Emergency fund: How much is enough?

Advice from experts and bloggers vary on the amount that one should save for their emergency fund(EF). Whose advice should you follow?

Some recommend three months of expenses while some recommend twelve months. Some recommend round numbers like $1,000 or $50,000 but it's not good enough to just build a random-X-months-emergency-fund or a random-lump-sum-emergency-fund without working out how much you REALLY need if unexpected events unfold.

Be wary of bad advice on the internet. One blogger's recommendation on the amount you need is "really whatever you are comfortable with" and "one way to establish your emergency fund is to base it on the unemployment rate"...what the...?! Just because you're "comfortable" with saving $X doesn't mean that's what you NEED in your emergency fund. And to base your EF requirements on "unemployment rate by sex, age, ethnicity, educational attainment" is insane and truly, bad advice.

Using a credit card in emergencies is fine and dandy if you're able to pay off the credit card bill at the end of the month. If you plan to use your credit card as your emergency fund and unable to pay it off at the end of the month, you will find yourself spiralling into a debt hole on top of your disastrous situation.

Events that could trigger the usage of your emergency fund:

* Job loss(if you're an employee) or loss in sales or revenue(if you're a business owner)
* Accidents
* Unexpected health issues such as broken legs or arms, dental problems etc
* Unexpected expenses such as your car breaks down, washing machine breaks down, your gutter is leaking etc
* Loss of tenant in your investment property, thus a shortfall in rental income before a new tenant could be found
* If you are retired and surviving on dividends, the last thing you want to do is liquidate your stock portfolio at inopportune times just because your dividend income dropped

How much should you have in your emergency fund?

If you can afford income protection insurance, then buy it! If you have a job loss, the income insurance payments will kick in and that means you can survive a lot longer if you don't need to use your EF funds immediately. Always check the fine prints before you buy income protection insurance so you know what they cover, how much they'll cover and when they'll cover you.

While having any funds stashed away for a rainy day is better than having nothing, to calculate the most ideal amount you should have in your EF is to start with the question of unemployment. If you build an emergency fund to cater for a pessimistic scenario then you won't find yourself having to make any panic decisions or having to rashly liquidate your investments in order to put food on the table and a roof over your head.

If you lost your job/main source of income, how long would it take you to find another job/main source of income?

* If it takes anything less than three months to find a new job, then you can build an EF that covers that period plus three months of expenses.

* If you think it will take you seven months to find new work, then your fund should cater for seven months plus three months extra.

That's a rough rule of thumb for a pessimistic scenario. Can you see the pitfalls with saving an emergency fund that covers six months of your expenses when you expect that it will take you eight months(for example) to find employment?

Your emergency fund needs to be large enough to cater for the period that you could be unemployed before finding a new job PLUS extra incase events don't turn out as you expect or you have unexpected expenses on top of your unexpected misfortune.

It's better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. Emergency funds essentially involves catering for the unexpected issues/problems/events and preparing for them so they become expected.

What expenses should the emergency fund cover?

Living and lifestyle expenses. All of it.

If you love your daily coffee or buying a monthly copy of Vogue or Vanity Fair, then build those expenses into your emergency fund. Build your needs and wants into your emergency fund. You don't HAVE to buy all your wants while you're unemployed, injured or whatever, but if you happen to buy a few of your wants, then it's not going to derail your emergency fund while you're unemployed.

If you're going to be unemployed, you'll have ample time on your hands and the last thing you want to do is stay home and mope all day just because you didn't build any luxuries or socialising costs into your emergency fund. On the other hand, you shouldn't be turning to your credit card to finance this just because you didn't prepare for it.

Some examples of expenses and bills that you can cater for when calculating how much you need in your EF:

* Mortgage repayments on all your properties: Principal place of residence and all your investment properties
* Utilities such as electricity, gas, water, landline, mobile, internet, cable
* Car bills such as registration/insurance/maintenance costs
* Insurances: Home and Content, Landlord and Income Protection Insurance
* Health: Medical/dental checkups
* Groceries and household necessities
* Expenses that you pay for your dependents: husband, wives, kids, anyone living in your household that is dependent on your income
* Entertainment: Dinner, movies, coffees etc
* Extracurricular activities such as dance/martial arts/music classes
* Loan repayments: If you have credit card debts/car loans/student loans etc then your emergency fund will need to cater for their repayment across your estimated period of unemployment > check to see if you can qualify for moratoriums on any of these loans and if you can, then the moment that your emergency kicks in, activate these moratoriums if possible

Track your daily expenses for a few months so that you have a good idea of how much you spend and need to set aside to build up your EF. Often times, the reality is that your actual expenses exceed what you thought you were spending.

