card that will earn me dining rewards. It does not cancel out the price, but it cuts down enough that I no longer feel as guilty about clicking the order button the third time in a week. For me, ultimately the tradeoff is time. There are weeks when not cooking and saving 2-3 hours helps me ship a new feature or milestone.. However, when you sum it up, it is, by all means, one of the most insidious budget "black holes" in my life--even when I am optimizing for promotions, cashback, etc. Always glad to talk more. Thanks for considering my take. I hope one day I can share CashbackHQ with Nerdwallet, but I'll wait on that ;)

More than happy to chat about this more if needed. I actually just deleted the apps a weeks again, after I found out that I spent over $540 in July on UberEats. What was worse is that I was trying to cut down and thought it had been a quiet month. So I was checking to see how well I had done! Yeeeesh. I know for a fact it was multiple thousands per year. Happy to say I'm now 4 weeks in without any deliveries. I work from home for myself so i never really thought much of it. I don't really spend too much outside of expenses and bills. I can probably go back a few years and let you know how much it was per year also. Daniel Daines-Hutt Mount Maunganui, New Zealand Head of Content at Zero To Mastery I also run my own blog at ampmycontent.com

I run LAXcar, so in addition to coordinating airport transfers, corporate events, and being on the road all the time, food delivery has been a lifesaver for me. During hectic weeks, I use DoorDash or Uber Eats three to four times, particularly when I am working late or have back-to-back meetings. I added it up recently, and I think I'm spending about $350-$400 a month on delivery fees, tips, and the markup included. It's easy, but when I saw the total, I did stop and think because it is essentially a car payment. Still, in the midst of a busy week, the saved time often feels worth it, particularly if skipping groceries or cooking lets me focus on running the business. I've begun making an effort to reserve delivery for the absolutely insane days and batch pickup orders for when I can, but for any entrepreneurs and busy professionals like myself, the trade-off between cost and time isn't always the easiest to handle. For additional insights, feel free to reach out at arsen.m@laxcar.com.

Food delivery services have become my stealthy budget buster. As I fell into my code for long stretches of time, I had initially justified the spend of about $400-500 per month as a productivity expense. The hours saved on food preparation meant that I could spend more time on development and strategy work. The truth of this reality hit when I went through my expenses for last quarter. Those "quick" $25 orders occurred 4-5 times per week. Late-nights of debugging led to auto triggering DoorDash orders. Building features for AlgoCademy's algorithm meant that I had to have focused work-time and cooking became cognitive load I could not afford. What surprised me the most was not the amount, but the propensity I was building. The stress I experienced during coding would trigger spikes in delivery. During our platform's major updates, our monthly delivery cost became nearly $700. The convenience I was willing to pay, became a tax I did not know I was accumulating. Now, on Sundays, I meal prep the next 4-5 days worth of meals. I try to simulate sprint planning. If I am preparing meals where I am batching similar foods together, it feels like organizing a code repository. I was able to reduce my dependency on delivery services down by roughly 60% while still preparing meals over the same productive blocks of time coding. The life of an entrepreneur is built on embracing a lifestyle like this and the temptation of the convenience that these services provide and how appealing those services are. Once again, however, I did not realize that I was essentially paying rent twice a month to be able to convenience myself. That money now contributes towards our development tools budget.

Food delivery was my silent killer of the budget when I had to close deals in a few weeks. I was spending cash of 340 dollars each month between DoorDash dinners when going through loan documents and Uber Eats lunches on back-to-back phone calls with clients. This hit me when my accountant was preparing taxes, and he recorded the cost of miscellaneous dining. That amount of 4,080 annually would have provided 2 more marketing campaigns or paid off conference attendance fees. At this point, delivery occupies a new position of $120 a month as a discretionary expense. I do meal prep on Sundays and only order in case of real emergencies, such as a last-minute loan adjustment when I have to work in the evening. I am used to keeping track of micro-expenses, and in some way, food apps did not support this practice, because I got used to it in AutoAnything e-commerce. The irony? I advise clients daily on blind spots in their real estate investments and turn a blind eye to my own financial blind spots. That luxurious convenience was costing me almost 15 percent of my monthly entertainment allowance.

Food delivery saved me at the moment when TrackSpikes worked out the first years. Working 80-hour shifts and spending at least 400-500 a month on DoorDash and Uber Eats without even realizing it. And the math struck me when I looked at my credit card bill. This $500 per month would be a $6,000 a year - they could either hire someone to work part-time or spend the money on improved marketing equipment. A meal that costs 12 dollars is easily transformed into a 20 dollar meal with delivery charges and tips. There is the convenience tax but time is money when you are creating a business. I now prepare meals in large quantities on Sundays and have simple meals in stock. I still apply the delivery strategy when launching a new product or during peak seasons, but paying attention to my spending allowed me to invest in developing the business. The wake-up call was worth it.

I've been working long hours operating my own business, so food delivery has become more about survival than anything else. I average about $300 to $350 a month in DoorDash and Uber Eats, most nights when cooking feels unfathomable after hours of back-to-back calls. When I see the total at the end of the month, it does make me pause, because that's several thousand dollars a year — money that might otherwise fund a family vacation or an investment in a new project. Yet the trade-off is that I get an extra hour or two each day to devote to work or relax, and that feels worth it right now. It's a reminder of how the blessings of modern convenience so often nevertheless cause us to rewrite our budget priorities — we have no idea quite how much we're spending until we track it.

