The true cost of buying your lunch

I like talking about food do you really yeah how was lunch it's okay but I felt pretty bad after you were telling me how much money I'd been spending on it which is true I don't like to go people mm-hmm no okay we're ready to start here hey everybody we are here with Carrie Taylor she is financial blogger author of squawk Fox she's all about saving the money right I hope so yes and today and her topic a good one for back-to-school is how to save money on lunches I mean it's good for back-to-school but it's also good for anyone who's working and has to take their way well you got to eat right yeah and eating is an expensive habit so if we can find ways to cut that everyday cost right save some more money you know for other things in life absolutely it's a go so if you have questions just send them to us via Facebook we're also live on YouTube today and so anyone who wants to pitch Carrie a question about how to save money how to make lunches well you're not a chef but you're no no but I can take your cost of lunch yeah so tell us about Carrie I mean how common is it that people do bring their lunches well it's really common to an about 60% of Canadians who work in an office buy their lunch at least once a week and the majority do it two to three times a week so when you add up the cost you know on a daily basis it doesn't seem like a lot but once you look at the big picture it's it adds up to thousands of dollars so a really good place to start is your basic ten dollar lunch right you think you spend ten bucks you know that was fun but if you're doing it once a week throughout the year that it's gonna add up to about five hundred dollars so this is significant and that's just once a week right do it every day you're looking at two thousand five hundred dollars for that weekly you know takeout meal right yeah it's really expensive constantly one meal so in total you could be saving between two and three thousand dollars a year theoretically if you were to bring your lunch everything all day exactly and you know you don't have to do it every day but most days are gonna save big dollars and if you work in a city $15 lunches is pretty common mm-hm those costs add up even more looking at about 750 dollars per year for just once a week right and then five times a week that's three thousand seven hundred dollars just online solely from so I'm gonna help and trying to convince people to cut that cost by you know doing what they call brown bagging it but today we're gonna do it in less you know baggage isn't ready more containers okay so now you have brought a whole selection of different lunches here and I mean there is a cost associated with making a lunch to of course exactly so you got to buy the food that takes time you got to prepare it a little bit that takes time but there's different methods and ways of doing it so what has he done so here I've got different lunches and they all range anywhere for about two dollars and fifty cents to about $3.75 so the easiest way for me to bring my lunch to work is to do the old leftover thing yeah so I cook once a week I cook Sunday nights I use something called an instant pot which you just throw the ingredients in it cooks it for 30 minutes and you're done I don't have to stand and watch it cook it's really simple so here I have chicken beans zucchini and some rice and that total cost is about two dollars a meal and I just throw it in a glass container and bring it to work it's really simple two bucks a lot less than four dollars this probably cost fifteen dollars in a restaurant right right even if it's takeout because it's not meat and beans and rice it's all high-quality ingredients you're eating very well for less the cost oh we have one comments over Amanda Ashley says she bags her lunch so congratulations Amanda anyone with questions just send them in via Facebook and I'm watching the screen here constantly too to send some questions to Carrie so that is your leftover lunch that was easy that would probably be my favorite because I feel you also have a sandwich sandwich okay so sandwiches are pretty common it's really easy to cut a sandwich you know I don't have to really be a chef to do this here I have chicken and Brie and I price the soaps I know it's taken a breeze it's really good it's really yummy right and you've got some vegetables on the side which are really easy you just you buy them and throw them in and with some hummus this meal runs about three dollars and seventy five cents and it's really healthy and wouldn't take you long to make that no it doesn't I mean you you make a sandwich I mean how easy is that right yes and that's a huge savings as well so when it's healthy it's delicious I enjoy it so well that unity is a good point as well I see you've got quite a healthy looking lunch here with the salad and a hard-boiled egg it looks like know so I mean people always complain about how much time it takes to prepare food but here you just throw the lettuce in add some garnishes on top row it in you're in right you've got some salad dressing here easy peasy I have I boil some eggs once a week they keep in the fridge sometimes I take the shells off I throw them in and I'm done this is so simple and I think what deters a lot of people is