Should you ever NEED to use your emergency fund in a real emergency, by cutting down on the luxuries and any superfluous spending that isn't a 'need' and is more of a 'want', you can survive a lot longer on your emergency fund stash. If you build your emergency fund on the basis of a temporarily stingy lifestyle then you'll have no cushion, and if you buckle under the pressure of trying to live such a basic lifestyle whilst looking for work, you'll find yourself in trouble when you splurge or treat yourself because you didn't cater for it.

How can you build your fund when you're barely surviving?

If you're in this category, then you can find ideas from reading SimpleLifeHabits article: '21 Simple Ideas to Get Cash Fast for an Emergency Fund' 

I hope this guide answered your questions about emergency funds and gave you some practical ideas on what your emergency fund should cover, how much you need, when and why you need one.

Borrowing $400,000 from the bank

Whoa, I can borrow more than $400,000 

My bank ran some preliminary numbers and said that they can probably arrange a pre-approval for me to borrow $400,000. And that's on top of my current loan commitment. The average Australian loan is about $360,000. If I were to fully leverage myself, then my aggregate investment loan balance would vastly exceed the average loan.

Would you borrow that much?

If your bank offered you an additional loan of $400,000, would you accept their offer?

I'd be crazy to borrow the maximum amount and gear myself to that extent. It's a bad move to over-leverage and also a bad move to under-leverage.

Why is it bad to be under-leveraged? Currently, I'm under-leveraged which means that I have the potential to buy more investment assets and service a greater loan. This can potentially translate to greater passive income and capital gains but I'm not taking advantage of that because I'm under-leveraged. Next year I plan to buy another investment so that should sort out the under-leveraging situation. Although I wouldn't borrow the maximum because that could topple like a house of cards.

Why is over-leveraging risky? No-one should be borrowing up to their maximum servicing capacity(your ability to repay loans) because it doesn't leave any rooms for errors, disruption to the income stream (job loss or fluctuations in business revenue) and it'll probably be rather stressful when you're walking on a financial tight rope. If you subject yourself to high risks, then you're subjecting yourself to the risk of having to liquidate your investments (shares or property) at an inopportune time, therefore, realising your losses and not having the ability to ride out asset price fluctuations.

How do you work out repayments?

I use my favourite site yourmortgage.com.au for their advanced repayment calculator. Although I've compiled my own spreadsheet with inbuilt formulas so no longer use this site but I recommend this one. Why? They have a fantastic loan repayment calculator. It's accurate and doesn't do shabby rounding ups and downs that ultimately give users inaccurate numbers like some of the other online calculators that I've checked out.

A loan of $400,000 at 8% for a loan term of 30 years means repayments of:

$2935.06/month OR
$1354.06/fortnight OR
$676.91/week

Of course, if you are buying an investment then you'll be earning investment income so that could contribute towards the repayment. If you're in Australia, then you also get a tax deduction for interest paid and a raft of other tax deductions associated with the maintenance of your investment. After all these deductions, the cost that's coming out of your own pocket is significantly less.

What if I want to instead, maximise my borrowings?

If I really wanted to borrow the maximum, then I would be refinancing my current investments down to a loan valuation ratio(LVR) of 20% so that I could borrow up to 80%.

By doing this, then for every $1 that I have, I can borrow $4. This is how I can fully gear myself and risk over-leveraging:

• If I have $100k then I can borrow $400k for a $500k investment.
• If I have $200k then I can borrow $800k for a $1 million investment.
• If I have $300k then I can borrow $1.2 million for a $1.5 million investment

Generally, you can maximise your borrowings and fully gear yourself without paying lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) if you have at least 20% to deposit.

Further reading:

1. 15 Tips On Paying Off Your Mortgage Faster
2. Understanding Loans and Their Features
3. Paying off your mortgage faster - The scenarios

Crazy binge shopping

After being stuck in a shopping rut, I finally made up for it this month!! I must have single handedly propped up our economy with my binge shopping >.> 

* Waterproof ski pants; Bought the Burton 2011 Season herringbone for $224. They were originally $280 but the shop had a 20% sale promotion. If I had bought them direct from the United States, they would only cost $150. But I spent about one hour trying on the different pants and $74 for one hour of mucking up their rack and not having to wait for shipment is a fair price to pay.

