Lunch can be a real budget-buster. It’s easy to not give it a thought until lunchtime…and so lunch becomes a regularly-scheduled impulse buy.
Focusing your money-saving efforts on lunch will yield great rewards, because everyone in the home eats a lunch every day. The most important step in this effort is to plan your lunches, and shop accordingly. Purchase better-quality foods and fewer processed foods to improve health and save money at the same time.
If lunch is eating a hole in your budget, read on to learn some of the sneaky ways that happens, and what you can do about it without starving yourself.
Lunch Loser #1: Starving Yourself or being “Too Busy” for Lunch
Skipping lunch would seem like the most logical way to save money on lunch; however, the opposite is true. Your brain and your body need lunch to be healthy and productive.
If you’re trying to save money by skipping lunch, you’ll often spend more money later in the day, when it’s easy to get hungry and binge on impulse-bought food. The other way it can cost you is if the amount of money you make depends on your productivity – If you skip lunch, you’ll find yourself slowing down and even losing focus.
For all the sacrifice of passing on lunch, you’d think you would at least lose some weight. No, that won’t happen, either. Dr. Richard Lipman gives a good explanation of how skipping lunch can actually lead to gaining weight:
When you skip any meal your blood sugar falls throughout the day. You arrive at the next meal not only hungry, but with low blood sugar. The result is a low energy level, which means less exercise and physical activity. Making bad choices like eating at fast food restaurants or having large meals is the result. Experiencing low blood sugar late in the afternoon often leads to overeating and loss of control.”
Richard Lipman, MD
Lunch Loser #2: Regular Takeout Lunches
There is a huge difference between the cost of restaurant food and food you bring from home. In fact, if there is just one tip here you’re going to use, this is it. The chart below gives you an idea of how much money you can save if you make the switch.
If you haven’t brown-bagged it since you were a kid, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Today’s supermarkets truly are super, when it comes to imaginative things to pack in your lunch.
Lunch Loser #3: “Splitting” the Check
Splitting the lunch check is the bane of every thrifty diner…unless, that is, your dining partner has the same eating habits as you. One example of this I’ll never forget happened when I was young and single, dining with a married friend and her toddler. I had a sandwich and a glass of water. My “friend” ordered an expensive meal, a drink, a dessert, and a kid’s meal; and then expected me to split the check. Luckily, I didn’t have that much money with me!
There’s an easy solution for this that’s easy on your friendships, too. When you order, instruct the waitress that you want separate checks. It sounds like a pain, but waitresses are actually really nice about this; it’s a more common practice than you might think.
Lunch Loser #4: Failing to Plan your Lunches
You know what they say, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail,” and lunch is no exception to the rule. To save money on lunch, you’ll need to think ahead – If you aren’t going to do the usual thing, what will you do?
You might love the tuna sandwiches from Subway, but find making tuna salad at home too fussy. A better plan might be to buy a 1/2 pint of chicken salad at your market’s deli counter. Sliced chicken and mayo is good, too, and almost as easy.
My 22-year-old son is a very un-fussy guy, who likes to make up a bunch of sandwiches on Sunday night, and store them in the fridge. As proud as I am of his thrifty nature, I’m a little suspicious of the quality of them toward the end of the week. With a few tweaks, though, it’s a good plan. Some types of sandwiches can even go in the freezer (just don’t do this with mayo).
You can save more time by doing the following tasks ahead of time: make up baggies of cookies, wash fruit, cut up veggies, and put dip into little containers. Entire brown bag lunches can be made, although I wouldn’t go more than three days ahead, for food safety reasons.
In addition to packing things ahead, you can jot down a basic menu for the month. Don’t worry, this is not where I offer you a printable calendar to plan your menu. I’ve never been able to keep up with them, so I wouldn’t suggest it to others. Just a few basic ideas on a sheet of paper is fine. The idea is to prevent you from reverting to your old, expensive lunch habits.
Most people don’t want to eat the same lunch every day (although many kids would disagree). A completely different lunch every day, however, can be hard to pull off, unless you’re feeding a lot of people. Bread, cheese, and lunch meat all freeze well; so you can buy different kinds and freeze them in smaller quantities. Provide variety by stocking up on less perishable sides, like cookies, crackers, condiments, hard and dried fruits, etc..
Lunch Loser #5: Diet Plans that Reduce your Wallet
I just can’t get over the concept that it costs more to eat less! It’s true, though; and there is actually some sense to it. Weight problems are often caused not by eating too much, but by eating low-quality foods. If you try to lose weight by eating better food, you can expect to pay more for it; but will save money in the long run, with less cravings, less impulse buying, and not feeling the need to eat so much.
There are, however, a lot of “diet” foods and plans that make weight loss more expensive than it needs to be. Fat-free salad dressings are a good example of this – To get the same flavor, one needs to use more of the fat-free version of a dressing than the regular version. The “lite” versions also tend to have a thinner texture, so a lot of it just runs to the bottom of the dish and gets thrown away. Buying the regular version and simply using less is a much more sensible way to lose weight, and spend less money. If you taper down your portion gradually, it’s much easier than cutting it way down all at once.
