Do you know how much is the average price for a lunch or dinner at the restaurant?

We did a little research about the cost of eating out, since when we’re on holidays we usually like (or we’re obliged) to get out to eat: in fact very often the meals are not included in the hotel’s price.

Well, looking for the Italian restaurants prices it seems that an average price would be around 20 Euros, depending on the popularity of the city we’re in (Florence is much more expensive than Taranto for example); in UK the prices are higher: in London, the so called low cost restaurants, can give us a meal for 13 pounds, thought the average of normal restaurants in London is around 37.72 pounds… A quite big amount of money for a middle worker. In France, if we consider the popular Paris, the prices vary from 20 to 50 or more Euros. For sure there are a lot of Mc Donalds all around the world, but you can’t require from your stomach to relax on holidays eating always at Mc Donald. On holidays one needs also to eat well, with pleasure.

And if a lucky family can maybe afford eating out every day on holidays, the average current family can’t. At most, once or twice a week. Do your accounts: eating out every day in Italy, considering only dinner (therefore supposing not to be hungry at lunch!) would cost –for two people, for 7 days and taking into account an average price of 20 Euros- 280 €. If after that you wanted to have something for lunch too, the price would be quickly doubled…If you think of numerous families then…

Well, think that this cost potentially –in a home exchange- can be deleted. And if it’s true that, on one hand, cooking your own food sometimes can be tiring and boring, on the other hand, the money saving and the tranquillity or comfort you get from cooking and eating in a fully equipped kitchen is worth the effort. At least 280 Euros saved.

The cost of a shopping at the supermarket is much cheaper: with the same amount of money an entire family could eat abundantly and in a well balanced way for more than a week, without giving up sweets or tasty morsel.

How much can you save then house swapping? A lot: not only in accommodation, not only thanks to a possible car exchange, but also in food, since we can eat comfortably at home, without having to spend a lot of money for restaurants. It’s sure that sometimes it’s a pleasure going out to have dinner and being served: but what a home swap gives us is the possibility to choose what to do and to save some money in case we had the need or the desire to do that.