I'm saying it's easier to control children when you don't also need to be cooking at the same time.
Ok, so you are saying that it's easier to control children if you take them to a restaurant than if you prepare dinner and eat at home? Right?
And that last paragraph was expanding upon the point I was making above, not in direct response to anything you said.
Well you seemed to be making the following argument:
If you have children, it's not practical to work around the expense of a meal out by preparing food at home because it's hard to prepare food while there are children around.
The lack of instagram pictures of dinner from people with children shows that people who have children face a time shortage while preparing food at home.
I take it you are now abandoning the second point?
I'm not a parent, but it seems plausible. It meshes with what I remember of being a kid, certainly, and what parent friends say.
Not entirely true. Most of my meals as a kid were home-cooked. But they're not the sort of thing that would generally be considered "nice" - they were mostly repetitive, easy to make, and uninteresting. Most families I'm familiar with, including my own when I was younger, are more likely to go out to a middle-class sit-down restaurant when they want something "fancy" instead of make something ambitious at home...
On ChrisHallquist's post extolling the virtues of money, the top comment is Eliezer pointing out the lack of concrete examples. Can anyone think of any? This is not just hypothetical: if I think your suggestion is good, I will try it (and report back on how it went)
I care about health, improving personal skills (particularly: programming, writing, people skills), gaining respect (particularly at work), and entertainment (these days: primarily books and computer games). If you think I should care about something else, feel free to suggest it.
I am early-twenties programmer living in San Francisco. In the interest of getting advice useful to more than one person, I'll omit further personal details.
Budget: $50/day
If your idea requires significant ongoing time commitment, that is a major negative.