* Books; Ryde Library just opened and now I have tons of books and magazines to choose from. Black Glass, by Meg Mundell was on my to-buy list at $32.95. I found the book at the library so it's off my to-buy list.

* Pots for gardening; I built a glasshouse on the weekend using a scrap clothes line that I scavenged and scrap plastic so that I could do some cuttings and propagations instead of spending so much on buying plants. As you can see, my hibiscus cutting is flourishing and I can't wait until the purple blooms appear.

I spent WAY too much on plants and pots the other weekend and that's why I needed to build the glasshouse so that I could propagate my own plants. I've yet to try propagating the three toned hibiscus that I saw in Wollongong a few weeks ago:


* Bike gear; Since my huge stack on the bike, I needed a new helmet so I bought an Avanti helmet, padding for my bike seat and lights so that I could go riding at night for some exercise.

There's not much else that I need or want to buy at the moment which is a good thing since I plan to make a lump sum payment on my student debt next week. The Government dropped the lump sum payment discount from 10% to 5% (which sucks) so I plan to make a larger lump sum payment than what I previously planned for to take advantage of the higher discount before it gets cut to 5%.

Next year - my five figure HECS/HELP student loan will FINALLY be paid off :)

Further reading:

1. Stuck in a nothing to spend on rut                   
2. Wish lists and gift giving

When a bottle of milk is cheaper than a bottle of water

How does milk end up on the shelves at shops?

Each cow produces roughly 20 litres of milk daily. The milk is then sold to the Processors who buy from farmers, processes and packages the milk which is then sold to retailers. According to Ken Henrick, the chief executive of the National Association of Retail Grocers of Australia, the retailers share of the dairy industry's gross profit is around 80%. Farmers earn varying rates, from as little as 17 cents per litre to 35 cents per litre.

Many are just breaking even and treading water with inability to expand herd numbers or invest in plant and equipment, forced to defer their capital improvements.

If you live in Australia, you would be well aware of the battle between the dairy farmers versus our two supermarket monopolies, Woolworths and Coles. Our Australian dairy industry produces 9 billion litres of milk annually.

Unfortunately for our diary farmers, they have battled with rising supply costs(feed, diesel, transport, labour) whilst also battling with shrinking margins due to the major supermarkets cutting the sale price of their home branded milk to $1 per litre. Consumers now reach for the home brand milk that costs $1 per litre instead of buying the independent milk labels at $2.40 to $3 per litre. So you're probably thinking, "Who cares as long as I can buy cheap milk".

The problems associated with cheap milk

A 600ml bottle of water costs $1.30 but a 1L bottle of milk costs only $1. That's where the ridiculousness lies. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the production costs of producing one litre of milk exceeds the production costs of producing one litre of bottled water.

As dairy farmers exit the industry, there will be decreasing numbers of dairy farms. Falling supply will push up prices. Secondly, as the independent milk suppliers, farms and processors shrink in numbers, their bargaining power against retailers will diminish and they will inevitably be price takers.

There is also the question of whether the major supermarkets will increase milk prices back to pre-discounting era prices and retain the profit margins for themselves without passing any profit increases to dairy farmers who have been rendered powerless.

Although I have shares in a major supermarket and possibly a conflict of interest as well due to my history with one of them, I would never want to see the destruction of our dairy farming industry. As a shareholder, an increasing dividend is good but not if it comes at the cost of other farmers and suppliers' misery. I'm happy to accept less dividend growth if it will prevent the implosion of our dairy farming industry.

The problem is, which bottle of milk will Australian shoppers reach for when they contemplate the shelves full of independently labelled milk and the cheaper, generic milk? One that is cheaper today, or one that is more likely to ensure the viability of our local dairy farmers for the future and therefore, cheaper prices in the long run?

Crying poor on a family income of $150,000

The latest Australian budget has been rather hardcore in terms of slashing benefits to middle income threshold families. $150,000 as a family income threshold isn't rich and it isn't poor either in Sydney. It's middle income and middle of the road.

When the budget information was unleashed, suddenly the comments section on mainstream news sites were inundated with unhappy people writing in about how they can't survive on a family income of $150,000 and that they NEED the Government subsidies that were slashed(Baby Bonus, Family Tax Benefits and Paid Parental Leave). It was a very harsh budget for middle income families.

