Various reasons will appear why you are going to pack lunches some of which are: school trips, the kids don’t like school lunches, day care requires you pack a lunch, you or your spouse is going to work, you are going to an all day baseball/ football/ soccer game or you are packing a lunch for a day trip that you and the family is going out on. Some adults and children will pack lunches because they are allergic to certain foods or ingredients in food.
Buying your lunch on a daily basis can be expensive and when you and your family is on a budget you find ways to cut back making the budget work. You can pack a lunch for pennies a day, well o.k., maybe not pennies a day but at least on dimes a day!
First let’s start with a few vegetables:
Bananas are an inexpensive fruit that you can take in your lunch. At prices that are anywhere from .29 cents a pound to .59 cents per pound, you need to find a fruit market that offers the .29 cents per pound. It will take two or three bananas to make a pound so you are buying each banana for just around .10 cents.
Grapes are another inexpensive fruit that you can purchase in large quantities. Grapes will run you about .30 per portion. Just washing a few grapes and putting them in a baggy you have a great addition for your lunch.
Oranges and grapefruits are a little more expensive, but you can find these at three or four for a $1.00, so your fruit for your lunch will run about .25 cents to .35 cents depending on what time of the year you are buying these items and where you are buying these fruits. Always look for a smaller fruit market; the larger grocery stores are going to be more expensive for fruits.
So, now that you have a little fruit for your lunch, how about a main dish or sandwich? Purchasing large chunks of your favorite lunchmeat and shaving it down your self at home will save lots of money. Take for example, you purchase a block of ham, shave it down and freeze it. You can get almost a month worth of sandwiches out of a ten-pound block that cost you roughly $1.80 to $2.00 per pound. But if you were to purchase this same ham by the pound at the grocery, you are going to pay $2.99 to $4.50 per pound – there is quite a difference in how much money you are going to be able to save.
You don’t have to eat ham all month, frozen hams, roast beef, bologna, and other lunch meats will last up to eight months when covered and sealed well in your freezer.
Continued >> on the next page