they like the feeling of going out for lunch because you cut that nice container it's displayed nicely but I think if you just put it in a nice glass lock container your food looks better and you want to hit it I don't know about that nice container carry the one I get mine is just like a styrofoam not very pleasing looking things I agree your all your stuff looks great this is much more pleasing you've made an investment in Tupperware and glass oh here we have some comments coming in Dave and Wayne say they cook in the evening the night before so similar to your leftover meal and they say they make a point of always making a bit extra at dinner so that they do have lunch ready to go and then Lee buckin says takeout food has far too many calories salt sugar and carbs see and this is the other thing so I'm not a nutritionist but a study just came out that said people who order their meal in take it out they're adding about 200 additional calories to what they would normally eat if they had made at home and a day another meal pro you know that they're ordering so if you're doing lunch and dinner you're out an additional 400 calories to your day by cooking at home you control what goes in for the ingredients the cooking method is it deep fried what oils you use preparation spices I mean all these things you have complete control over when you cook your own meal right so that's a huge advantage for people with food allergies nut allergies wheat allergies dairy allergies because you can you know minimize that effect by bringing your own meals so for sure huge health benefits by cooking at home absolutely okay Eva even our Ivan Escobar asks why do we pay so much for school lunch and overall it's not even good at all that's good well if that's the thing right a lot of schools have programs where it's like six bucks a day I know my daughter she's six and there's a school lunch program for her as well so I mean you really have to look at you know the cost benefit to what the food is you're getting in the schools and and how much you can save by it by cooking your own as well so it's good to investigate what your schools are offering all right here's another question from Karen Baghead yeah is looking for tips and the question is how to eat healthy in college oh that's so hard cuz you hear the frosh 15 right when you get back to school I know I did it in town I did it it was not so awesome but you know that's the thing so when you go away to school and you have you live in maybe residents and you have a food plan attached to that that can be a huge challenge because you're probably walking a lot less than you used to before you went to college because everything's on campus so you need to make a point of getting out a bit more and being very you know choosy about the kind of food that you're you're getting on your meal plan so you look for things with less you know sauce is less processing more Whole Foods and go those and go that route all right here's another question from Dennis Jancy and he asked I'm gone from 6 5:30 a.m. til 9:00 at night how do you pack lunch at 11:00 at night for two or three meals a day I did this so I used to do competitive sports and my swim time was you know 3:30 4:00 a.m. in the pool so I would pack things the day before have it organized and just do it I mean you have to sit down and do it it takes time so here here's it would be a sandwich that I would I would pack for my lunch and I just have nice little containers know how much food to put in it and just do the work you just need to send some time aside and you know pack those meals well or even I would say to Dennis even if you just did one meal like it's true if you're gone from 5:30 any morning til 9:00 at night that's a couple of meals that you're looking at right or even three and then he thing as well you know he gets home so late all the rest of it so obviously organization is the key and having stuff ready a fridge so if you do your grocery haul you know make sure you stock your fridge with the kind of foods you want to eat late at night early in the morning and have them on hand because if they're nicely displayed in your refrigerator and you can see them and they're not like you know hiding in the back becoming fossils then you're more likely to eat those meals at home bring them along pack them you know and have them on hand there's probably cookbooks too that specialize in this sort of takeaway meals and different ideas and so forth there's a cookbook for every there's a book for everything but you know what I just get a container and put the food in it yes there's no cookbook that's gonna put the food in for you so eventually once you've you know looked at some meal ideas I mean there's lots of blogs out there that have like $5 lunches $3 lunches you can get some inspiration from those but eventually you actually have to put it in the container so some time aside into it well speaking of all of that Kerry just seen a Dunkel wants to see the lunches that Kerry has prepared so maybe a holdup okay including the snacks too but yeah this one so here is um just a salad so I just sliced up some romaine it romaine at the bottom you can just buy hearts of romaine and there's no rinsing necessary it's really easy peasy chop it up throw some garnish on