Cooking at home to save money for retirement and travel (and because it tastes better!)

My name's Ed, but for over 20 years I've gone by Edly online. I tell people the “ly” is silent.

That's my wife next to me. She's from The Philippines. We met in Hong Kong. That's another story.
I'm a happily married father of three, who I've watched growing up while working at one of the biggest movie theaters in the country. If you live in the Bay Area there's a good chance you've seen me there.
A lot of my interests are more creative: Drawing, animation, sculpting, and especially cooking. But I also love to travel, usually around North America due to travel costs.
And I'm a bit stingy. I like to keep costs as low as possible.
Combining my interests is how I can help you.
Here's an example: Do you know how much you spend on fast food? I mean, on an annual basis?
If you get a simple Big Mac meal at McDonald's in California, you're spending about $7.

If you thought I was joking, no, I rounded down.
For a 6” sub meal at Subway, it's about $8. If you have to drive a mile to get that meal, add in $1 for the mileage (IRS Mileage rate for 2017 is $0.53/mile, so I rounded down again.) So, each time you go out to get lunch it costs at least $8. If you do that just once per week over a year, that's $400. If you do that daily, it's $2000 annually (5 days per week, 50 weeks per year.)
If you have leftovers just one more time per week, and put the savings toward your mortgage, (assuming you have a mortgage of $500,000 for 30 years at 3.7% and put your lunch savings toward the principle every month from inception) then you will pay off your mortgage 9 months sooner, and save $9,565 in interest. If you skip that $8 per day lunch cost by taking your lunch every day, and put the savings toward your mortgage, you could end up paying off your mortgage 3 years and 5 months early for a savings of over $43,000. And that's just by taking lunch to work instead of eating out!
That's for one person. What if you have two people working, and taking lunch instead? On the low end, each taking lunch once per week, you pay off your mortgage a year and a half early, and save almost $19,000, and on the high-end, you pay off your mortgage...Jeez!...6 years and 2 months early, saving over $75,500!
Or you could put that money into your retirement through an IRA or your 401(k) plan or just have a better vacation each year. Think about the possibilities!
Now, what if you don't know how to cook? That's where I come in. I like to cook, I like to experiment, and I like to teach. I have a lot of recipes, cooking tips, and techniques I've come up with to make cooking simpler, and to save time and money. I'd like to share that information with you here.
At least that's my plan, and you know what they say about plans. I'm always flexible, and I look forward to learning at least as much as I try to teach on the Steemit platform.