Save Money Bringing Your Lunch to Work

Now that many people are going back to the office, either full-time or part-time. For these people, eating out is once again an easy option instead of preparing a meal and snacks to bring with you to work. But eating out is not only expensive but can often be more unhealthy. There are benefits to eating out but there are ways to add these benefits to bringing your lunch to work. Lunch is a great and healthy way to decrease your monthly food expense.

Cost

Eating out for lunch on average costs $12, if you eat out every work day this will cost you $60 a week. Or $240 a month, $3,120 annually. With the current inflation, this can quickly increase. On average the cost of bringing your lunch to work is $3. This means that bringing your lunch to work every day will reduce the cost of your weekly lunches to almost the same as eating out one day. Weekly the cost is $15, monthly $60 and $780 annually.

By these calculations, bringing your lunch to work instead of eating out costs 75%. If you are looking for a place to save money, this is an easy money saver.

Make it Easy

Of course, it is easy to say just take your lunch to work. But it can be much harder in practice. Eating out with your co-workers can help your work life. You also need to prepare and bring your lunch. You need to set yourself up for success.

Co-workers

If you often eat with your co-workers, try encouring them to eat in a place where you can bring your own food. Some ideas would be: lunch room at work, parks, or a food court. You can also choose to go out once a week with them as a treat to yourself if they don’t eat where you can bring your own food.

Prep

Make a plan for your lunches, choose to make things that you are excited about. If you plan out what you are going to do for your lunches for the week, you can do things throughout the week to make it easy for you. When I took my lunch to work, I often took leftovers from the night before or from earlier in the week. It was really easy to say no to McDonald’s when I had pulled pork to eat. Another idea that I used was making something on the weekend for me to bring for lunch, chicken pot pie was a favourite.

You can also use leftovers to make a new meal, turning leftover chicken into chicken tacos or chicken cesear salad. You could even use leftover chicken to make chicken pot pie. Sandwiches are also great for using up leftovers, my fiance loves to use leftover pot roast for roast sandwiches. There are many different ideas on how to turn leftovers in a new meal.

When your co-workers see what awesome food you have, they may just join you in bringing your lunch to work.

Bringing your lunch to work can save you as much as $2,340 a year. By making a plan of your lunches, you can still have new and exciting lunches. Or even old favourites.