Vent: Tried meal prepping vs buying lunch every day for a month

I tracked my spending for 30 days in Portland and meal prepping cost me $120 total while buying lunch ran $310. The meal prep took a few hours on Sunday but saved me almost $200 and I felt less sluggish in the afternoon. Anyone else surprised by how much faster your bank account grows when you just pack a sandwich?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_mila23d ago

Prepping saves way more than you think. My veggie wrap kit cost like $15 for the week. Restaurant lunch tacos add up fast. Packing lunch feels like free money compared to dropping $12 daily. Toughest part is just doing the dishes after.

wadem8923d ago

Nah, I tried prepping and it just didn't work for me. The $15 veggie wrap kit sounds good until you get sick of eating the same thing three days in a row. Plus the time spent cooking and cleaning up on Sunday could be used for something else. And honestly, grabbing tacos with coworkers has a social value you don't get from eating a sad desk lunch alone. The math only works if you actually stick with it for months, which most people don't.

robinson.hannah7d ago

$15 for the whole week though, how many wraps does that actually make? Because the $12 daily taco habit is definitely brutal, I get that. But I'm curious if that kit is for 5 wraps or like 3, because if you're just eating a half wrap for lunch you're gonna be hungry by 2pm and then that whole "free money" thing goes out the window when you buy a snack anyway. Also what's in the veggie wrap kit exactly, because if it's just lettuce and tomato wrapped in a tortilla that's gonna get old real fast no matter how much you save. I've done the prep thing off and on and the real deal breaker for me was always the texture going weird by day 4.