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Brown Bagging Your Way to Savings

Today’s post is written by Mike Collins of http://savingmoneytoday.net as part of the Yakezie Blog Swap in which bloggers were asked to share their best day to day money saving tip.

Do you buy lunch at work every day? Have you ever actually sat down and added up how much money you’re spending?

I did once…and I almost fell out of my chair when I saw how much I was spending!

Back in the day I used to buy lunch at the office almost every single day. It certainly didn’t seem like I was spending much. A chef salad here, a cheese steak and fries there. But every day I was spending about 7 dollars and change. That’s $35 a week, which adds up to a whopping $1820 over the course of a year!

I started thinking about all the things I could do with that extra $1820, like paying off some of our debt, increasing my 401k contributions(ed: but staying with your 401k contribution limits, of course!), picking out a new big-screen tv, or enjoying an extended family vacation at Walley World.

I immediately starting bringing my lunch to work 4 days a week (I do treat myself once a week) and I’ve been saving money ever since.

Now I know what you’re thinking. It costs money to bring lunch from home too right?

Yes, of course it does…but nowhere near as much as eating out every day. Let’s do some basic math to prove the point. Say you swing by the grocery store to buy some ham and cheese so you can make sandwiches for the week. You pick up a half pound of ham for $3 and a half pound of cheese for $2. A loaf of bread on sale runs you another $2. That means you just spent $7 for a week’s worth of lunches. Even if you only bring lunch 4 days a week you’ve still saved yourself $21. That’s over $1000 a year!

And here’s a tip to save even more: If you have extra food from dinner, just bring the leftovers for lunch the next day. We always try to make just a little bit extra so I can have free lunch the next day.

So the next time you’re sitting around complaining that you don’t have enough money for so and so, think about how much money you are spending every day on lunch, or coffee, or cigarettes, etc. You might just find that you have plenty of money after all if you just shift your priorities a bit.

Sunday Roundup: Reddit Rocks

Misc

Friday was my biggest traffic day, ever. Mike‘s guest post, Brown Bagging Your Way to Savings, went slightly nuts on reddit. For a few hours, it was in the top 10 on the front page, generating more traffic every half hour than I normally see in a day. That was fun.

In other news, my kid is in the #2 slot for wrestling the heavyweight slot on his wrestling team.

30 Day Project Update

This month, I am trying to establish the Slow Carb Diet as a habit. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.

I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.

Weight: I have lost 25 pounds since January 2nd. That’s 3 pounds since last week. 17 more to meet my goal for February.

Total Inches: I have lost 14 inches in the same time frame, down 2.5 since last week.

Best Posts

J. Money has launched an awesome new project called Love Drop. Once a month, they go make a huge difference in someone’s life. Wise Bread interviewed them yesterday.

Tip: Use the word “solved” in a google search to find the answers to tech problems.

If OMG and Awesome got drunk and made a baby with Optimus Prime, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cobra Commander’s nastiest fantasies, the offspring wouldn’t be this good. Holy crap. Major cheese alert.

Q. Why do some business lobby hard for excessive regulation in the name of protecting the environment or forcing people into decisions they disagree with, only to turn around and lobby for waivers to those regulations once they are passed? A. Because it’s not about the environment or health or giving-a-crap. It’s about the money. When an established company pushes for regulations, it’s to keep upstarts from entering the market. Regulations add barriers to entry. Anybody who’s trying to force you to do something for your own good has a product to sell to meet that “need”.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?

Have you ever given any thought to the idea that debt is a social disease? It’s taboo, you usually didn’t do anything nice to get it, and it’s hard to get rid of.

In case I haven’t made it obnoxiously clear, I’m more than a bit of a geek. The post I wrote about D&D and personal finance should make it more obvious.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Medical Costs and Choices was included in the Festival of Frugality.

How to Save Money On Anything was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Mike from http://savingmoneytoday.net presented Brown Bagging Your Way to Savings, which is the post that went kinda nuts on reddit. He also hosted my post, Resisting Temptation.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.