top a hard-boiled egg the salad dressing is right in here and put a lid on and go and right there you've got a healthy salad now a lot of the restaurants have little buffets where they weigh your salad and then you you leave and those can cost like 16 dollars yeah depending on what in there right and eggs and beans cost so much so doing it yourself is a huge you know amplifier for your health as well as it costs that cuts that cost show you snack it snacks I like the snack really simple so I love yogurt and berries and I just throw them in a container you know there's no need to buy all these individual you know yogurt snacks you know some of them have like guys I don't know like granola on top just oh here perfect yeah Bowl on top so here I just throw some some berries and you don't need to chop up the berries they you know come in yeah buy these pieces it's perfect for a snack throw it in your done mm-hmm and you have some hummus here yeah I just want a container some crackers yeah you know oh yeah some beans some snap peas you know there you go oh maybe you like pretzels well there you go again there's no chopping required Carrie is a blogger and also a food stylist there we go oh I'm not a food stylist I just like to eat there we go that's so simple now show this one this is kind of an interesting data okay so 42% of Canadians say they they buy their lunch at work because they don't have time to cook and I'm like why why are we so stressed about cooking this is what I used to do when I was in college you know you grab a bag and you put the food in it so people like avocado toast so here we go we got a knife in there to cut the avocado we got the avocado some bread an apple as a snack and a hard-boiled egg if you if you want your Himalayan pink salt it's in there you know you just throw it in and go right it's easy I use this as a plate and you have an instant avocado toast without any fuss or mess or expense so we can all afford houses now all right now someone is gonna argue with you here Carrie I like or Kelly takahashi is commenting lunch is more than eating brown bags will be consumed at the desk lunch is for eating with others I agree with her and this is the thing so too many Canadians are sitting at their desk at work and having their midday meal and that's really it's not great for morale yet there's no interaction you feel like you have to you know scoop it down I'm not getting that break and the social interaction if you're just sitting at your desk working it true and you're not going out you know what I think for me when I used to buy my lunch daily it was part of you know the routine of getting out of the office and going for a walk and ordering my meal and coming back and that provided a nice mental break from the day so a lot of offices have lunch rooms and I find that when there's one person in the office that you know makes a point of having a really healthy meal at lunch people join in so when I used to work at one company in Ottawa there was a gentleman that used to do stir fries in the office and people started changing their routine he did stir fries in the office do that I had a kitchen act and he would bring up you know I was brings on walk bring his own ingredients chopped up and it was so strange because people sort of changing the habit and we it became social so we don't meet at lunch to see what the heck he was cooking and we'd bring our lunch and it became a competition who would the best lunch of the day and it just sort of happened socially and it was great former out because we got to know each other better outside of you know our product teams and it was a lot of fun but I completely agree with the commenter it's it's so much more and I think the problem is and we're all sitting at the desk we feel like we need to eat it quickly and we're not making a point of going out for a walk at lunch or going into a park in the summertime and eating your lunch there so grab some colleagues get out of the office grab your lunch will make it first and then sit in a park and enjoy a nice lunch outside alright so Malik is asking a question says I can't cook so I buy everything even everything ready even salad how can I save money I hate cooking well I can't cook either and everyone in my family agrees so I mean there's there's tip there's tips and tricks so if you were buying everything pre-made so if you're buying like you know this pre-made lunch it like meals like yeah well those are huge in the grocery store sorry everybody has so little time and the whole idea of a premade meal has just exploded I know and it's so convenient well look at what's in that meal and replicate it you know ud engineer it as I as I would always say look at what the ingredients are and it's really not hard to make rice make you know slice some bread or get pre-cut bread and just make a sandwich what I do like this is something I do every week we make an instant pot meal here it is so this is my chicken rice zucchini mushroom and beans and this is so easy because I just layer it in the hot pot and let it cook itself this takes very little skill to cook trust me I do it I survive the family enjoys it and it's really easy so if you're not sure how to buy individual ingredients and assemble them in a meal it's a really good idea