Lunch Money

When I was growing up my Mom used to make my lunch to bring to school with me. I refused to eat school lunches because they were just NASTY. Besides why would I want to eat that um.. what is a nice word to use...STUFF...when I could have awesome pita sandwiches and pieces of bell pepper? Yeah I know not exactly what every kid wants in their lunch, but hey it was good to me!

Now my husband makes my lunch for me. Yes, you heard me right. My HUSBAND makes my lunch. Granted I make whatever desert we are having for the week, the bread (now that I have my nifty bread machine), and the chips. But he prepares them every night, and if I am lucky I get a lovely note telling me how wonderful/beautiful/special etc I am.

There is a lot of money to be saved from taking your lunch to work with you. "But I don't have a microwave/fridge." So? Neither does my husband. If, unlike my DH, you do not have an aversion to borrowing the gas station microwave, you can still eat a hot meal i.e leftovers. Not microwave meals that you bought, unless they are free or almost free using coupons. Buying meals like that won't save you much money because inevitably they do not fill you up and an hour later you are at the gas station, buying something else. Now where was I? Oh yeah.

Saving money by bringing your lunch to work.

Over the next week/month/ever how long it takes me to get this done, I am going to be sharing ways that I save money by taking lunch to work.

First off think about how much you spend buying your lunch 5 days a week for a whole year. If you spend a meager $5 a day you will have spent somewhere in the nature of $1300 a year. That means you can save $2600 a year if both you and your spouse start taking your lunch. And if you are like us, we were spending more like $7-$10 a piece a day. So the potential saving for us was a little bit more like $4420 a year on average.

I am not saying that we do not ever forget our lunch and buy it at Mc Donald's, or just feel like eating something other than what we brought. We do. I mean we are only human. BUT we are saving a lot of money by brown bagging it.

If that was not incentive enough, you are also helping out the environment when you use a reusable lunch bag and either reuse your plastic baggies or use Tupperware (and by that I mean the old washed out margarine and sour cream tubs). Think of all those trees that go into those fast food wrappers and bags. NO I do not know how many that is, but hey everything you do that reduces waste helps is the way I look at it. And no I am not perfect. I forget to bring my lunch bag home, or *cough cough* misplace it.

Well if that does not have you begging for more, I don't know what will. Daniel's new MP3 kids radio (parent torture) device has started blasting in my ear, so I have lost my peace and quiet, and therefore my train of thought. I will be posting more in the days to come on ways to save money preparing your luches, things to do to liven the lunches up a bit, and what has worked or not worked for us.