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Make your own lunch, save a mortgagepayment

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by Matthew Halliday, Canadian Business OnlineTuesday, June 1, 2010

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It's one of the most obvious but overlooked ways Canadians hemorrhage money lunch hour. (Lets ignore the irony that Im writing this at 12:30 on a Friday afternoon,over a $5.50 tuna salad sandwich and a $2 brownie purchased from the companycafeteria.)

We crunched some numbers and figured out, quasi-scientifically, what it costs to buylunch every day, and how much a hypothetical office-labourer might save by taking 10minutes each morning to brown-bag it.

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I wont bore you with a detailed breakdown of mathematical wizardry thespreadsheet below, based on a 241-day work year, summarizes it. (241 days beingwhats left once we subtract weekends, two weeks vacation, and statutory holidaysfrom 365.) Lets have a look:

Morning coffee,Tim Hortons

Bologna and cheesesandwich plus small sidesalad

Afternooncoffee, TimHortons Snack Total

Costper day $1.50 $8 $1.50 $2 $13Costpermonth $33 $176 $33 $44 $286Costper year$361.50 $1,928 $361.50 $482 $3,133

Adjust for your own preferences, but the prices above are based on a typical days

purchases.

Now lets look at the cost to brown-bag the same food:

Coffee beans,unground

Wholewheat bread

Meat, veggies,sandwich stuffing Cookies/fruitTotal

Cost perday $0.47 $0.37 $4.76 $0.80 $6.41Cost permonth $9.95 $7.85 $100.00 $16.80 $134.60Cost peryear $119.40 $90.07 $1,147.62 $192.80 $1,549.89Doing the math for your own lunch gets a little more complicated. Lets say a big cup ofcoffee weighs in at 10 grams of ground beans. Youve got 454 grams in a pound ofcoffee, so theres a cup a day for 45 days. Divide in half and you have a little morethan two cups a day for the working month. Perfect.

A 16-slice load of bread makes eight sandwiches. Veggies, meat, and cheese add upto maybe $100 a month. (Of course no one wants to eat a sandwich every single day,but were just going for a ballpark number here feel free to substitute your own

culinary preferences.) A bag of 20 gourmet cookies costs $4.99. Throw in two cookiesplus an apple, and youre snacking for 80 cents a day.

Add it all up and youre saving $1,583.11 a year.

Other things you can buy with almost $1,600: a high-end 46 LCD TV. Three iPads.Over 1/3 of the average annual undergraduate tuition. A well above-average mortgagepayment.

Few of us eat out every day of course, and there are countless variables. You canmake an expensive meal at home or find a dirt-cheap one out. Food is pricier in someregions than in others and, lets be honest, were not taking into account food spoilage(we all have some inedibly wilted lettuce and brown tomatoes in the fridge).

Regardless, this little number-crunching exercise should confirm what we already know

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