A lunch bought at work averages about $14, while one you pack costs about $4 to $5 in groceries. At those prices, packing four days a week saves well over $1,000 a year. Cook extra at dinner so tomorrow’s lunch is already made, and plan one lunch out a week to make the habit last.
Buying lunch rarely feels expensive because you pay for it one meal at a time. The Fooda Price Index, built from millions of sales at pop-up restaurants inside workplaces, puts that meal at $13.90 on average.
Run your own numbers before you start. Subtract what a packed lunch costs from what you usually pay for a bought one, then multiply by the lunches you’d pack in a year. The USDA’s moderate-cost food plan, a grocery budget for healthy meals made at home, allows $76.50 to $91.90 a week for an adult aged 20 to 70 in a four-person household. Spread over a week’s 21 meals, that’s about $4 each. For someone who lives alone, the USDA suggests adding 20%, which puts a meal closer to $5.
Say you work 48 weeks a year and pack four days a week. Swapping a $14 bought lunch for a $4 packed one saves $10 a lunch, or $1,920 over 192 lunches a year.
Packing doesn’t have to mean cooking a second time each day. Three habits make it quick:
- Double the recipe at dinner two or three nights a week, and portion the extra into containers before anyone goes back for seconds.
- Spend an hour on Sunday making three or four lunches at once, such as a pot of chili or a sheet pan of chicken and vegetables over rice.
- Keep a short rotation of four or five lunches you like, so you never have to decide what to pack.
A lunch out you’ve planned makes the other four days easier to pack. Pick the day now, such as Friday with coworkers, and put it on your calendar.
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