The annual cost of food and drink at work.

spreadsheet

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Hi all,

I was looking at the family finances over the weekend with a view to making savings next year. I’m amazed at the annual cost of eating and drinking at work. The cost never bothered me years ago when I was single but now it feels quite selfish when viewed against other family expenses.

A cup of tea in the morning with the odd croissant, dinner in the subsidised staff restaurant, coffee or tea in the afternoon can come to over a tenner a day or about €2500 a year. I’d a similar figure in mind for the annual family food budget for the 4 of us!

I have to get this figure down next year. Initially I can see my options are:

1. Bring sandwiches to eat at my desk.
I’m reluctant to do this as I enjoy the food in the restaurant and look forward to the break.

2. Cut out costly tea and coffee.
There are free vending machines in work but the quality gets to you after a while and you crave the real thing. I’d consider bringing tea bags but I’ve nowhere to keep milk fresh.

I imagine the best thing to do is set a budget of say €1000 or about €20 a week and work from that.

Any suggestions/views?
 
Put your milk in a flask & it will stay fresh
Bring the bulk of your lunch in, have that at your desk & then nip to the canteen for a bowl of soup or scone
If you like real coffee & have access to boiling water, buy a single plunger cup (made by smartcafe - Debenhams used to sell them) & some coffee (about €3 for 400grm in Tesco) and you're sorted for atleast a forthnight

It's amazing how quickly coofee & muffin add up - a friend of mine couldn't understamd how she never had any money so we grossed up a few figures on an anual basis and she was shocked - she (used to) get a coffee and muffin religiously every morning at work in a well known coffee house €6 per day = €1440 per year (and she said she would often get a second cup at lunch. She ate out every day and normally spend about €10 in the local cafes/bars = €2400pa. Daily newspaper (which she reckons she spent no more than 5 mins flicking through it = €360 and so on!!! when she realised she had to earn almost double (tax) to pay for these few things she quickly stopped !!
 
Thats a nice idea with the Smartcafe cup Sam, thanks. I'll give that a go. I wonder could I get those hotel-style UHT milks somewhere. I don't think they need to go in the fridge??
 
I've been examining my spending recently and I'd recommend it to everyone, I suggest that you get yourself a notebook and simply write down everything you spend for a week - it's scary! I had absolutely no idea I was spending so much on food, newspapers and magazines. I bought coffee with a scone, croissant or muffin every morning and lunch was another coffee and a sandwich, which cost me around a tenner a day. Now I get up on hour earlier (a real struggle at first - I'm not a morning person) have a proper breakfast at home and make myself a decent lunch. I'm eating a great deal better and now I find I have it down to a fine art and I'm using the extra time to walk to work. My only addiction is coffee and I have a single plunger pot and I use that in work. I bring a book to work and read that at lunchtime and listen to the news on the radio instead of buying a newspaper (my partner brings home newspapers in the evening and I read them then). Basically I've reverted to shopping, cooking and eating the way most people used to - I plan meals in advance and use left-overs instead of bining them. I'm spending a lot less money but honestly don't feel any worse off, I was wasting a lot of money if the truth be told.
 
1. don't buy newspapers if you don't have to - why if everything is online?
2. we have microwaves at the work provided for free but if you don't have any, why don't you make a collection and buy a cheap one with your coleagues only to be used for heating the food? or get the sandwich and eat some soup if you go out ...
3. the smartcafe cups are great for coffee, flask for a milk
4. if you want to treat yourself, allocate yourself a budget, let's say a lunch in a restaurant once or twice a week ...
5. if you find your own lunches and leftovers boring, why don't you get like-minded colleagues to swap your lunches, that way you can something new ..
6. keep the bottle from the soft drink you bought and refill it with water - you will keep hydrated and it's for free
 
Great ideas Goomigen. Although I know I used to say the extra hour to have a decent brekkie and make sambos wasn't worth the time I could have been using to work and earn or develop myself. But times have changed!
 
Don't know if you're near the city centre, but if you can, why not walk to Moore St and purchase your fruit/veg/fish from the traders, your rice/spices etc. from the foreign shops - make it a twice-weekly jaunt - exercise for you, savings on food - wins all round!
 
