When I was a kid, my mom gave me enough cash at the beginning of the week to buy my lunch every day. Then if I chose to make my lunch instead, I could keep the money. It was a bonus to our allowance and taught us to be thrifty. It worked out well since there were only 2 kids in the family.
With 6 kids in our family, it would cost us $300 a month to let the kids buy lunch every day. Our schools average $2.50 for lunch (older kids are slightly more, younger ones slightly less.) We can pack a lunch for around $.75 with a basic sandwich, some veggie sticks, and a self-packaged snack like cheese crackers. Sometimes the kids pack ramen noodles in a thermos (cringe–I know.) Heidi, the Sophomore, will often grill a chicken breast on the single serving grill and slice it over a chef’s salad.
Packing 6 lunches every morning (before I leave for work at 6:45 am) would push me over the edge of sanity. I delegated that to the kids and they’ve done well. I try to keep their snack baskets filled with healthy-ish things, so they can make a sandwich and grab a few items to go with it.
We buy family size items from Aldi and sometimes Costco (when they have a coupon that makes it a good enough deal.) Then we repackage them with a measuring cup into snack size baggies. Sometimes the kids help with that part and it saves me a lot of time. It costs less per serving to take a few minutes to repackage than to buy single serving packs.
The kids only drink water*, both at home and at school. That might be the single most budget saving thing we do around here! *Occasionally with snacks they get milk or homemade kombucha or Melaleuca’s Sustain Sport–like Gatorade but healthier and less expensive–but we don’t pack those for school.
How do you make lunches fit into your budget?
This is Day 19 of our series 31 Days of Kids and Money
This is a current discussion in our house bc in MN our school lunch was healthy and local with a variety of options for $1.90. I liked my daughter getting to try chicken shawarma with her peers or salad from a local farm WHILE AT SCHOOL!!! I felt that was worth the money. But we’ve moved to WA where $3/lunch has a less impressive menu. She wants to buy every day. We say no way! We have offered that she can buy hot lunch 1x/week and she has to make/bring her lunch the rest of the week (and in 3rd grade yes, she does make her whole lunch). And if she doesn’t use it, she can roll it over. We have to prepay her account so it helped me decide how much to put in there and know how long it will last. So far so good!
Kristine, That sounds like a great plan to me.
We also bag up the bulk items ahead of time (usually on Sunday), cut fruit/veggies, etc so when the kids pack up their lunches, they can just grab the items and it’s super easy. My 8 year old can do the prep bagging and my preschooler also pulls his items together for his lunch. Adults help with slicing, putting hummus in smaller containers, etc.
Kristine, I agree. It makes packing lunches so much easier.