I’ve been frugal since my college days, but one of the few areas that I let lifestyle creep (or lifestyle inflation) expand is my meal costs for breakfast and lunch. There has been days that I’ve spent over $20 just on breakfast and lunch. My typical cost are between $7 and $16. More often than not though, my normal costs are around $12.
Since I started my Lunch Experiment, I’m more mindful of the cost of breakfast and lunch meals.
Today, I went back to my Lunch Experiment ways and only paid 60 cents for both my breakfast and lunch… How is this accomplished? See the table below:
| Qty | Meal | Cost | Total Cost | ||
| 1 | Oatmeal (instant) | 0.29 | 0.29 | ||
| 2 | Eggs | 0.08 | 0.16 | ||
| 1 | Ramen Noodle package | 0.15 | 0.15 | ||
| $0.60 | |||||
So basically these frugal meals are cost 95% less than my regular non-frugal meals. I’ve been very happy with the return on my frugal meals!
For the most part the meal is healthy, both the oatmeal and eggs are great! With the Ramen Noodles?… I’d have to say no…
So, I’ve decided to go with this meal 2 or 3 times a week. This will reduce my lunch and breakfast costs, and I should not experience to much harm from the high salt intake (I put salt on my eggs, and the ramen seasoning is loaded with salt).
This is just one way that you can reduce your cost dramatically, as I have done…
Readers: What additional ways do you reduce your costs? I figure this is an easy way to save over $50 a week (at least $2,600 a year…) not bad!
-MR