Brown Bag Mathematics

There are thousands of ways to save money and a million ways to spend it. I'm faced with the imbalance of this equation every night of the working week. A challenge that I consistently fail when I decide not to pack my lunch before going to bed. Such a simple task could annually save me a significant amount of money. But the other side of the grass is so much greener.

Eating out has a major upside, getting outside for fresh air, a mental break from your work, drinking a yard beer of Guinness. And the food factor: thinly sliced deli meat from Boar's Head, springy lettuce, hot waitresses, and the option of eating a fresh Cobb salad. These are honorable reasons to venture out for lunch. But when I look at it strictly from a money standpoint, it seems like a short-bus move not to brown-bag my office meal.

Let's do the math, shall we? Last time I checked, there were 365 days in a year.

• throw out Saturdays and Sundays, 260 working days
• subtract Federal holidays, 249 working days
• minus vacation for a mid-career hire, 234 working days
• sans sick days, 229 working days
• take away days with beautiful weather to call in sick and play golf, 225 working days.

The number 225 seems so harmless by itself, let's do some multiplication, shall we? The average lunch in the D.C. Metropolitan area is not cheap unless you don't have an appetite due to chronic diarrhea and/or you have to eat through a straw. Otherwise, if you are ready to chow, start memorizing your PIN number for the ATM visit, you'll need it. Let's review from a Deli perspective:

• sandwich - $6, chips - $1, soda - $.75, indigestion...priceless or $7.75.
• 225 working days multiplied by $7.75 per day equals $1,744 per year.

I'm comfortable in saying that a total for eating lunch at a slim $7.75 is a conservative estimate. Let's stop being naive and have a real corporate clone lunch. Let's get a pager in the shape of a coaster that blinks, a waiter, and a bill. Now we're living large. Oh, our table's ready:

• entree, drinks, tip, uncontrollable flatulence.....$16.00.
• 225 working days multiplied by $16.00 per day equals $3,600.

The final step is to morph the conservative and liberal estimate into a hybrid amount. Half of those lunches are spent peeling back the white paper wrapping on the chicken salad sandwich at $7.75. The other half is having a beautiful waitress remind you how old and perverted you are while munching on a salad the size of a campfire at $16.00. Divide 225 days by two and assign the divided amount by each dollar amount then combine them and vee-oh-la, $2,671.88 per year. That's alot of coin....what's available for approximately $2,671 in 2006 dollars:

• 42" widescreen plasma HDTV
• Full set of high end golf clubs (including driver and golf bag)
• Down payment on a Harley Davidson
• American Express gift card for $2,671

Why not just pack a lunch? Now I won't save the full $2,671 because my grub money has to go somewhere but I could guesstimate a savings of $1,500 per year by brown-bagging it. A loaf of bread costs $2.99, a 24 count of sliced cheese is $4.99....oh f*ck it, I'm not doing this math all over again. Just trust me on this one, you'll save money by packing your lunch.

Why is it such a herculean effort? I can find time in my predictable schedule to brown-bag it. It'd be easy to squeeze 5 minutes between my TiVO'd Family Guy and falling asleep on the couch to make a sandwich. It has the appearance of being a breeze but it is such a royal pain in the ass, kinda' like changing banks. Lousy leftovers, deli meat on the cusp of expiration, not to mention my 70's style refrigerator that was engineered by a midget contortionist from Cirque du soleil. I was in traction for a week from grabbing a jar of pickles hidden in the back on the second shelf. Damn midget engineers. Then it hits me, it's not about the act of making my lunch, it's the baggage that goes along with it. Being stuck at my desk for the whole day, breathing in the oxygen backwash from 1,500 co-workers, and toggling between the internet and my excel spreadsheet when someone walks by. There has to be a compromise.

Fact is, I shouldn't eat out every day of the week and coax a possible Lipitor prescription. On the other hand, I shouldn't be inside the office every day of the week suffering from mental health atrophy. The happy medium is to eat out two days a week and pack my lunch three days a week. On the days I do pack my lunch I'll just find a secluded corner in the break room to cozy up to my latest issue of Maxim, great articles...seriously.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to think about packing my lunch. Or maybe I should just go to bed, it's getting kinda' late.