Plain Old Common Cents

photo by axelsrose

Lunch doesn’t seem like something that would make or break your budget. After all, lunch isn’t as big as replacing the transmission in your car, fixing a leak in the roof, or any other temporary “emergency,” is it?

In my limited experience in the workplace, I have seen many different eating habits from my coworkers, but by far the most common habit is to eat out every day, or nearly every day. If we assume that this is the norm, then we should see how much money we can save each year by deviating from the norm.

Lets assume that your average lunch is a $5.99 sandwich, with a $0.75 bag of chips, and a $1.50 drink. With tax, that comes out to $8.82. You might not spend that much every day, but some days you might spend much more. You probably work somewhere around 240 days per year, not including holidays, weekends, or vacation days. We will exclude those days for the sake of this exercise, but lets be realistic - you will eat out on those days too.

• 240 days x $8.82 = $2,116.80

If your spouse works, multiply that by 2 to $4,233.60. You should tailor this to fit your situation. If on average you spend 20 percent more than $8.82, multiply the total by 1.2; and likewise, if you spend less then adjust down from there. Lets not forget that you are probably addicted to caffeine, and if you have a Starbucks coffee each day along with a muffin or bagel, lets add that in too, just for kicks.

• 1 Starbucks Coffee - $2 or $4 if you get a latte.
• 1 Muffin or Bagel w/ cream cheese - $1.75

When you add your breakfast habit to your already expensive lunch habit, you’re looking at $3,256.80 per person. $6,513.60 for both you and your spouse.

What if I told you that you could eat a healthy and enjoyable lunch for much less than $1,000 per year per person. If you give up Starbucks for home and office brewed coffee and Starbucks muffins for store bought muffins you could have breakfast and lunch for less than $1,000 per year.

On average, my wife and I spend between $1.50 and $3.00 for our packed lunches. We cook almost every night and use the leftovers as our lunch, or we make a sandwich or other simple and inexpensive meal to take with us into the office. Instead of purchasing a soda at a vending machine for $1.50, I bring a can of Arizona Green Tea with me that costs about $0.25. My wife only drinks tea or water. Instead of buying an individual bag of chips, I bring a piece of fruit or on occasion I might buy a big bag of chips and use it to fill up sandwich bags at home. By choosing much cheaper alternatives, we do not sacrifice quality or quantity in our lunches but we save literally thousands of dollars a year.
With that money invested long term in the stock market, we are talking about saving hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars over our career by simply choosing to bring a lunch instead of eating out. Are you willing to throw away that much money, just so you can eat out at lunch every day?