LPT: Cooking half your meals from scratch and buying premade meals for the other half is time and cost effective.

Cooking all your meals from scratch each week is pretty time consuming. It's healthier for sure, but most people don't have the time to cook everything from scratch. There's also the higher likelihood of food rotting in the fridge if you leave it in too long, or just forgetting.

Cooking for half the week, I tend to waste food less and save time.

Cooking any amount of food is still cheaper and faster than eating out. Eating out is expensive, and usually doesn't save you time. Eating out, you have to get out of the house, order, wait, and drive back home. You could home deliver the food, but you pay the premium. Not to mention the risks of random strangers touching your food.

If you cook at home, premade of scratch, you can multitask with non-cooking related tasks.