yes that was in the original comment

in economics the general abstraction would be ‘all things equal next best option’

wage is just a simpler shorthand to quantize your time relative to other options, you could do just straight hours but personally I value my free time well above my pay even with overtime

but you are getting lost in specifics

the point was cooking for yourself has other costs than just food ingredients, those costs are factored into what you pay for an external meal, figure out your total costs (and benefits) for an internal one or it’s not fair to compare the two (an example i highlighted was controlling ingredient quality)

if you’d still rather cook at home but the math doesn’t line up, something is worth more than what’s listed there and there is use in identifying what that is

we do this naturally all the time without deeper thought but people often miss things that way and end up unhappy with decisions

things can turn out in unexpected ways that still fail but i rarely regret doing things otherwise