Skip to main content

I'm Saving At Least $5000/Yr On Food

This is kind of a back of the napkin calculation. Assuming that my at food at work expenses been reduced by 85%, I'm saving about $5000 per year on that alone.

I had previously estimated that I was spending about $20-25 per day on lunch and snacks. The reality is it probably was a little lower than that. Let's say it was $20/day, and I'm now spending about $3/day.

The old math is:
$20x5x50=$5000/yr

The new math is:
$3x5x50=$750/yr

This accounts for 5 day work weeks with 2 weeks vacation where I'm probably eating out at restaurants for most of that time. This ignores new nightly dinner costs which have also been reduced probably by about 70%, but that's a little more unpredictable since I usually eat dinner with my wife who is, how shall I say, slightly less fanatical about the dollar per calorie economics of eating than I've become.

It also doesn't factor in a practical elimination of alcohol from my restaurant bills and foregone taxi/ride sharing expenses since I'm rarely under the influence anymore and can easily drive. Even if I splurge with one drink or two, I can still drive. It also ignores my reduction in sales and restaurant tax expenditures from ordering smaller meals.

So, the reality is I'm saving at least $5000/yr, but it's probably closer to $6000 when you factor in those other efficiencies.

I'll probably run a more in-depth analysis of my food expenditures at some point, but it's hard to argue with nearly 40 pounds off the scale and $5-6k back in my bank account every year.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Weekly Updates (2/9/2018)

Week one of BUD/S training is going OK. I can do everything but all the sit-ups (and of course the swimming, due to the lack of pool). The best I could bang out with sit-ups were 2 sets of 20, 1 of 15 and 1 of 10. But, at least I haven't experienced any soreness yet. Just the little bit of additional activity has me losing even slightly more weight. I'm holding my weight under the 40 pound loss benchmark on the scale every day now, and I'm feeling really good. I've almost forgotten how much I enjoyed running, which I'm sure has a lot to do with how much less of a strain it is on my body. I'm not going to lie - it was nothing short of exhilarating holding down the weight button on the treadmill for as long as it took to reduce the weight setting from 198 to 157- my weight from the last time I set it. It was definitely a bizarre experience. After the PowerWatch bust, I decided to try out another activity tracker watch. So, I ordered a Garmin Fenix 5X. It's

Carrying All That Extra Weight Around Is Stupid and Inefficient

If you have a hard time thinking of good reasons for losing weight, how about you try carrying a Thanksgiving turkey around in a backpack everywhere, every day and see how you feel. I'll spare you the trouble: you'll feel horrible. Granted, carrying all the weight you need to lose (give or take) in the form of a Butterball suspended from your back is much more uncomfortable than having it spread over your body throughout your face and all the way down to your toes, but it'll give you some idea of all the extra work your body has to do every day in getting you from point A to B. I remember dismissing all the chatter about how being overweight makes you excessively fatigued as fitness freak happy talk, but it's true. I used to be tired all the time and just chalked it up to the way a normal person feels after a full day's work. And, when I initially started this plan, I felt even worse because I was not only fat and tired but now hungry and grouchy too. But, as the

Cheapo Hacks: The $0 Haircut

Cutting my own hair is one of the things I've always wanted to do but never could work up the nerve to actually try until recently. I know many bald guys have been doing it for a while - one of the few perks of losing your hair, I'd imagine. Just buzz what's left as tight as you want, and you're done. But, for those of us who've managed to hold onto our hair on top of our head a little longer, cutting your hair seems like a very risky proposition. I work an office job, so keeping a low profile for a week or two after royally screwing up isn't really an option. This made the economics of trying it more trouble than it was worth, or so I thought. After all, if it was so easy, why do no one other than bald guys cut their own hair? I didn't know of any. $20 after tip every couple of months seemed like a pretty pointless amount of money to worry about, even for a cheapo. Part of the problem, however, was that I'd either have to hurry over after work