Restaurant meals were just not an option for us at all. And that included any kind of meal out for lunch at work. Our household of two at the time simply could not afford the hit to our bottom line of daily take-out or cafeteria meals.
Even for a single person that would have meant hundreds of dollars less every year that could go toward savings or long-term financial goals. And for the two of us, it would have amounted to a couple of thousand dollars a year. That’s tens of thousands over the course of a lifetime.
And let’s bear in mind that this is money spent on completely forgettable food.
So we brownbagged our lunches then, both for school and for work. And we continue to do so now, either by taking leftovers, or making ourselves sandwiches.
Our financial situation taught us early that there’s simply no reason that lunch should cost more than $1-$2 per person.