You check your mailbox and find a promotion for a meal box. These savings are usually good enough to get people like you to sign up for a subscription, but once this promotion ends, it’s another story. At full price, these boxes take a financial toll. Despite their convenience, meal boxes have these four downsides.

1. You Pay More Price-Per-Serving

Let’s start with the biggest reason: cost. Meal subscriptions are more expensive than if you prepared all your own food. Why? Because they include more than just the price of your ingredients. You also have to pay for packaging, transportation, and subscription fees. he company that provides these recipes has to make a living, too, so they mark up every expense involved in the service.

2. You Still Have Other Food Costs

Most boxes provide enough food to make four to six meals each week. That means you still have to go grocery shopping to fill in the rest of meals and snacks throughout the week. If you don’t meal plan and budget carefully, you can wind up buying the same amount of food as usual in addition to your meal box.

Juggling both the subscription cost and your typical grocery bills can be difficult. All this extra spending makes it hard to balance your budget, leading to tough decisions. You might have less money to spend on important things, like savings or even fun things. Budgeting for fun is an important part of your financial well-being.

3. You Sacrifice Savings for Your Subscription

You might believe the meal subscription is worth the high cost because of its convenience. It saves you the mental labor of deciding what to eat each week, and the prepared ingredients and recipe cards cut down how much time you spend cooking.

Unfortunately, their high cost can be challenging to pay at a time like this when inflation has caused everything in your budget to increase. With your subscriptions taking a healthy portion of your income, you might consider drawing some money from your savings to afford it.

Saving less, or pausing savings entirely, is a bad idea, as you’ll be less prepared if you have to cover an unexpected expense. Depending on when your expense arrives, you can’t always cancel your subscription in time, but you may find a convenient and fast application process for loans by phone.

Taking out a phone loan may work in an emergency, but it shouldn’t replace your savings. If you can’t save and afford a meal box, cancel your subscription before you pause your savings.

4. You Have an Outstanding Personal Loan

The previous point talks about subscriptions before you take out a loan. This next one examines life after you get a loan by phone. Sometimes, borrowing is inevitable. A big, unexpected expense can be too much to handle, even when you save every month, so you get help with an installment loan or line of credit.

Financial advisors recommend tweaking your budget after you borrow, so you can reroute more cash towards this extra bill. Subscriptions are the first expenses on the chopping block when you’re in need of extra cash, along with these other discretionary expenses. Limiting how much spending you do in a month can help you pay off your loans and lines of credit more efficiently.