You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.

You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.

Have a great weekend!

Money-Saving Tip: Put Your Groceries Away

Finance

23 Hour Smoked Boston Butt — Image by bbum via Flickr

Last night, we went grocery shopping. I found a beautiful pork roast, just begging to come home with me. It could spend all day Sunday in the smoker. Rub some brown sugar and garlic on the outside, maybe use a mix of maple and cherry wood chips to turn my pork butt into breakfast food. Picture this: a beautiful chunk of slow-cooked pork butt, covered in a candied crust, falling apart at the lightest touch, and tasting faintly of maple syrup.

It was love.

This morning, I woke up, walked into the kitchen to make some breakfast, and saw that beautiful butt sitting on the counter. Room temperature meat, ruined by my negligence. $15 in the trash.

We got back late last night, and apparently set this wonderful piece of future-food down with the non-refrigerated items were were planning to put away later. We said good-bye to the sitter, chased the kids to bed, picked up the house a bit, and forgot about my new love.

I’m sad.

Here’s my advice: When you get home from grocery shopping, immediately put all of the groceries away. Let the kids juggle knives for a bit, if you have to, but get the food put away. If that’s not going to work, at least take it all out of the shopping bags so you can check your work.

There are starving kids in Iowa. Don’t let potential candied pork roast go to waste.

How Much Should You Tip?

Finance

: Image by cemre via Flickr

This post from CNN Money has been making the rounds. I’m getting into the game today.

With the holiday season upon us, tipping the people you work with is a tradition in some cases and actually expected in others. Here’s what CNN came up with and my take:

Housekeeper. We don’t have one. I’d think $75-100 would make a nice tip/Christmas bonus. I seem to be more generous than average with my imaginary maid. Maybe that’s because of the outfits she wears.
Gardener. Once again, we don’t have one. Even if we did, I live in Minnesota and have close to a foot of snow over the patch of weeds I call my garden. If I did have a gardener, I wouldn’t have seen him for a few months by now, anyway. $0!
Mail carrier. I’ve only met my mail man a dozen times and I’ve never considered giving him a Christmas present. Do people really do that?
Barber. I don’t have one any more. My wife has started doing my hair for me. When I did, I tipped about 25%, but again, I wouldn’t think about a Christmas present. I only saw him quarterly. I don’t think my wife has a regular stylist either. She’s just got a shop she goes to and gets whoever is available. Is there holiday tipping protocol for that?
Garbage collector. No way. Really? I don’t know that I’ve seen the same guy twice. Am I supposed to give a present to the anonymous, interchangeable union guy that drives past my house every Friday?
Newspaper carrier. One night, twelve years ago, while my wife was still working graveyard shifts, she had a hard time sleeping on her nights off. That’s natural for 3rd shift workers. At about 4AM, she was watching TV and saw someone run past the window. Scared, she came to wake me up. I handed her the phone to call the police, while I grabbed the only thing I had for self-defense and went to investigate. I ran out on the front step–in my boxers, carrying a sword–and saw someone lurking in the neighbor’s yard across the street. I yelled, “Y0u don’t belong here!” only to hear “I’m delivering the paper!” That’s when I start tipping the newspaper carrier. I stopped when we canceled our subscription a few years later. Who needs a dead tree in the morning, when there are a million news sites on the internet?

If the majority of people are giving Christmas bonuses to that many people, and are as generous as the article suggests, then I fall far to the loutish end of the bell curve. I am planning to give my virtual assistant 1/12 of the pay he’s earned this year, so that should make up for some of it, but that is an ongoing business relationship.

How do you compare when it comes to holiday tipping?

Sunday Roundup: Outta Town

Misc

Scrapbooking Cupcakes! — Image by clevercupcakes via Flickr

This weekend, my wife is off scrapbooking with my mother and sister-in-law. Instead of hanging around the house trying to keep three kids entertained, I’m at my brother’s house, since his wife abandoned him with their kids, too. I’ll let his kids keep mine entertained, and vice versa. Woo!