How I let somebody rob me of ₹8,367?

What do you value the most - stepping out of your comfort zone or convenience?

For those of you who’d choose ‘convenience’, I don’t judge you.

In fact, most of our adult lives are spent finding ways of convenience.

With that said, let me put you in a scenario.

It’s almost 3 PM, you should have eaten lunch already but you got caught up in work and you didn’t get the time to have lunch. Now you have two options:

1. Go out to a restaurant and pack yourself a good lunch,

2. or pick up your phone, open a food delivery app, and order something fulfilling for lunch, even though it’s going to cost you a little extra.

If you’re anything like me, you’re going to go with the second option - because of convenience, right?

Having somebody else deliver a delicacy to your doorstep is one of the simplest pleasures of life. As adults, we work so hard. Cutting ourselves some slack and paying a little extra just for the sake of ‘convenience’ only makes sense.

But what happens when you start doing it frequently and realize that you ended up spending more on that ‘little extra cost’ than your rent?

Pretty crazy!

See I love burritos. I think California Burrito here in Bangalore makes the best burritos I could ever have. And here’s what their menu looks like:

If I want to order the Regular BBQ Chicken Burrito, it costs me ₹225.

Add Guacamole toppings of ₹50 and your order reaches a total of ₹275.

That’s your net order value when you visit the restaurant to eat. Exactly ₹275.

Now, here’s the exact same order with the exact same toppings on Zomato (a popular food delivery app):

With a grand total of ₹434 on the same order, you end up paying an extra ₹159 just for the sake of ‘convenience’.

At this point, I understand that a little extra from time to time never hurt anybody. We’re all humans that deserve to treat ourselves from time to time.

But when you look at the same numbers in the long run, you end up spending more than you could on anything else.

Multiply an average extra amount of ₹160 per order over a period of a year for about 100 orders, you end up paying A LOT!

₹160 delivery fee and taxes x 100 orders a year = A whole lot of money that you can spend on other forms of convenience! 

This is what happened to me over the last few months.

There’s a grocery delivery app called BlinkIt that I absolutely adore because of how fast it delivers everything I want it to.

From late-night snacks to groceries, I’m almost wholly dependent on buying everything from here.

And before you judge me for not going out grocery shopping myself, I usually have long working days before I come back home late, which is never a good time to buy the groceries or anything as a matter of fact.

So, BlinkIt, right?

But what if I tell you that over the last 4 months of my habit of ordering groceries from BlinkIt cost me a total of ₹8,367?

Last week, a random idea popped into my head - What if I count how many times I have ordered from BlinkIt in the last 4 months, keep an average delivery fee of ₹25, and see how much I ended up spending? And the answer was ₹8,367!

Heartbreaking!

The bottom line is that seeking convenience from time to time in your life isn’t a problem. The problem is when you start seeking it all the time, something which I’m very well guilty of.

And what am I doing to tackle this now?

NOT RELYING ON DELIVERY APPS FOR MY DAILY GROCERIES AND FOOD!

At least that’s what my parents are going to want after reading this story!

Sorry, Mom and Dad!

Till next time…