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The title of this post has two meanings.

1) You should not buy into penny pinching with brown bag lunches to save your financial health. Don’t get me wrong, taking your lunch saves big bucks and I do so almost every day.

2) Do not buy something that will force you to cook or take your lunch if you are not used to this lifestyle. So many couples buy or rent a place saying, “Oh well, we’ll just have to eat at home more and take our lunches.”

DING! DING! DING! This if your financial conscience!

If you can only afford something by changing your lifestyle, then YOU CANNOT AFFORD IT!

The Simple Dollar just posted an article Quality of Life and Consumer Spending addressing this.

I’ve never understood the unending supply of articles telling people to skip a cup of coffee or brown bag lunch just to save a few dollars. It helps, sure, but it won’t save you if you’ve made bad decisions on major expenses. I completely agree that if you plan carefully and take care of the big things – the long term major expenses in your budget – there’s far less need to sweat the small things. So many people buy a more expensive home than they can easily afford, cars they can’t afford, big expensive vacations or a houseful of new furniture they can live without. Even the choice of how many children to have and when has a huge impact on finances.

Yet if you arrange your life so that major expenses are not consuming all of your income and then some, you can actually eat lunch out once awhile, buy that cup of coffee, or see a movie. Quality of life goes up dramatically. At that point, if you want to save on little things also, it becomes a choice, rather than a constant necessity just to survive.

from Sydney on SmartSpending

Brown Bag Everyday Except Wednesday

I take my lunch to work on a regular basis; however, relating to The Simple Dollar’s post, my uncle and I eat lunch together almost every Wednesday afternoon.

Being a very financially conscious person I crunched the numbers and realized this costs me around $28 each month.

$28 Is Worth It

Spending that time with my uncle is worth a heck of a lot more than the $28 to me.

Find out what is worth it to you, and calculate the balance in your life.