Can you survive on $150,000 per annum?

My question to families that will be affected: If there are families out there that can survive on less, then why can't your family survive on less too?

There are families living in metro and greater Sydney that are earning minimum income(around $30,000pa) or a family income significantly less than $150,000 per annum and if they can survive on $80,000 for example, then why can't the family on $150,000?

At the end of the day, the Government isn't there to subsidise anybody's lifestyle. If a family decides to live near the beach, harbourside or at inner city suburbs or to enrol their children at Private Schools with school fees of $20,000 per child each year, is that a really good reason as to why the Government should subsidise those choices? Should the Government be subsidising families that are going on annual vacations overseas or on skiing holidays?

If you think that the middle to upper class is getting the raw end of the stick, the latest budget is also bringing the stick out to lower income earners, the unemployed who will have to try harder to qualify for their unemployment money, the single parents and the disabled. Or the kids who are earning 'unearned' income.

As long as they don't dabble with Capital Gains Tax(CGT) concessions and Negative Gearing, then I don't care how many subsidies they cut.

A lot of the business owners and wealthier families who have plenty of investment assets have been keeping rather quiet on this budget. They have plenty of investment assets and as long as the budget or tax changes don't meddle with CGT or Negative Gearing, they probably won't care too much about the cut subsidies either. Sure, there's going to be a sense of regret because who doesn't want to get 'free money'(which technically isn't free because you paid taxes) from the Government?

Rule One: Never Lose Money

"Rule One: Never Lose Money. Rule Two: Never Forget Rule One."
Warren Buffet

A more classic take on not losing money would be the old proverb, 'A fool and his money are soon parted'. If you don't treat your capital with care and consideration, then expect your capital to be lost or diminished over time.

Over the recent years, I've had many opportunities presented to me in the form of business ideas, ventures, partnership and pretty much anything where particular friends have been short of funds but think that they've got a good venture to offer to me.

The only time I've ever asked for capital was several years ago when interest rates for savings account were at 1% to 4%pa and I didn't want to risk 100% of my savings in the stockmarket until I'd saved a bit more. Inbetween low yield savings account and the high risk stockmarket, was the bond market. Corporate Bonds. They were offered by the major banks in Australia and probably by other investment banks but I didn't look at the investment bank offerings.

To invest in Corporate Bonds, the minimum capital requirement was $100,000 and I didn't have that capital so I had to try and raise some funds.

The yield was about 5%-7% and it was better than the interest returns we were earning individually on our savings account. Anyway, I could only rustle up an aggregate $80k so it wasn't sufficient. I was accepting all the risks and said that I would re-imburse any losses whatsoever and split all the gains with no accounting for the risks that I was accepting on everyone's behalf, simply because I wanted to experiment with other investment options. 

The risks of default on the Corporate Bond depended on who the Corporate Bond holder was and I was only going to invest in a Blue Chip company bond. Typically, the higher the risk of bond default, the higher the yield. However, my goal wasn't to maximise the yield. It was only to earn more than the low interest rate on savings account available at that time and yet not expose myself to the higher risks of the stock market.

Anyway, fast forward to now, I haven't asked for capital since and I don't need anyones capital anymore to enter into any investments that interests me. I have my own capital for doing whatever I want.

Because of that, over the years, I have had many business ventures proposed to me. Seeking venture capital or partnerships for cafes, restaurants, take aways etc. On average, the typical amount that I've been asked to lend ranged from $50k to $100k. That's a lot of money when the venture has multiple partners and multiple interested parties.

The problem with diluted ownership in ventures with multiple partners is that you lose control in terms of decision making. It becomes more the case of 'majority rules' and because of that, it means you risk subjecting your capital to greater risk of loss. For me, that's a huge detraction. I'm not interested in investing in any venture where I can't control the outcome directly but can only influence the outcome to some extent.

A friend of mine has recently asked me if I wanted to invest $50k with a partnership of four(total investment capital $200k) into a cafe with her uncle as the chef. So what was the problem with her proposal?

• Firstly, her uncle would not be injecting any capital.
• Secondly, the business' success will depend on mainly his performance.
• Thirdly, I knew her and trusted her, but I did not know her uncle and I had no idea about how professional and dedicated he was to the food industry or how much I could trust him

If her uncle decided to throw in the towel and quit, what is going to stop him from walking away? He's not risking any of his money so what's going to stop him from quitting at an inopportune moment? Even if you reinforce his employment with a contract, if he wants out, he could burn all the food or give poor service, leaving you no choice but to terminate the contract. What if the business was built around him and he decided to leave?

