How to Bring Your Lunch to Work Without Trashing Your Wallet or Your Taste Taste Buds

When I was in high-school, I had a terrible habit of going out to eat every single day for lunch. I probably visited every fast food restaurant in town during the school year and easily spent $35 or $40 a week on fast-food just during my lunch hour, but what did I care? I was in high-school, I had all of the disposable income in the world! I quickly realized that eating out every day is not a winning game plan in the real world. After some experimentation and work, I've come up with a pretty effective way to brown bag one's lunch and really make it work.

Don't bring something to work that you wouldn't want to eat at home. Quite often people throw something extremely quick such as leftovers from a few nights ago or a cheese sandwich into their lunchbox because it's quick and easy. It won't take much time to prepare, but you are going to get sick of eating food like that rather quickly and return to your old habits of going out every day.

Take the time and make yourself something nice to eat during the work day. Make a good sandwich, use quality bread, meat and cheese in addition to the vegetables and condiments you'll add. Sandwiches can be either really nasty or very delicious, but it all depends on the effort you put into making them.

If you don't have the time to make a good meal for yourself in the morning before work or the night before, maybe pickup some frozen entrees at your local big-box store. They're not the best food in the world, but you can get a meal for $1.00 or $2.00. It'll cost less than going out to eat, but better than eating something that takes no time to make, such as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Don't bring frozen entrees to work every day, because you're going to get sick of them after a while. Make it a point to make yourself a decent meal for work at least one or two days a week.

Make sure to make it a good balance of food that you take the time to prepare, frozen entrees, and going out to eat. Personally, I've decided that every Friday I'll go out to eat to one of the local restaurants in the down town area that I work. There's plenty of good food, and it's okay to partake in it once and a while as long as one doesn't go overboard. Two days a week I'll make a very good sandwich or other entrée to bring to work, and two other days I'll bring something frozen, such as a Lean Cuisine frozen dinner.

Some would argue that you should never eat lunch alone, and that you'll lose out on valuable networking opportunities, but I haven't found this to be the case. I'll bring my lunch to the break room and have plenty of good conversation with my coworkers, and when I do go out to eat on Fridays, usually there's plenty of opportunities for networking and conversation.

Brown bagging your lunch can be very effective in saving you time and money over the noon hour, but you have to keep a good balance of what you're eating. You shouldn't go out to eat 5 times a week, but you should relegate yourself to bologna and cheese sandwiches everyday either.