If you pack a lunch consistently you’ll be surprised how much money you can save.
Glass Bowls Provide Lunch Values
Having Glass Bowls so you can bring leftovers for lunch, is the second of our Kitchen Tools series. It will empower you to save thousands of dollars on your food budget.
Why glass bowls? When it comes to feeding a family, there is a lot of money at stake. The average family is spending $200 per person each month on groceries. That means that a family of four will spend nearly $10,000 on food this year! And using glass bowls for lunch can help slash these numbers.
Here’s our second grocery “tool” that will save you lots of money, year after year.
Glass Bowls to Pack Up Your Lunch
Some people call them “leftovers,” we choose to look at them as pre-cooked meals and money in the bank. If you invest in a $10 set of Pyrex bowls with lids you could save enough money to start a college savings account for your kids!
Having a set of 3 small glass bowls will allow you to pack up leftovers after dinner and take them for lunch the next day.
If you can’t bring yourself to eat the same food two days in a row, freeze the meal in the bowl and bring it a couple of days later.
And Annette had lots of recipe requests for the delicious-smelling meals.
Steve did this almost every day for 20 years and we saved more than $40,000.
What …. 40,000 dollars? Your kidding right?
Here’s the math.
- Weeks: 20 years x 50 weeks of work = 1000 weeks (2 weeks off each year for vacation)
- Days: 1000 weeks x 5 Days of Work = 5000 days of not buying lunch
- Cost: Assume between $7 and $10 for lunch (using an average of $8.5 per day)
Buying Lunch Cost for 20 years: $8.50 x 5000 days = $42,500
Reduction for eating out and sick days
But let’s be real, some days he did go out to lunch with clients or there was a work party or he was home from work because he was sick. So let’s reduce this by 10 days per year x 20 years. So subtract $1700 and our final savings were:
$40,800 saved by bringing lunch to work for 20 years.
How Much Could You Save?
It all depends on how often you bring your lunch to work. Following are two different scenarios:
- Bringing Lunch 3 Days Per Week
- Bringing Lunch 5 Days Per Week
Bringing Lunch 3 Days Per Week
If the average lunch costs about $8.50, bringing a meal to work three times each week would save you $1275 every year.
- 3 Days per week x 50 weeks = 150 days x $8.50 = $1275 each year!
That would be a nice addition to any college savings account.
Savings Bringing Lunch 5 Days Per Week
If you brought your lunch every day for 50 weeks, you would save: $2125 compared to eating lunch out every day.
That money could be used to retire debt or build an emergency savings account.
So as you can see, packing a lunch can really cause you to save a lot of money. And you don’t even need to do it every day. If you did like Steve and brought a lunch to work, but you only did it 3 days each week for 20 years you would have amassed $25,500 dollars.
That’s some really significant money. Are you willing? Are you able? If so, start building that nest egg at lunchtime tomorrow!
Watch for next week’s Wednesday blog where we’ll talk about a hot little tool that could save you $3400 in the next 12 months.
Check out the other posts in this series:
- Week 1: The Humble SpoonULa
- Week 3: $3400 Crock Pot
- Week 4: $500 Sliced Savings
- Week 5: $2000 Freezer Tool
For more ways to save money on food, consider our second book, Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half.