Reframing Lunches

As I keep writing, I love that I developed new habits and rebalanced my life. But the true test is when things get busy, do I keep with the new regime, or slip back into old ways. I was listening to a freakonomics episode that talked about habits and one comment really stuck with me.  It was about giving yourself time to change. The point being that you've had years doing things one way so changing over night just isn't balanced when you think about the science and the rewiring that needs to happen. It's all about managing expectations. 

This week I've been faced with an old habit popping up - wanting to skip making my lunch in the morning and just buy my lunch. So far I've been good.  Partly because I want to be in more control of what ingredients I consume, which on the flip side can make making my lunch harder each morning. Gone are the days of wiping up a sandwich to pack. And if I haven't batched cook, I find I need to quickly cook up some meat and veggies or complex grain in the morning and with the heat and humidity...well, you can see why I want to just buy my lunch. 

But one thing that popped into my head yesterday that helps reframe things for me is the cost. Not just a vague, lunches can get expensive kind of thing.  The usual, general arguments of its healthier to make my lunch, it saves time at lunchtime because you aren't running out to get something, and it's just expensive.  All of those I could talk my way out of with my inner voices. 

What it was, was pulling on my budgeting I've done. I had started tracking my spending during my time off so that I had a better understanding of how much I spent on what. Mainly I did this exercise because I really needed to know as I was getting to the end of my time off. It helped me tighten the belt in areas that I saw fluctuate month to month and reflect on why which then fed back to real time purchasing decisions. The point being, I know how much I spend on groceries/food per month, which includes meals out. And since I wasn't really eating out, I was pretty economical, even while sticking with healthy foods (meat and veggies are 90% of my grocery bills). 

My aha moment was when I connected that buying my lunch for one day was about the same cost I had for all my food that day. Rounding up, I spend $300 per month which is $10 per day and lunches in my area are, rounding up, $10. That really put things in perspective for me.  Why blow all my money for the day on one meal?  Now, can I afford to spend more, of course.  Would that increase the quality of my eating - not really.  Does it help my core values and principles - nope. Am I considering my future self when making decisions in the now - nope. Basically, I was succumbing to the wants in the now (not having to deal with making my lunch), and pushing the consequences onto future me. 

So, for now, I'm plugging along and not slipping into making things "easier" for the short term but at the expense of my long term. I'm following the advise of an old boss when I asked him his tips for financial planning. He said, "as you make more and more money, don't adjust your spending to correlate."  His point was you will be tempted to spend more the more disposable income you have, but it's all wants, and not needs and it's better to put it away and save.