Packing Lunch vs. Eating Out

The Consumerist has a post today about packing your lunch. Basically it referred back to a post written by a dietician on her husband's blog. She gives a week's menu with prices vs. eating out for lunch. Her lunches were pretty boring. Really just sandwiches and sides. Two of days were repeats. She came up with a total of $11.08.

The gem was in comments. Elisabeth referred back to a post she made on her blog, Money for the Rest of Us, about the same topic. In her post she linked to a nifty calculator to determine how much you can save and the interest you can earn over time. Lunchsaver at dinkytown.net, it's pretty straightforward. Plug in how much lunch out would cost, # of bagged lunches per month, cost of the bagged lunch, # of years and expected rate of return.

I put in $6.50 for eating out, 16 bagged lunches per month @ $2.50 each, with 6% expected return. That's a savings of $64 per month/$768 per year/$97 interest if invested.

Elisabeth's blog didn't have any comments but the other two did. I would assume that the people reading these sites would be interested in saving money. After all from what I can tell with just a quick glance that seems to be the theme of the blogs. But a bunch of the comments were trying to explain why NOT to pack a lunch. ?? What?? How in the world can a person argue that it's not a good idea? It's cheaper (duh!), healthier (duh!), safer (duh!)not <rat infested>.

For the last few months I've been making lunches. Not so much to save money but more because I don't eat breakfast, skip lunch then when I get home I don't feel good. I don't remember how I found it, but I started packing a bento. Traditional bento are Japanese meals with rice, meat or fish, and one or two vegetables. The vegetables are cut up into shapes or characters. It's pretty cool. Mine are Americanized versions put into a bento box that I bought on eBay. There is a livejournal group that people post their pictures of their meals, recipes, ask questions. Another cool blog is Vegan Lunchbox. She doesn't post everyday like she used to, but it's a mother who packs her son's lunch in a Laptop Lunchbox. There are also tons of Flicker groups of both Laptop Lunches and bentos.

After I started packing my bento, I do feel better after work and of course packing a lunch is so much cheaper than buying one out everyday. Not to mention that it takes 20 minutes to go get lunch and get back which only leaves 10 minutes to gobble it up. If you have it delivered, you have to ask other people to get the minimum, the money never comes out right, the girls I work with won't tip so it's embarrassing to give the delivery guy the money, they don't come on time (would you if you KNEW you weren't going to get a tip?).

It's just so much easier to bring my own. Now if I could just stay away from the snack box. And buy pop at the store and bring that too. But I hate going to the grocery store.


$2.09 prescription
3.69 TacoBell