There have been friends in the past who invested and lost, telling me that I was lucky not to have thrown my capital in with them. A the end of the day, it's not a question of luck. It's a question of judgement and analysing your risks and deciding what happens in various scenarios and what the possible outcomes could be. And if the potential scenarios aren't great, then having the gumption to say that you're not interested in investing.

Increasing utility bills changes behaviour

Unused appliances are switched off
Turn off chest freezer and equipment not being used
Install solar powered hot water system
Ensure house is well insulated against heat and cold
Have rainwater drain off the roof to tubs so it can be used to water the plants

These are all actions that my parents have taken.

After having the chest freezer and fridge operating simultaneously for over a decade now, my parents finally turned the chest freezer off, citing high energy prices and the horrendous electricity bills. It's always such a waste to see higher bills when something could have been done about it.

Because they operate a commercial business, there's a lot of electronic equipment and power being used. They are always looking for greener ways to minimise power and water usage. They've already implemented a solar hot water system and were keen on installing solar panels until the Government recently reduced the rebate on offer.

How can this Government in power try to pass themselves off as pro-green and try to implement the CT (Carbon Tax) on one hand but on the other hand, they reduce the rebates and incentives that lure householders and businesses to pursue greener practices?

The price of fuel has increased dramatically and this is a worldwide issue and problem. I suspect that more and more people are eyeing the public transport routes and facilities in their area so that they can plan the alternative for when fuel becomes relatively unaffordable or starts to bite into the budget.

Spending: Books and more books

Reading too much too fast can be bad

Since I've been catching public transport to work for the past few weeks, I've been burning through my reading materials. I often panic if I can't find reading material for the travel to work.

I wonder if anyone else feels that panic sensation if they don't have anything to read while transiting?

 Unlike a lot of travellers, I've never suffered travel sickness of any type and infact, find that I can concentrate very well while travelling. Unfortunately I read too fast and often find myself flying through the books that I've got and have had to buy more. Visited the local Red Cross store to stock up on some more books as you can see in the photo above. Six books for $12 which is not too bad.

I'll read anything, across all the genres. Fantasy, horror, murder mysteries, classics, futuristic, technical texts, romance novels etc Until our local library opens up, I'll be either buying or reading ebooks.

Kindle and ebooks

My friend is lending a Kindle to me. If I really like it then I'll contemplate buying one. Once the Kindle is loaded with ebooks, I'll have a good supply of reading materials so that there's no more panic moments over having nothing to read while travelling.

Recent books read:

• Patricia Cornwell - Post Mortem (This book is thoroughly chilling)
• Patricia Cornwell - The Body Farm (Classic story about Munchausen Syndrome)
• Patricia Cornwell - Body of Evidence (You'll never want to live alone after reading this)
• The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (A sad story that jerks the heartstrings)
• Johanna Lindsey - Joining (Historical romance involving Earls, Knights and consipiracy)

Further reading:

1. Crazy binge shopping

Facebook: Spams, malware, viruses etc

Cleaning the spam out of inbox really is the pits. No matter how many spam/rule filters that I create, the spammers always find a way to bypass these rules with creativity.

The latest spams that are so annoying have been the wave of spam purporting to be from Facebook. How stupid do these spammers think we are?

Unfortunately they probably claim some victims every now and then, otherwise they would have quitted by now.

What do Facebook email scams look like?

 I'll post a few screenshots up so that anyone who isn't tech or internet savvy can have a point of reference. I love the idea of foiling those stupid scammers by posting this up. Anyway, if you get any of these, do NOT click on them. Delete them immediately.

If you really feel the urge to check your Facebook due to these 'fake' reminders, type "http://www.facebook.com" directly into your browser instead of clicking on the 'link' provided. Here are some fake Facebook spams and scams, bon appetit:

Facebook scam clickily.ws
Do yourself a favour and don't click on it, don't 'like' the page, don't add the application and don't add the java script to your address bar or else the spam will be sent to all your friends. If you have already become a victim, you NEED to REMOVE the application from your privacy settings in Facebook. Clickily.ws is a malware and may also possibly be a virus too so don't forget to run your virus and spyware applications.

