Category Archives: Experiment

Good Cheap Lunches

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When going out for lunch, I use to eat whatever I wanted without regard to the price.  This was good, but usually once I found something I stuck to it, and whenever going to that restaurant, I would buy that menu item over and over.

Unfortunately, what the food that I liked was also typically one of the more expensive items on the menu, with the exception of steak meals.  Lately, I’ve discovered that I can make my dollar stretch farther, if I buy soups at the more expensive restaurants.  The good news is that the soup at better restaurants also taste better.  For instance, when I go to Macaroni Grill, I now buy 1 of their soup menu items.  They are extremely taste and very reasonably priced ($3.49 for a cup of Macaroni Grill’s tasty soups) plus, their free bread that comes with the meals is superb.  I have to admit, I’m not sure that I would get the bread if I went alone and ordered just soup, but since I always go with my buddies, and they still eat large, I reap the rewards… 🙂

So in an earlier Post, I mentioned that I’m doing an experiment where I only spend $12 a week on eating lunch out.  If I buy soup meals instead of the more expense meals, I can eat out 2 times a week for lunch! Booyah!

I win multiple ways with the above approach:

  • I still get to save the same $40 a week for the allowance experiment.
  • I get to enjoy the socialization aspect of lunch with my buddies at work.
  • If I only eat out once that week, I get to save an additional $6 that week.
  • I get to escape from work for an hour!
  • restaurant food taste even better, after being on a diet of noodles, peanuts, and eggs.

Buying soup when going out for lunch should be considered!  Try it you might be surprised…

Paying An Adult Allowance, A Lunch Experminent

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I’ve decided to pay myself an experimental Adult Allowance!

Currently, as I mentioned in a previous post, I pay my kids an allowance.  A few months ago, joking around, I told my son I was going to start to pay myself an allowance too.  That got me thinking about potential savings from my lunch expense.   In the end, my joke was exactly what I decided to do!

Let me provide my previous background:

Prior to starting my “Paying myself an allowance” experiment, I was spending about an average of $12 on breakfast and lunch per day, for a total of $60 a week.  That’s almost $250 a month!!!  I like going out with friends for lunch, but I don’t like paying that kind of money.

So, I decided to pack breakfast and lunch 4 times a week; enabling me to save at least $40 a week.  This is effectively money that I would have spent by going out to eat with friends, so basically it’s free money for me.  If it wasn’t for this experiment, I would still be spending that money on lunches out at work today!!!

Yeah, the math doesn’t work out perfectly, I left a buffer for special situations that don’t occur regularly, like Co-worker birthdays, cost of packed food, etc…

So you might be wondering how I’m spending on my new revised lunch budget?…

drum roll….: 70 cents a day, $3.50 a week, $14.80 a month.

I’ve  been able to accomplish this by eating instant oatmeal for breakfast, and 2 eggs with ramen noodles (or a small bag of peanuts) for lunch.  The people I use to eat out with looked at me eating my lunch a little oddly at first, but they got use to it.  Plus, I still go out with them once a week, so I’m not a total lunch recluse.

The idea is to save that money in dividend yielding stocks, bond or money markets, then after 2 year, to start using the interest earned off of the investment for other things… maybe even an additional lunch out every other week.

Ideally, after my experiment is over, I’ll be so use to eating out only once a week, that I’ll probably just stick to it.

-MR

UPDATE:  This idea has been implemented as a Lunch Experiment as I describe above!  Read about my “Lunch Experiment” here!