to get like a five dollar a meal cookbook right those sort of ideas can really spur your creativity and open your mind to what's possible or Malak if that person really can't cook a cooking course you know because sometimes like given a cookbook if you don't have the experience and sort of the hands-on it can I think feel very intimidating but if you take a cooking course and you're actually working with people and getting the left and then in the long run of course you would save so much money I mean buying all that kind of prefab stuff is super super expensive okay Alisa Ralston says delivery groceries has actually saved me a lot of money and calories because it's easy for me to stick to a grocery budget and I'm left tempted by junk foods so that vending not going into the store and seeing all those treats just being specific of the things you want on an online order it's so true because you're forced to choose when you're you know sitting at your computer picking you know am I gonna get broccoli or am I gonna get chips chips exactly right and I find that too it's harder in rural areas in Canada to do it online grocery shop so when I moved to the big city in Toronto all of a sudden I had all this access and I couldn't believe how much I guess food waste you can cut out of your system because you just really choose and buy what's on the screen so it makes it really simple but stores are great at getting you to part with your money I mean you walk right in you see the aisles you splurge it's not hard especially if you're shopping at a big-box store like Costco to get you know confused or get like excited about what you see and add it in your shopping cart so online shopping can save you some serious cash right but I mean just the same as you're saying about restaurant meals I'm sure all those prefab meals could be less healthy more fat more salt sugar all those sorts of things not so great okay replying to the eating together at work comment Judy says we set the table with paper napkins and eat together second shift and it is a really nice break with fun people so some people obviously are getting into this whole idea I think so I mean it's it's a corporate culture you have to look at it takes it maybe if you're used to people sitting in a desk it takes to change but it's true if you have a lunch punch and you you know your lunch but yeah if you have a lunch punch and you make a make a meal of it every day it actually becomes a lot of fun now Kerry I noticed you have a coffee a travel mug sitting there's that just here today with you or that part of your education this is part of my thing so I bring water in this sometimes I make my tea sometimes I buy coffee and again people spend three four dollars on coffee daily so by bringing your own container and make it one that's that's quality that's not going to leak and you know put your coffee or water or whatever in it you're gonna save money on your beverage and that's another cost that people need to look at cutting as well because it can add up no I like to buy a coffee once a day if I'm out and about I have absolutely no problem with buying my two dollar coffee I know what I'm into it's part of my budget so I'm not all one way or the other you know you must bring everything from home I'm just saying look at the costs and look at how they add up and and look to disperse and change by looking perhaps how much hourly wages you have to earn in order to pay for your your midday meal oh so one of the things I say people if they want to be inspired to to do a bit of a you know rethought process on their lunch it's look at how much you make per year so let's go with let's say your family earns seventy five thousand which is a nice income but if you look at your after-tax take-home and you're buying your lunch five days a week you know ten dollars a meal you've just written off and paid one full paycheck towards your annual lunch so you know that's that could be a big chunk of dough so why not look at your hourly income which at that point at twenty five seventy five thousand dollars after tax is about 20 bucks and hours what you're earning so if you're spending ten fifteen dollars on lunch that's half of half an hour of work so if it's worth it for you to spend half an hour of work sitting at your desk only to buy your lunch and eat it at your desk then that's okay but if that's not okay then it's time to reevaluate how you're you know eating your meals so we have a couple more comments coming in Deraa IP Lopez adore Lopez says I make a big batch of lasagna on the weekend and it becomes lunches and dinner for my husband and I for days and then John just suzunskiy is taking issue with that earlier commenter who said that they couldn't cook he says can't cook that's a crock anyone can make a sandwich or salad that's not cooking it's just one of many excuses people make to spend money going out for lunch and then from YouTube we have a question I don't know whether you can answer this I don't know the answer myself should we store food in aluminum foil or plastic wrap oh well this is the thing right like you know people are debating what happens with the plastics do they leech swelleth but then oil you can't put in a microwave exactly so I I have the simple trick for that I use glass