Is your lunch eating you?
Posted on February 26, 2008 - Filed Under Business |
With my new refrigerator being installed, an interesting memory surfaced.
A conversation, long since forgotten, came back and made me feel good. Once again, it’s a time travel episode at Chez Cliff.
Memory Lane
After first reading the RDPD books, Robert challenged the reader to increase their income level $200 that same day. The challenged was accepted.
My approach to this challenge was to examine in detail my expenses. No discernible spending pattern could be found however. It wasn’t the big ticket items. It was this line which repeated over and over again on my bank statement: “ATM Withdrawal”. Each withdrawl was $20 or $40. At the end of every month, over $600 had disappeared. Or $7200/year. Where did it go?
Food. Eating lunch at a cafe or having dinner at some low-cost dive.
Present Day
Much has changed since that time. One lesson learned: people hemorrhage cash by eating out. It’s not the $50 or $100 meals with $75 bottle of wine. That could play into it. But it’s the little meals, the little daily meals which eats away at the bottom line.
Based on my own data*, a table was built to show what the cost savings would be if Lunch and Dinner was prepared at home. Some could argue it is implausible to prepare every single meal at home. So I took some snapshots of what the cost savings would be if meals were prepared three, five and seven times a week.
My assumptions for cost savings are based spending $10/lunch/day and $20/dinner/day. If purchased daily, lunch would cost $3650/year and dinner $7300/year. Total: $10950
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