Lunch Loser #6: Buying Bottles of Water
It’s one thing if you’re at a fancy gala, and you order a Perrier, because you don’t want any extra calories. Aside from that, bringing a disposible bottle of water every time you leave the house is a blatant waste of money. I applaud your healthy hydration habit; but do yourself a favor – Get a travel bottle and fill it from your tap. If your water is not that great, treat yourself to a Brita Pitcher.
This is a much broader subject than you’d think; as I found out when I wrote a full-length article that will answer all your questions on buying water and give you the best money-saving tips, no matter which route you choose to go with your portable hydration (scroll all the way down for a link to that one)!
Lunch Loser #7: Chicken Hot Dogs – a Paltry Lunch
You won’t find a cheaper hot dog than a chicken dog (unless it’s a turkey dog), but these are truly nasty. Their first ingredient is “mechanically separated chcken.” This is chicken that used to be thrown away, because it took too much costly labor to get it off the chicken. Industry pros insist that it is safe; but I prefer not to eat it. Chicken hotdogs are spongy and disgusting, and loaded with fillers. People complain about fillers in pet food, but they still put them in our hot dogs??
You’re much better off buying quality hot dogs; then, serving fewer hot dogs per person, and adding an extra, low-cost side dish, such as potato salad.
Lunch Loser #8: Bubba Burgers – Too Much of a Good Thing
These are very good burgers, but not everybody needs a 1/3 lb. hamburger. Most people don’t think of that when they are sparking up the grill, though. Then, kids feel gypped if you give them half a burger, so splitting them is out.
We love burgers in my family, so I have tried many ways of saving money on them throughout the years. The cheap patties that come in a box are kind of nasty, and I’ve never tried that ground beef that comes in the big chub.
The best hamburger money-saver I’ve come up with is to buy decent hamburger meat (80/20) and stretch it with tasty, inexpensive add-ins. Food corporations do this all the time – They’re called “fillers” … but your fillers will be healthy.
My favorite add-ins are:
- Bread crumbs
- Cheddar cheese
- Beef bouillon powder
- Black pepper
- Egg
- Dried onion
Using my “fillers,” I can usually get 5-6 burgers from a pound of meat. We have burgers for lunch every week in the summer, so it definitely saves me a bit of money, and the add-ins make for a very flavorful burger.
Bonus tip: I make the guys’ burgers a little bigger, so I don’t get accused of underfeeding people!
Lunch Loser #9: Potato Chips – It’s true, you can’t eat just one
Yes, they do taste good with a sandwich, but you really don’t need them on a regular basis. We buy them occasionally, as a treat. Keep in mind that chips have no nutritional value, and fill up your family so they’re not hungry for the fruits and veggies they should be eating with that sandwich. Then, later, everyone is hungry again sooner, and likely to splurge on other foods that are costly to wallet and health.
There are many better replacements for chips, which will keep everyone filled up a bit longer. You’ll also notice that when you eat healthier foods, you often will crave some more healthy food when you get hungry again. Try:
- Apple slices with peanut butter
- Carrots and celery made with a quick satay sauce (peanut butter + soy sauce)
- Frozen broccoli pieces dipped in Ranch dressing (put broccoli in a colander, and rinse with cold water to thaw. Place a paper towel on the bottom of the serving bowl).
- Frozen bananas with chocolate shell (freeze banana slices on a cookie sheet. Gently melt chocolate chips in a microwavable dish, and stir in a bit of coconut oil. When you pour this over the frozen bananas, or dip them in it, it will harden on contact).
Lunch Loser #10: Soda – How to put your dentist’s kids through college
Soda is a loser on so many fronts, I wouldn’t have room to list them all. Like chips, it is an extra expense with no nutritional value.
If you need the boost from a caffienated soda, consider getting that lift from a mild energy supplement. I’ll link to a great article I found (scroll to bottom for that), in which they describe quite a few good natural supplements for energy. I checked out a few of them over at Swanson Vitamins, and they are a heck of a lot cheaper than soda. For example, Tyrosine is just $4.56 for 100 pills, and is very well rated.
Healthline author Gavin Van De Walle, MS, RD describes the usefulness of tyronine:
In the body, tyrosine is used to make neurotransmitters, which tend to decrease under periods of stressful or mentally demanding situations. There is good evidence that supplementing with tyrosine replenishes these important neurotransmitters and improves mental function, compared to a placebo.”
Gavin Van De Walle
Another way that soda can drain your wallet is by ruining your teeth. Even if there is no sugar in the soda, it can destroy your enamal. Dr. Andrew Weil tells us why:
Acidic additives used to flavor sugar-free soft drinks are responsible for the enamel erosion. The worst of these is citric acid used in lime and lemon drinks. Phosphoric acid used in colas is almost as damaging.”
Dr. Andrew Weil
If it does have sugar, you run the additional danger of having a mid-afternoon sugar crash, which can lead to cravings to impulse buy expensive, junky foods.