containers to store my food after it's leftovers because if it's heated food you're putting it in the fridge there's a lot not a lot of evidence that show that glass leeches anything and with a glass container such as you know something like this you can put it in the dishwasher you can put it in the microwave transfer it right in reheat your meal easy-peasy and it doesn't stain glass doesn't stain great are aesthetically pleasing I enjoy eating out of this more so than you know a ziplock bag for sure but um you know you think if people invested more in their their lunch carry kits they might enjoy eating out of the morph especially if they're easier to clean easier to use in a microwave easier to stick in a dishwasher so I think that's worth looking at now if you're storing your food for weeks on it and in the fridge that's probably not a healthy thing to do the dietitians of Canada and Health Canada recommends leftover stay in the fridge for about 2 to 4 days after you cook them so again now you need a container for freezing and I find that these baleful freezer safe yeah containers with good locks on the lid do really well in the freezer as well as hot and cold so that's where you're getting your bang for your buck if you're able to preserve and carry your food with ease with a quality container that'll let you do that you know that comment about one of many excuses people make it makes me think things there are a lot of reasons people come up with why they can't possibly bring a lunch yeah I've used quite a few myself one of them being that I'm not crazy about sandwiches right but as you're pointing out there's a lot of different options that you can make doesn't have to be a sandwich I don't have to be in a brown bag exactly I rarely use a brown bag and I while I do make sandwiches there's just so many ways to do a meal if you prefer a hot lunch then cook something on Sunday night and have it during the week make a salad these are all really two simple things to do and if the reason is the corporate culture is you know different and everyone kind of frowns upon you if you bring here if you bring your lunch because you're not going out with the team then maybe it's time to say hey why don't we have you know a potluck one day I'm trying to get an idea I get people to change it up a little minutes you're not always going out all right so Edward Bernard Dodd says I switched from lattes to black coffee and saved $3 a day switched to making lunches at home and saved somewhere between 750 and $10.00 a day on meals I gave myself permission to buy lunch on Fridays but I'm still finding bringing a meal from home tastes better and saves money on Bert he is a convert and you know he's again he's not looking at it's all one way or all the other there's no reason why you can't go out for lunch with your colleagues on a Friday or a Monday or a Wednesday right bring your lunch most of the time and eat out occasionally I mean life is short have a little bit of fun I'm not you know saying you have to save every dollar but there are certain ways to cut costs and why work so many hours of a day if it's only going to cover your lunch right you know cut some of those costs and use those savings for for really important things in life you know save for your retirement savings plan put that twenty five hundred dollars in the savings put it in retirement put it on a holiday want a holiday well sure I'm not gonna you know just keep you there put it in your kids registered education savings plan get the government bonus with it you're gonna get 60% more there'll be more money to go around so there's so many different ways pay down a mortgage payment pay down some debt those are real costs and probably will make you a lot happier than that one meal that you've you know foregone in a restaurant because you brought your lunch all right we're with Carey Taylor here a financial blogger with squawk Fox telling us how to save money on lunches and we just I think got one maybe last one I think we're almost at the end of our time here Jackie Hurley is asking what are your tips for a long-haul truck driver three meals a day at truck stops are not cheap not chief a new healthier you don't have a fridge either no but there are little coolers you can get and there's insulated lunch kits you can buy a lot of them have like an ice pack built into them and you just freeze it or bring it and add it and you can stock up your meals and don't eat while you're driving pull over and have a nice little little break but there's lots of kids available for those for those needs I know when I go to a grocery store because my home is in rural BC so it's an hour drive to the grocery store so I have a cooler that I pack to bring my groceries home so why not have a cooler in your truck good tearing your lunch all right thank you so much Kerry thanks and Kerry's gonna be our guest tonight on on the money seven o'clock on CBC News Network and we'll be talking about this and other things thank you so much and everybody take your lunch at least once this week after this great lesson thank you

Channel: CBC News

Views: 162,383

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Id: _jxeZ2Vwd0Q

Length: 25min 37sec (1537 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 29 2017