Small changes in your lunch habits can make big changes in your wallet

Finding ways to save money in your budget doesn’t always have to be extreme.  Sometimes all it takes is small consistent new habits to make a big results.

We decided that instead of having my husband go out to eat lunch with his coworkers every day we would instead pack him a lunch to take.  He usually has leftovers from dinner and some fruit or a salad, sometimes he will make himself a sandwich.

I added up how much this saved us over a year.  I estimated we  spend about $3 a day on the lunch he takes to work.  He works approximately 250 days out of the year making it $750 spending on lunch.  If he were to go out to eat with his coworkers we estimated he would spend about $7 (which is LOW balling it!) a day making it $1,750 a year for lunch.

So, just by packing a lunch for work we are saving $1,000 a year!  Think about this savings in long term value.  In 5 years we have saved $5,000.  In 10 years we have saved $10,000!  The savings over time is huge!  Imagine if I did the same thing, the amount would DOUBLE!

If you have school aged kids you can also save a large amount of money if you pack them a lunch instead of having them buy a hot lunch at school.

I spend about $1 per kid for each lunch I pack them.  I have two school aged kids so that comes to spending $80 a year on school lunches for them.  If I were to buy a hot school lunch the total yearly cost would be $220 a year.  So by packing them a lunch we are saving $140 a year.  This isn’t a huge amount, but Every.Single.Dollar makes a HUGE difference when you are on a budget.

These are our two easy secrets that have saved us over a $1,000 a year.  By the time all of my kids will have graduated from high school it will be over a $15,000 savings!  What lunch money saving secrets do you have?

If you are interested in more ways we save money each year check out my article:  What we cut from our budget to save over $2500 a year.