Lunch a Day
Sat, 02/28/2009 - 23:58
Learning to bring lunch to work has been the best thing for my savings.
I realize how much I've been able to save this way. I'm able to make a simple dish, take it to work and not have to worry about finding a place to eat and how long it's going to take me to get back in time. This has resulted in thousands of dollars in my savings account in the course of one year. There are also other aspects of my spending that I adjusted, but this has definately been the smartest.
My lunch savings for 2009
I use mint.com to track my spending, so every time I buy lunch, i use my credit card (which I pay off every month). All my lunch savings are tagged under Lunch Category, so I easily pulled my number for 2009.
It came to 370!!! I probably spend another $100 on lunch I bought with cash, bringing the total to $470. That's vs. $2115 (47 weeks X 5 days X $9) I would have spent. So I saved around $1645 by bringing my own lunch to work more than 3 times a week in 2009. That's a good chunk of change! Highly recommend to try doing this, it's exciting when you actually can see the savings, keeps me motivated :)
Bring a lunch to work to save!
Try making plenty of something for dinner on the weekend that makes good leftovers for work lunches, like spaghetti or chili or a casserole. Package up the leftovers in lunch-sized portions and put them in the fridge. You can throw together a lunch in 60 seconds in the morning that beats most lunches you can buy and saves lots of money AND time.