Image: emerchandise.com

If you have an ounce of cooking skill, then you should start thinking about preparing your own lunch. You will be surprised by how much money you can save!

Here’s the breakdown. On average, a meal costs about $5.99, tack on a drink at $1.25 and you’re at $7.24, add tax (7% in New Jersey) and the total comes to $7.75. Multiply that by five days and you’re spending $38.75 a week on food. Let’s say we work about 50 weeks a year, give a take a few days for holidays and what not. So lets multiply $38.75 by 50. That equals $1937.50 a year spent on purchasing lunch.

Now if we cook lunch ourselves and make use of the water cooler at work, the typical cost probably hovers around $2.50 a day for lunch. That’s $12.50 a week for lunch. Multiply that amount by 50 and we have $625.00. Take the difference and you could end up with $1312.50 in savings!
The downside is that you’ll lose some time during the day when you prepare lunch for the next day and you’ll probably have to do more grocery shopping. The upside is that you’ll be able to control the ingredients and portions, so in the end you’ll be eating healthier as well. Also, the more you cook, the better you will get at it. Don’t worry, we all struggle in the beginning when we first learn to cook.

I don’t know about you, but I can buy a lot of stuff for $1312.50