Entry bubble Bring Your Lunch and Save Money!

By: Jake | January 12, 2009 | Category: Money

A Bagged LunchThe news these days is chock full of tips for saving money. We even have 66 simple ways for you to do that. But an alert Pueblo.gsa.gov visitor recently touched on an idea so obvious that most of us take it for granted. Simply, do you know how much you can save each month by bringing your lunch to work?

Like I said—it's obvious. You save more money making your own sandwich than you do paying Tony at the local sub shop, but have you ever sat down and quantified it? This alert reader sent us a lunch savings calculator from Bankrate.com which lets you calculate your savings from bagging your lunch over a long period of time.

To grab lunch in D.C. it costs me an average of $10 depending on what I get. The average cost for me to bring lunch is about $4. If I bring my lunch for a whole month, which is very doable, the calculator says I'll save $120. If I bring for a year, which is unlikely, I'll save $1,440. Bagging it for four years (impossible), will save me over $5000.

I don't know about you, but I'm able to really stick to something if there's a clear benefit to it. I won't be saving $1500 on lunch this year, but I know I can save at least $1000. While I'm bagging it, I can also focus more on my nutrition.

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