Hover the mouse over the hyperlinked word "1 messages" and you will see where the landing page is> as you can see in this scam email, it alleges to be from Facebook yet the hyperlink takes the user to http://climbershub(dot)com/single(dot)html and this is dodgy

Hover the mouse over the hyperlinked section "To login to Facebook" and you will see where the landing page is> as you can see in this scam email, it alleges to be from Facebook yet the hyperlink takes the user to http://climbershub(dot)com/single(dot)html and this is dodgy

Do NOT open the attachments - it is most likely a virus/malware/spyware or something malicious.

 How can you identify between a real email and a fake one?

It's getting hard to determine between a real one and a scam because the spammers and scammers are getting intelligent.

• Don't open up attachments that are from unknown source.
• Delete emails from anyone that you don't recognise or you're not expecting.
• If there's a link that's embedded in the email, hover your mouse over the link (do NOT click on it!) and you'll see whether the link that is on your email is the same or differs from the link that is actually embedded (see the images that I've provided).

The same goes for all those fake 'job' emails and fake 'bank password' alert emails. The latest scam that even almost had me caught was when a virus alert popped up on the screen that looked like an authentic Microsoft or Nortons virus checking alert that says you must click on it immediately to stop the 'virus' from infecting your computer.

It compels the user to click quickly to 'activate' the virus checker but instead this activates the virus/malware. I find that if that happens, I kill the pop up and run the virus checking software immediately from the task bar section of the PC (the virus checking icon is usually near your clock on the bottom, right hand side corner of your screen).

The best way to save is by learning how to cook

Knom Bujok - It's a traditional Cambodian dish which consists of a lot of fresh(raw!) vegies and can be accompanied by steamed pork belly sliced thinly or shredded chicken, all wrapped up in the lettuce and dipped into the dipping sauce

 Watch Masterchef and be inspired in the kitchen

The TV show Masterchef, is crowned with the title of introducing the kitchen to a lot of Australians who previously did not cook often. By learning how to cook proper meals, you'll enjoy your food more and it's usually more nutricious because you can use quality oil and quality ingredients.

Last night, I had a marathon session in the kitchen where I prepared a simple fresh, raw vegetable dinner with steamed chicken and also prepared a huge pot of pasta because we haven't eaten pasta for a few months now.

Just don't be like me and stockpile your groceries or else you'll end up throwing out some ingredients.

$32.40 worth of groceries bought=14 servings=$2.32 per serving

0.99 bean sprouts
1.29 mint
1.59 for 815g of apples
1.45 for 1kg of carrots
1.59 for 1kg of tomatoes
1.59 for 1kg of zucchinis
1.29 iceberg lettuce
4.17 for 464g of beef mince
6.83 herbed Italian sausages
7.60 for roasted garlic pasta sauce
3.98 for 6 chicken drumsticks

Despite the media repeatedly publishing articles about how groceries are so expensive and unaffordable, healthy ingredients such as fresh fruit and vegetables are cheap, particularly when they are in season.

It's not the fresh unprocessed food that is unaffordable, it's the processed junk, chips, lollies, snacks and meat that have gone up in price drastically over the years and have become relatively unaffordable. After reading about the pain of animals being slaughtered, I've been decreasing my meat consumption. Cooking with less meat, more vegetables and eating vegetarian meals more frequently.



$2.32 per serving

It never ceases to amaze me whenever I check to see whether the proponents of takeaway food are right in their belief that buying takeaway is cheaper than cooking at home. Everytime, the numbers for cooking at home trumps the takeaway option.

If instead, I decided to buy 14 takeaway meals, assuming I even chose the local Chinese $10/meal option, then it would cost $140 to $150 instead. If I were to dine at popular restaurants at $30/meal then it would be on average $420 for 14 meals.

Benefits of home cooked meals

* You can use better quality ingredients and oil than what the restaurants and takeaway shops usually use
* You can omit any vegetable or ingredient that you dislike
* If you use more vegetables and eat more fruit then it's great for weight control
* Better health means less trips to the doctor and less medical problems further down the track
* It's definitely cheaper than buying takeaway or dining out
* You may find the process of cooking relaxing and a stress reliever
* You can learn to appreciate quality meals and may find dining out a lot more pleasurable since you've cut back on dining out often

Further reading:

1. Stockpiling food is such a waste
2. Buying lunches and dining out
3. Update on progress bars and interest income