Now there may be some relatively healthy food places to eat out at like Subways, a local salad bar, etc. but in my experience the food at such places is very bland, and the number of such food places and variety of food available there is limited. Also, if your coworkers don’t agree with your decision to eat at a healthy place, the socializing idea goes out the window. If you eat the same bland food every day, you’re missing out on one of the greatest experiences in life, which is eating tasty, delicious food. Also, it takes a great amount of discipline to eat food you don’t like every day. Can you actually keep it up?

It’s so much better to prepare food you like, because you can tailor it to your own tastes and use spices to add flavor which health food places almost never use (what do people have against spices? they’re amazing!). And you can also change things around if you get bored. You don’t have to make complicated dishes, it can can be something quick. Not restricting yourself to just American food definitely adds a lot of variety.

It’s like getting your exercise by hiking with friends or learning a fun form of dance instead of going to the gym and hitting the treadmill. It’s effortless cause it’s actually pleasant rather than boring. And you’re much less likely to quit because of that.

No one ever counts total costs, they only count the price paid for groceries, usually for packing a sorry, unhealthy, bologna-and-chips type lunch.

If I buy the Chinese buffet with hot tea for $6.35, could I REALLY duplicate that from home for less?

Not only I would have to buy all those ingredients at the grocery store, I would have to take my time to fix all those dishes.
I would have to pay the utility bills to cook the food.
If I’m tired and forget to bring it (happens a lot), I’ll ending up going somewhere and buying a lunch anyway. In the meantime, the lunch I packed (and forgot) goes bad and gets wasted. The excess food that I can’t really eat (unless I eat the same thing over and over) gets thrown in the trash.
Unless the price of you lunch goes over $10, maybe it’s not such a bad idea.
Takes a lot of the stress out of your day.
Put your cooking skills to work on the dinner meal, that way you’ll get a better variety of things to eat.

I bag a lunch with a sandwich, piece of fruit and bag of chips. It costs me about $2 or $2.5 per day and I use some more expensive ingredients.

If I were to go for the cheaper options in our work cafe then I might be able to get a lunch at work for almost as cheap. For example a bowl of soup costs $1.5 at work.

Jim

Learning to cook easy simple meals that you can take to work for lunch is easy to do and can be done one day of the week and prepackaged for the rest of the week.

I will venture to say that it will nearly always be cheaper to buy food from the grocery, cook it and take it to work instead of buying out every day…barring any expensive $12 frozen fillet mignons you may buy on a regular basis.

Thus your actual net savings is only $4 per day, not $8… amounting to about $1000 per year.

I’m sure there is value to socializing in the office, but I don’t think it can usually equate to the $1000 to $2000 you save by not buying lunch daily. You can also make an effort to socialize at worth other ways than going out to lunch.

Jim

Is the author of this devil’s advocate post employed in Mexico? Do they eat soup every day? I can’t remember the last time I ate lunch for $5…ok, maybe subway but whatever..

Let’s try my average lunch costs:

$8 x 48 weeks x 5 days = $1920
$9 x 48 weeks x 5 days = $2160
$10 x 48 weeks x 5 days = $2400

I eat leftovers like a champ.

The economic term, “opportunity cost,” comes to mind here. By “saving” a few dollars, what opportunities do you forego? Do we stop to think that our time is also something that is to be “invested?”

For example, if we “save” five dollars by eating a bag lunch sitting at our desk, what kind of opportunities do we forego by spending time alone?

Quiet time has its own intrinsic value but “doing nothing” may also be viewed as a poor “investment” of our time…

“Money often costs too much.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can still bring your lunch and eat with a group- every office I’ve ever worked in has had a cafeteria or lunch room of some sort. Get your group together and go there to chat. Or, take your sandwich, go for a walk and find a park bench somewhere- voila! You’ve saved money and avoided thrombophlebitis!

I try to bring my lunch most days, but will go out for lucnh about once a week simply because I enjoy it. That’s the best reason of all.