My Lunchbox Makes One House Payment a Year for Me
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*** Updated 4/16/2021***
My lunch box makes one house payment for me every year.
It wasn’t always that way, though.
Up until a couple of years ago, I ate lunch out every day. Some days, it was a Jimmy John’s sandwich, while other days, it was a trip to the sushi train (my nickname for that excellent place with little sushi plates chugging by on the conveyer belt). I mention these two restaurants because of their speed. I could get a Jimmy John’s Number 17 (no tomatoes/cut-in-half) in under five minutes and be on my way. At Sushi Maru, I could sit at the rail and eat alone and finish in ten minutes. Bada-boom, done.
Those restaurants also represented the end of the spectrum in my lunch prices. Jimmy John’s cost me about $8.00 out the door. Sushi Maru, with just water and a tip, was costing me approximately $15.00. I hit both once a week with other restaurants for the off days.
I shouldn’t forget the occasional morning and afternoon snacks which were far too often and for which I’m still paying the price in my workouts.
What Eating Lunch Out Cost Me
I’m going to be kind to myself and say that I was averaging $8/day eating my lunch out, but I spent more than that. I’ll use an average of fifty weeks a year, assuming a couple of weeks for vacation. Here’s the math:
$8/day x 5 days = $40/week x 50 weeks = $2,000/year.
Yipes! My bank account leaked cash at lunch. I needed an intervention, and it came in the form of a lunch box.
What Bringing My Lunch Saves Me
The contents of my lunchbox one day this past week - (PB&J sandwich, chips, veggies with hummus, yogurt, apple and a few mini peanut butter cups).
The credit goes to my girlfriend for making my lunch. I’ve tried to do it, but I failed to keep it regular. When it comes to groceries and meals, she’s the engine for budget consistency. Without her, I fall apart and spend too much on food.
Some days my lunch is a cold cut sandwich, chips, fruit, nuts, and a yogurt. The items are usually in reusable containers, the exception being the occasional yogurt. Other days I get leftovers from the previous night’s dinner. The lunchbox is always filled with extra goodies to provide me with a morning and afternoon bite. My snacks are often celery sticks with a bit of hummus, an apple, or a small container of trail mix.
I often bring home something I didn’t eat as my girlfriend has a habit of overpacking. Since I work out at the end of the day, she thinks I might pass out from low blood sugar. It’s usually the apple or nuts as I try to save the items for later consumption.
My girlfriend and I have calculated the average costs for my lunches, which often comes to a few dollars a day. That sounds so ridiculously low that I’m raising it to $3.50/day for this exercise, but I want you to understand it’s incredibly inexpensive to make your lunch.
Here’s the math:
$3.50/day x 5 days = $17.50/week x 50 weeks = $875/year.
What’s the savings look like?
$2,000 (eating out) minus $875 (cost of bringing my lunchbox)
= a whopping $1,125/year savings.
What's that $1,125/year really mean?
It’s a house payment.
It’s one less real estate commission I must earn each year.
It’s a time-saver—I don’t have to find lunch during the day.
I’m eating healthier.
I’m happier.
I have friends who will say that the amount I’m saving is not worth the effort. They point out that broken into monthly amounts, it’s only $93.75/month and not worth the effort of making a lunch every day.
How many hours would they have to work to pay for $93.75 of lunch savings? At $20/hour (excluding the government’s hand in your pocket), they’d have to do almost four hours each month to pay for that savings. It’s even worse if you calculate the cost of the actual lunches.
What The Most Successful Broker Eats
In our lunchroom, there is only one other broker who consistently brings his lunch from home. Coincidentally, he is the most successful broker and the wealthiest real estate investor in our office.
This guy has a massive portfolio with no debt on it. It’s a cash flow engine. His habit of getting to the office early and working late is legendary. He’s a deal-making machine and a nice guy to boot.
Every day, though, he brings leftovers from dinner and heats them in the company’s microwave. This guy, with more money than I would care to guess, brings his lunch. Occasionally, we’ll chat, but usually, we pass each other in the lunchroom and say a quick hello.
If he’s not acting wealthy by eating out every day, why should I?
Are there never times I eat lunch out?
It's hard to make a lunchbox look cool, but trust me, it is (really).
Am I perfect? Come on, get real. There have been several months without a single day of eating out. Then there’s a week where a client is in town one day, a friend’s birthday is the next, followed by an out-of-town tour with my business partner. I’m eating lunch out on all those days.
It’s the same philosophy as going to the gym. Just because you miss one day doesn’t mean you throw away all the progress you’ve made to sit down with a bucket of Chunky Monkey.
But I don’t skip a lunchbox day just because I want to. Doing that would lead to continual excuses to start slacking with the budget. Again, using the gym analogy, one skipped visit leads to a second, leads to a New Year’s resolution to get back to the gym.
My girlfriend deserves the credit for this. I’m only the consumer in the process. She’s the one who keeps us on budget, and I can’t thank her enough because of what it means to the overall goal.
On a side note, she occasionally sends me to work with soup in a Hello Kitty thermos or a sandwich in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles container. Our son gets a cool Avengers-themed thermos and sandwich containers. When I question why he gets the neater containers, she says we’re on a budget, and I need to act like a grown-up.
All I want to know is this—will Captain America ever protect my sandwich?
What about you?
Are you bringing lunch or battling a budget leak by eating out?