HI Tommy, I'm a UK-based CEO running Accounts Draft (accountsdraft.com), an accounting software startup, and I'm also a partner at an accountancy practice. With a young child and evening work sprints, we lean heavily on delivery - mainly Deliveroo. Here's how much I spend (real numbers): Five-year total: £6,628.50. By year: Year Amount 2019 £24.47 2020 £174.26 2021 £529.19 2022 £1,433.92 2023 £1,163.74 2024 £1,287.98 2025 £2,014.94 Grand Total £6,628.50 Why I pay for delivery The trade-off is time. My day consists of working full-time in the accountancy practice and then a couple of hours every evening on Accounts Draft, my software start-up, and maybe 10 hours over a weekend. I have to do nursery pick-up for my child and bath and bedtime alongside all this. Deliveroo buys back around an hour of my time each day, which is well worth it. How I keep it sensible — Rob Benson-May, CEO, Accounts Draft (accountsdraft.com) Happy to provide the raw data or monthly breakdown if helpful.

There is a strange comfort to pushing a button and having dinner delivered about forty minutes later. Most days I am juggling meetings, creative reviews, and numbers, numbers, numbers. By the end of the day I don't have energy to cut up veggies or think about using a pan. Delivery has been a convenience, but of late, it has become more of a means of getting through the day. I go back through previous orders and it strikes me that I always traded twenty dollars for a little calm or quiet between one thing and another. The total grows automatically I am not embarrassed by it. But what is surprising is the way these small choices can accumulate over time. The food is usually not something special. What I am really paying for is a reprieve from the cognitive load. Sometimes that is worth it. Some times it is an indication of slow down and see when comfort becomes a lifestyle I never intended.

When work and life become busy, food delivery is a savior. The greatest advantage is the amount of time it saves and in most instances that time is more valuable than the additional cost. It allows you time to concentrate on what is important rather than attempting to squeeze in one more job. The disadvantage is the rate at which such expenses are accumulated. One can lose track of the portion of the budget that is allocated to convenience. I consider it worth it when it actually contributes to productivity or family time but I attempt not to make it the fallback position. Ultimately, delivery must be a resource that you apply when required not something that has sneaked through to control your expenditures.

As someone who works day jobs as a consultant with California Hard Money Lender while also holding my broker's license at Monterey Mortgage since I launched in 2001, I obviously use delivery services more than I care to realize! Between taking client calls, reviewing loans, and arranging deal structure meetings that aren't in session until late at night, it's often hard to get around to making a meal. DoorDash is now my default service, because their restaurant menu ranges from fast food options for lunches, to acceptable cuisine for dinners when I only have time to eat after 8pm. They deliver their solutions consistently, really important when you have back to back client meetings. I find that my monthly DoorDash expenditure is around $280-320; again, this completely surprised me until I was doing the math. That is an average amount paid for utilities by some of my clients. Even if the convenience fee itself only tolls about $40 per month, when your property is hot on the market, and taking any time off means wasting thousands of dollars, paying $6 to get your burrito doesn't seem like a bad idea anymore. But what I do not like is how the costs creep up. A 12 dollar meal becomes $18 with fees and tip. This is something I started tracking since the credit card statements looked different from pre-pandemic days. The math is savage: Five times per week at $18 costs would be $360 per month, which is $4,320 per year. It really hit home when I realized that food delivery exceeded some borrowers' monthly HOA fees, I mean that's cheating money! Now I prep in big batches and try to limit when I get food so that important days for my clients take priority over cooking meals.

I run a company and my schedule is often packed from early morning to late evening which makes food delivery a regular part of my routine. On average I spend between 250 and 300 dollars a month across apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash. When I finally added it up it did give me pause because it is close to what I'd spend on groceries for two weeks. Still the convenience is hard to give up since it saves hours I'd otherwise spend cooking or shopping. For me it has become less about luxury and more about buying back time in a busy week.

I once added up my monthly delivery spending and realized I was hovering around $300, which honestly is about what I'd budget for replacing appliances in a flip. In the moment, it feels like a small trade-off for extra hours on-site with contractors or with my kids, but seeing that number made me rethink how often I'm outsourcing dinner. Now I try to make delivery more intentional--saving it for nights when I'm burning the candle at both ends--so I can redirect some of that money back into my projects.

I was surprised when my monthly food delivery habits hit nearly $300--about the same as I'd budget for landscaping a property. The convenience is invaluable when I'm on the move between properties and projects, but seeing that total made me stop and think. Now, I save delivery for nights when I'm genuinely pressed and often opt for curbside pickup, which saves both time and a chunk of change over the long haul.

Name: Billy Rhyne City: Wimberley, Texas Occupation: Developer & Merchant GC, Horseshoe Ridge RV Resort As a business owner and new parent, food delivery services have become a big part of my family's routine. Between managing operations at our resort and raising a little one, time is the most valuable resource we have. We probably spend around $350-$400 per month on DoorDash and Uber Eats. When I actually add it up, it does give me pause because that's a meaningful portion of a monthly grocery budget. But the tradeoff is convenience: the ability to stay focused on work or family while still getting a decent meal without leaving the property. It's definitely a "time tax" I'm willing to pay in this season of life, even if I know I could save by cutting back.