How To Save Money On Food At Work

Recently, I posted about my poor budgeting and spending at work. Now I would like to share some tips on how to reduce spending on food at work and what I have done to save about $100 a month compared to my old ways.

Skip Starbucks and drink coffee at work– a lot of offices have coffee available for free. If so, that is obviously a great chance to save some money. I don’t have that option at my office so I bought a Senseo coffee machine and brew my own coffee at my desk. The Senseo machine is about $60, but you could pay for that by skipping lattes for a month. Admittedly, you could get a less expensive coffee maker, but the Senseo does not require filters and is easy to clean up. I think it payed for itself very quickly for me. The Senseo doesn’t brew the greatest coffee, but it’s not bad and for less than $0.50 per cup it gets the job done. Whatever your substitute, the goal is to cut out the $4 lattes.

Brown bag it– again, an obvious solution, but if you haven’t tried it you will truly be amazed at how much money you can save by doing this. My favorite ‘brown bag’ lunch is leftovers from dinner, preferably pasta or something easy to heat up in the microwave at work. Another easy option is sandwiches, which can even be made the night before to save time in the morning. I also keep an emergency stash of Hot Pockets (Lean Pockets) for days that I don’t feel like preparing anything or days that I forget to bring food (I keep some in the freezer at work). A lot of these options depend on having a refrigerator at work, so hopefully that is possible for you. If not, your variety may be limited a bit, but perhaps an insulated travel bag with an ice pack would get the job done. Even if you have to go out and buy something, it will quickly pay for itself.

Keep snacks and favorite drinks at the office– I’m trying to cut snacks and sodas out of my diet as much as possible, but if I am going to indulge, I don’t want to pay the prices at the vending machine. Your money goes so much farther on these items at the grocery store, so stock up on the things you like, but don’t let yourself go crazy with it. For example, I try to allow myself either one cup of coffee or one diet soda per day at work. Sometimes I’ll skip one or the other for the whole week. My desire is to avoid becoming dependent on these drinks and form a habit that could get pricey. Some of my coworkers will go through four or more sodas per day, and buy them at vending machines- paying a huge premium over the grocery store. The other part of this tip is to replace the foods you like with low calorie options- I try to go for some Baked Lays or the new Nabisco 100 Calorie snacks. I’m not going for perfection here, just trying to make the best choices I can while I’m away from home.

Drink water– most offices have a water cooler, which makes this so easy (and free). I don’t have that option at work- only a drinking fountain. I’m not thrilled with drinking tap water, and even less thrilled with the germs that may be floating around it, but I just bring a bottle of water to work each day and refill it. I’m really tempted to bring in a gallon of purified water each day, if for nothing else than to avoid the germs around the fountain, but I haven’t bothered yet and I’ve survived on the tap water so far. 🙂

Tell your coworkers you’ll never eat with them again! Okay, that’s a joke, but you definitely can’t make it a habit to eat out every day if you want to save money on your lunches. If saving money isn’t important to you or the camaraderie is worth more, then by all means go for it. I work with programmers, who tend to be a quiet bunch, so we are fine with going out to lunch together every couple of weeks or so. That works for us and makes it easy on the budget. If going out to lunch can somehow better your career or help you get ahead (maybe going to lunch with the boss) then I would consider it money well spent, you’ll just have to look for other areas to cut back.

A typical month in the past would have seen me spend about $80 – $100 eating out at work (that’s after I had kicked the latte habit). There is nothing inherently wrong with spending some money on lunch. However, for myself I found that I was often just picking up something convenient and fast and eating it at my desk in a hurry. There just wasn’t a good reason to spend $5 – $10 to do that when I could bring food from home about a fourth of the cost and get the same result. If your office goes out to lunch and you want to be part of the culture then make that part of your budget and have fun. At the very least, I think everyone can benefit by spending less on coffee and skipping the vending machines. I practice all of these tips and it has made a big difference in my budget. Good luck!