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Update: I stopped buying lunch at the deli by my job and finally did the $1.50 bean pot thing
For about two years I was dropping $9.75 every single weekday at the deli two blocks from my office in Sacramento. That is almost $200 a month on turkey wraps and a bag of chips. Then my coworker Rosa brought in this big pot of pinto beans she made on Sunday and ate it all week over rice with hot sauce and a little cheese. I copied her the next weekend and spent $4 total on a bag of dried beans, an onion, and some garlic. The trick I was getting wrong was thinking dried beans take forever and taste bland. Soaking them overnight and then simmering with a halved onion and a spoon of cumin takes maybe 20 minutes of actual work. I portion it into five containers and my lunch is now about a dollar fifty a day instead of ten bucks. That is real money back in my pocket and I am not even sick of the beans yet. Rosa says her family in Fresno has been doing this forever and I just never asked. What is your go-to cheap lunch that actually keeps you full till dinner?
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hannahw3010d ago
Are you sure you are actually saving money, or are you just trading one habit for another? Between the gas for a bigger grocery run, the time soaking and simmering, and the fact that most people quit beans after three weeks, that ten dollar deli lunch starts looking like it was buying you convenience you cannot really price out. Plus five days of the same pinto beans over rice is basically a carb bomb, so if you crash at 2pm and hit the vending machine, that dollar fifty just became four bucks. Rosa has been eating this her whole life, sure, but she probably is not sitting at a desk all day either.
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