“I’ve worked hard performing my job, I don’t want to work hard making my lunch too.”

“Eating out or buying from the work cafeteria is so much easier to do.”

The question is, how much do I actually spend in a month for the convenience of not making and bringing my own lunch from home?

Tracking your spending and knowing how much you REALLY spend on a category like “work lunch out” in a month can be quite tedious. Maybe you have a checkbook where you can record each of your expenses. At the end of the month, you can take the time to sit down with a calculator and tally them. Then you will have the full picture for that category for the month. There has to be a much easier and less tedious way.

I use CalendarBudget to know exactly how much I spend each month on select categories. As seen in the example in this image, I spend $7 every weekday for my Work Lunch, which adds up to $154 for the month of April shown and circled in the category list on the left (I am able to see the tally by setting the category’s budget to $0 for the month, which then gives me the amount I’ve spent for the month). Now you ask how knowing this number can help you with your finances. You can make a comparison of how much it would cost if you brought food from home. I usually bring leftovers from the night before. Plus I bring a drink and some extra snacks in case the main meal part wasn’t enough. This reduces my waste of food and makes the cost of my lunch much lower. Maybe Work Lunch would then cost about $50 which still leaves about $100 to be redirected to paying down some other expenses/debts. Over a year it adds up to over $1000 to help reduce debt or to add to your current savings.

Knowledge about your actual spending habits is the first step to making a positive change where needed. You then need to act on that knowledge if you want to improve your current standard of living. CalendarBudget can help you know your spending habits so you can see where you can reduce some of those expenses to have extra money to be redirected to improve your current standard of living.

Visit calendarbudget.com and sign up for a one-month free trial to understand your spending habits and plan for a better future.