For the coffee problem you could get some ''NESCAFE 3 in 1.'' Its instant coffee with creamer and sweetener/sugar all in one tiny portable powder sachet ideal for bringing into work with you. In practice I like the blend of sugar taste and creamer. It needs very nothing else for me. Its for sale in Lidl at about 1.49 euro for a bag of ten or 12 sachets. Especially compared to some of the really bad coffees Ive tried in the past. I actually like this product. You cant beat its convenience either. All you need is hot water.


http://www.amazon.com/Nescafe-Originale-25-Packs/dp/B000W5BS9K

Im not recommending you buy it at the above link. The link above is only there for the purposes of identifying it.
 
You can buy UHT milk in a supermarket. Not as common here as in the UK but still available (personally I detest the stuff and would instead buy one of those mini-fridges and set it up under my desk :) )
 
I totally agree with this thread. I think people who have no work canteen and perhaps no proper lunch area and have to go out every day are a bit stuck.
Spreadsheet, if you like the food in the canteen you can still eat it but maybe just twice a week instead of every day, you will appreciate it all the more!

It helps me that our canteen at work is subsidised but if I buy lunches all the time it is still E5-10 a go which adds up.
  • Nice coffee is subsidised in work for E1.5 so I do have 1 cup of that per day
  • If I have to have breakfast in work I have a bowl of porridge for 60c but you can always microwave your own very easily if you have a mw at work
  • I make large quantities at home at the weekend, put 2 or 3 portions in the fridge for lunches, the rest in the freezer. Home made chunky veg soup with beans in it is great for this, very filling. Otherwise it's dinner left overs.
  • I buy scones in Dunnes and bring them in along with fruit and yoghurts for snacks.
  • I always have quite a lot of food in with me at work so I have no excuse to buy anything.
  • Chewing gum
 
You can buy UHT milk in a supermarket. Not as common here as in the UK but still available (personally I detest the stuff and would instead buy one of those mini-fridges and set it up under my desk :) )

I don't like it either. Theres something just odd and suspiciously wrong about milk which doesn't need refrigeration ;) However it doesn't ruin a cup of coffee too much. If theres caffeine in it I'll drink it !
 
Yeah as "Pat Mustards" boss in Fr Ted says "Nobody buys UHT, because its sh!te"

If you are bringing in your lunch I would still recommend going somewhere other than your desk to eat it, as you need a break from the PC....
 
We get free tea and coffee at work. Small company so it's easier but I thought a lot of small companies did the same.

Other than that I don't spend at cent at work. Make and bring my own sandwiches and always have done.

Croissants? Muffins? Cappu-frappa-skinny whatevers a €5 a go?

Mad.
 
We get free tea and coffee at work. Small company so it's easier but I thought a lot of small companies did the same.

I thought 99% of companies did the same, certainly any software company i've worked in anyway. TBH I would nearly reconsider moving to a place if they didnt have free tea/coffee :eek:
 
18 months ago we moved from an office with it's own canteen to one without. It meant I had to start bringing in my own lunch, which aside from it costing me a couple of minutes extra in bed in the morning, I got used to it quite easily. I reckoned it saved me around €1000 per year, on the basis that I would always have had a scone, a sandwich at lunch etc. Basically if you have to make it instead of pay for it, you eat less

Have the same problem with milk but I got used to black tea quite quickly,
 
Here's my solution to the problem of storing milk: I use powdered milk. Most supermarkets sell tubs of Marvel, and I think there is another brand in a plastic bottle. Simply add a spoonful to your tea or coffee, and there ya go :) It doesn't cool your drink the way milk would do, of course, but you can always add a splash of cold water.

By the way, large cartons of UHT milk still need to be refrigerated as soon as they're opened. The milk is treated to last longer so long as it's sealed in the carton, but once that's open, it behaves pretty much like fresh, un-UHTd milk.

Another handy product is instant tea. Typhoo make one called QT, and it has powdered milk in it, so all you need to do is add boiling water. It would probably horrify serious tea-drinkers, but I'm happy so long as it's hot and tastes even vaguely like tea :p It's available in Sainsbury's, for those who shop north of the border, and also in a wonderful little shop on Moore Street called 3-2-1 Euro. It sells a lot of items that you would normally only find in the UK.
 
Could you not buy one of those little fridges in argos or tesco for about 20 quid - possibly 40 quid? You could plug it in in the corner and it can have all your milk, salad, sambos, cheese and butter/spread in it. It hums a bit (as in noise, not smell) but it's well worth it :)
 
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