Do you want to save around $1,500 per year? Hmmm – what could I buy for that? Designer dresses, purses, shoes, or I could skim off exactly that amount from my annual salary and stick it into a special fund, right? A fund for that girl’s spa vacation I’ve been dreaming about, or the cookery class that I’ve always wanted to do. Yep, $1,5000 is a lot of money and it’s the average amount that you can save by making your own lunch at home everyday in place of eating out.
I came up with this figure by estimating that most of us spend between four to fifteen bucks a day on lunch. A soup and roll will cost you four bucks, and a fancy, sandwich, chips and drink can easily get you up to fifteen. BTW – this doesn’t include any coffee shop drinks, which can almost double this amount for some. So, let’s go with an average of 10 bucks per day. Now, if the average cost of a made-at-home brown paper bag lunch is four dollars, we are already saving sixty percent, and this works out to be around fifteen hundred bucks a year.
I can actually further save (this is where my frugal upbringing really kicks in), by making use of leftovers – I love to challenge myself to make a lunch for under a dollar a day!
Aside from the cost savings, making my own lunch is also way better for the environment because I am avoiding all that packaging, and packaging from the local deli or grocery store mounts up: we’re talking paper, plastic, polystyrene, cardboard and plastic flatware – much of which is not recyclable, especially after it’s soiled. I detest having to dump all this waste into a trashcan for a meal that took me all of 10 minutes to consume – what a dreadful waste, right?
So, why not commit to making your own homemade lunch for the next year. You obviously don’t need to go crazy – if you find yourself out and about the odd day, or if you’re meeting friends for lunch, by all means go and enjoy, but for the MOST part, make your own.
If you have kids, you can make your lunch at the same time that you make their – easy right?
And, my final thought on all of this is that preparing your own food at home is way healthier: You don’t really know exactly what’s in that mayo that the deli is using, and you can never know for sure how fresh their food really is. I know so many people, including myself, who’ve had food poisoning from either a salad bar or a deli sandwich – YUCK!
So, what’s the downside to making your own, other than a tiny amount of effort? NONE!
