Brown Bagging Update

Today's shop was a personal best to date, only $18.13 for the whole weeks lunch fixings, bargain! Granted there were some leftovers from last week, and I'm pretty much stocked for butter and condiments these days, I was still chuffed though. My deli meats for my rolls came to less than $2 for the whole week!

There were people in the kitchen today actually watching us make up today's lunch, asking us questions about our routine, while admiring our lunches and being shocked at how little it all cost. I think we're becoming quite famous, well on our floor at least.

One girl said we should get our own cooking show!

Move Changes – Travel Cost Savings

My company just moved locations from the CBD to a more suburban technology park. This series outlines the money related changes I've made for myself as part of the move.

I think the most amazing money saving moving out here has offered me is my daily travel costs.

I used to drive to work every day and park in what I thought was the cheaper option of 'earlybird parking'. I was paying $18 a day for the 'privilege', plus paying $40 a fortnight in petrol driving to and from home, which also covered my regular leisure travel.

This was a massive $5060 a year (allowing for a 46 week working year).

My company provides free shuttle buses to the campus from my nearest railway station, which I can actually walk to if I choose, or catch another bus to get to (it's about a 20 minute easy walk).

10 trip bus tickets cost $13.60, so that's a maximum of $27.20 a fortnight, assuming I catch the bus to and from the station morning and evening. I've been walking home most nights and walked to the station twice in the last two weeks, so it could stretch out longer, but for budgeting I’m assuming bus each way each day.

This is only $625.60 a year (allowing for a 46 week working year) in comparison. I haven't put any petrol in my car for the last two weeks, so I'm assuming that I can halve my petrol budget, which reduces it to $460 a year for regular driving, for a new total of $1085.60.

So a saving of just over $3970 a year! That’s best part of paying off a credit card right there, all by itself.

I'm just gobsmacked.

Move Changes - Brown Bagging It 2

My company just moved locations from the CBD to a more suburban technology park. This series outlines the money related changes I've made for myself as part of the move.

Lunch was easily a $10-$15 a day experience for me, if not more. Food courts offering too many tempting choices, there was no need to plan or bring my lunch. Or so I thought.

Of course there was a need for me to plan and bring my lunch as I was sinking myself deeper and deeper into debt!

I needed to find a way to get the 'leave the office for a while' benefit of buying my lunch, with a payoff of not spending anywhere near the amount I have been.

I've found a solution. One of the guys I work with was also keen to bring his lunch instead of buying it. So we’re running a very friendly 'ready steady cook' style competition.

We've blocked out time on Mondays to walk down to the nearest shopping centre (mall), hit the supermarket and buy our lunch materials for the week. Still get to go out & buy lunch this way, plus some social interaction and a nice walk in the sunshine.

The fun part (for us anyway) is to break down the cost of each individual lunch we make, see what each other makes and make a call on who 'won' for the day. Lowest meal cost is 50% of the score, with 'plate appeal' making providing the other 50%. I didn't want it to be just about low cost, but about genuine value for money.

This is how this week's daily menu broke down for me

• Rolls $0.82
• Butter $0.11
• Mustard $0.07
• Lettuce $1.09
• Tomato $0.74
• Meat $0.64
• Apple $1.16
• Banana $0.71
• Water $0 (we have iced filtered water at work)
  

For a total of $5.34 a day! If I use an average of $12.50 a day over 46 working weeks a year for the old spend, that’s a saving of around $1645 a year on work lunches!

Move Changes - Brown Bagging It

My company just moved locations from the CBD to a more suburban technology park. This series will outline the money related changes I’ve made for myself as part of the move.

I was a notorious breakfast buyer, which normally consisted of:

• Large coffee (skim flat white with 1 equal) - $3
  
• Turkish toast with Vegemite - $3

So looking at that, I'm paying $60 a fortnight, just for breakfast, and just on working days! Madness!

I'm not really hungry when I wake up, so I'm still having breakfast when I get to work, but it now looks like this:

• Large mug of tea (skim milk with 1 equal) - $0 (all supplied by work)
  
• Wholegrain toast with Vegemite or peanut butter - $0.64 (based on dividing serves into ingredients costs)

So my new cost is approximately $6.40 for those same 10 breakfasts, a saving of almost 90%!

Keeping this up will save me just over $1230 a year, this will go straight towards a fair sized dent on my debts.