How to save money on food is always a topic of interest, especially if you have big money goals to pay off debt, save for retirement or save for some other big ticket item in your life.  After scouring all the articles I could find about how to save money on food, a common trend kept coming up. It is usually the simplest changes that save you the most money over a period of time.

What I mean by this is, most people look for these huge life changes they can make to suddenly have $20,000 fall in their lap.  Unfortunately for all of us, life doesn’t really work that way. What tends to work the best is making small lifestyle changes, consistently, over time.

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What I tried in my own life to save money on food.

One of the biggest changes my husband and I made when we decide to begin our debt free journey was packing a lunch.  This was our brilliant plan, eat leftovers for lunch and never eat out.

Once life started happening, we weren’t meal planning, we weren’t making dinner at home, which in turn meant we didn’t have leftovers.  This meant we HAD to eat out for lunch.

So much money was spent!  We totally blew our food budget eating out every month.  It was so stupid.

What started out as good intentions actually ended up causing us to spend even more money.  We felt defeated so we “threw in the towel,” and just ate out all the time. We completely gave up any effort toward saving money on food.

The Simple Change

Obviously, the leftover idea was a total flop.  This eventually led to us being frustrated with the money we were spending and ready to give the lunch mealtime problem another look.

To find a solution to this problem we went back to the basics of lunchtime.  What is cheap and what is delicious?

Cold meat sandwiches!  We were eating at places like Subway, Cousins and Jimmy John’s already.  We decided we could just do the homemade version of this instead.

Sandwiches are cheap, easy to make and yummy!  Is it boring to eat the same thing every day?  Maybe to some, but we change things up with different meats and cheeses.  One side benefit of only eating a sandwich for lunch is keeping your waistline in check. There is never a risk of overheating.

Does making your lunch really save that much money?

Let’s do some quick math on this.  I will only use one person as an example.

Cost per sandwich for bread, deli meat and cheese (Aldi prices) = $5.89 for 12 sandwiches.  This is approximately $0.50 per sandwich.

If you pack a lunch 5 days a week for 52 weeks (one year) = $130

That is $130 for one year of cold meat sandwiches for one person.  Super cheap!

Now if you were like my husband and me, we were eating out every day.  We will go with a cheap average of one person eating a $5 foot long at Subway, but were we spending $12 at Jimmy John’s for a whole meal?  Absolutely!

Eating out for $5/day for 5 days a week for 52 weeks (one year) = $1,3000.

That is 10 times more than making your lunch!  10 times!!

Even if you only ate out half of that time (2-3 days/week) that is still $650/year or 5 times more than packing a lunch.

That is totally crazy!  And we were doing that for years.

My math was only for one person and only for lunch.  If you are a family where:

• Both of you are eating out for lunch
• You buy groceries to keep in your home
• You eat out regularly for dinners

You are very likely spending way too much money on food.  (Just like me and my family were!)

Beginning to pack your lunch is such a simple change to save money on food that will have a huge impact on your finances.  Not only will you be saving money, but you will also be changing your behaviors.

As you stop eating out at lunch, eating out, in general, will be less normal for you.  You will become more conscious of how much you spend on food and will naturally decrease the amount you are eating out for dinners as well.

This can be totally life-changing and budget-changing.  Once you get a handle on packing a lunch every day, you can start to focus on your food budget even more by decreasing the amount you eat out for dinner and meal planning.

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Packing a lunch every day may not be something you can start doing 100%, but even packing a lunch half the time will save you significant dollars.  Start small with this change because even a little change will add up over time.

Do not do what we did and set yourself up for failure with an unrealistic plan.

Also, if you hate lunch meat sandwiches, find your own version of a cheap substitute:

• Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
• Easy Mac
• Soup
• Bagel with peanut butter

The possibilities are endless, but stick with simple, easy and cheap!  If you do this, you will save money on food.

When you start making small substitutes in your life for expenses that are killing your budget, you will begin to see major savings.  Don’t try to change everything all at once.  Starting small and easing into the change will make it much more likely to stick.

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