March Lunch Challenge

Another law school blogger is staying frugal by packing her lunch to school everyday. This helps avoid junk food in the diet and saves money. I am attempting to not eat out for lunch the entire month of March. Part of it is an attempt to have healthier dinners which result in healthy leftovers, part of it is to save money, and part of it is to use up the box of nutrisystem food that has been sitting in my pantry for WAY too long. When I was an intern in D.C. without a car I figured nutrisystem was the perfect solution. I couldn't buy groceries more than a bag or two at a time so I would have all of my food delivered. Turns out, in addition to the food that they send you you have to buy salad fixings, veggies, cheeses, and other groceries. By the time I added it all up I was spending as much on groceries as before, plus I had to pay for the nutrisystem stuff. I also hated quite a few of the dishes so I mailed those back. Heads up, if you ever try this system, don't buy the scrambled eggs, just buy eggs and cook them yourself, blech. Sometimes I eat out because hubby doesn't pack a lunch and calls me up wanting to go somewhere. It's hard to turn him down and leave him there to starve when I have the car. Also, going out to lunch is a nice mental break and way to get away from the office. Sure, it takes an hour rather than thirty minutes so I only bill 8 hours rather than 8.5 in a day, but bonus checks aren't everything. Once the snow melts I should be able to achieve the same mental break and still bring my lunch by going outside to eat it. In the meantime, we'll see how this experiment works. Maybe when hubby calls I'll pick him up, take him to the house and make him something. That or I'll have to start getting up earlier so that he can drop me off before he goes to work and he'll have the car.