Do you pack your own lunch on work days or go out to eat? I always bring my lunch with me. This is partly because I work in an area of the city that pretty much requires you to drive (and park amongst city traffic) if you want to get something to eat, and partly because eating out for lunch every day can get very expensive. And I’m cheap.
Let’s do the math: If I chose to visit a local deli to get a sandwich every day I would probably drop about 8.00 per day on a sandwich, snack, and drink.
8.00 x 5 work days= 40.00 per week spent on lunches alone. This could translate to much more per day in higher priced urban areas.
Here’s what I take from home for lunch instead:
1. Salad-I split up a bag of salad into four services and sprinkle in some salt, pepper, and corn. One bag = 2.00. This means the salad costs me 50 cents per day. Fridays tend to be a free for all day where I just bring some dinner leftovers from the week.
2. Chicken breasts- I normally buy a pack of five that run about 6.00 each. I split these up into five servings and mix them in with my salad/ leftovers. This costs me 1.20 per day.
3. I generally bring a baggie of Special K cracker chips (those things are amazing). They cost about 2.00 per box and I split the box up into five or six servings. Approx 35 cents per day.
4. Baby carrots- Only 99 cents per bag! I generally split up a bag into four servings, with a grand total of approx. 25 cents per day.
4. Almonds- 5.00 per container, I split them up into 8 small servings. That’s about 63 cents a day.
All together, my daily lunch costs me about 2.93 a day, or 14.65 per week.
While I definitely switch up what I bring with me every week, it always falls well below the 40.00/ week price tag I’d be paying if I are lunch out everyday! I know that in some professions, lunch meetings are the norm and I’m not sure how I would adjust my budget if eating lunch out was a necessity. Maybe company credit cards would cover that sort of thing as a business expense?
What do you all bring for lunch? Do you work a job that requires you to eat out with co-workers/ potential clients? If so, please share how you budget out your money!
Any affordable snacks I’m missing out on?
I have a lazy streak that usually prevents me from wanting to make lunches from scratch, so I try to make big batches of dinner and take it to lunch the next day. So… there’s a lot of pasta for lunch.
Posted by Annabel | March 12, 2012, 10:15 pmMy co-workers always are amazed that I always bring my lunch. I find it easiest to pack my lunch for the next day as I cook my dinner.
Posted by danielledevery | March 23, 2012, 7:02 pm