To hate packing food to take to work

[waitingforautumn]

I live just outside and work in central London. Cost of living rising means I'm starting to feel guilty about the money spent on coffee, breakfast and lunch at work. I do somewhat 'budget' for this (i.e. am single, no kids, don't care for designer stuff etc, walk where I can rather than train or bus). However I do realise how much I could save if I were really disciplined about going to the supermarkets and stocking up for a week of homemade lunches and prepped breakfasts, which do sound appealing in theory..

Only issue is, I REALLY tend to miss buying things out - esp lunch. Just being able to pick something new each day, made with ingredients I wouldn't usually buy. I just feel like I eat more healthily/get more variety when I allow myself this. There's the option of sandwiches and baguettes (Pret/Paul/Leon type thing) plus lots of hot options where I work. I also love a good old Tesco meal deal so often have that for lunch too (love the mix and matching element).

Can cheapen breakfast by stopping at a supermarket bakery on way (£1 for a pastry rather than say £2.50). And it's still lovely (am a sucker for pastries and now associate office days with getting one). In the past I've made overnight oats and did keep that up for a while but got out of the habit after the pandemic return to work, and also loathe the washing up part at the office sink.😆

Is it me or is there something nice about strolling to work with a coffee you didn't have to make yourself, a fresh pastry and picking up a lunch you didn't have to plan way in adv or prep?!

I do wonder if this is quite a London thing with all the variety around. Have to be up around 6.30 to get around without the trains/tubes being busy so it feels to early to eat something before leaving home - and I'm always hungry when I sit down having had to walk past upteen bakeries to get in! I feel stopping for coffee/food helps make the working day nicer, I can pick something I fancy there and then. Few colleagues bring anything to eat from home and get all their meals/drinks out for the day so this really feels like the norm. We must all be spending anywhere from £5-£15 a day on all this. 🤔

Nobody single from my generation can afford to get on the housing ladder here anyway, even with decent savings. Some of my friends easily spend £35 a pop getting nails done every 3 weeks, which is outrageous to me. So I'm inclined to say whatever treats get you through life?!

AIBU? Am I lazy? Do I need to find another source of joy in my life? Writing this on the train on the way to work obvs and I have absolutely nothing on me for the day ahead!

Have you looked at too good to go ? Bags of goodies are available from 10am in some areas..... my friend lives in London and she's obsessed with it. Even Yo Sushi is on there.

As an aside no. I don't think you should give it up. Either do it on a Monday and Friday only or do it once a week and get really nice stuff instead.

YANBU - to a degree. I now find the stuff I can buy out in London rather rubbish and less healthy than what I can make at home. Especially as a lot of places have closed or reduced choice.

E.g. hot smoked salmon on an open sandwich, cucumber and celery sticks, crisps, an apple. I also take in leftover dinner in a Thermos or soup. Also I have a good coffee machine at home and Costa has nothing on the coffee I can make and take with me.

What I'm saying is maybe you just need to give it some thought, get in some nice lunch options, invest in a bit of equipment, a good bento box or lunch box and it soon pays off.

"I do wonder if this is quite a London thing with all the variety around"

Yeah the rest of us 'eer country folk just catch ourself whiche'er animal move slowest and throw it on the bonfire for lunch... we don't 'ave them fancy drink and san'wich places.

That why haggis is so popular, their wonky legs make 'em easy to catch, gettin' the fur off a challange tho.

But in all seriously of COURSE us country bumpkins go out to lunch just like londoners, your not the only 'advance' part of civilisation.

I live up a mountain and between the 2 towns here we have Mcdonalds, KFC, 3 supermarkers, many small conveniance shops/garages, gregs, weatherspoons, an italian resteraunt, many takeaways and countless small indepenant coffee shops/bakeries and thats not even a 'city' but plenty of choice.

Read the room, OP. Given that many people are struggling to afford even the basics, a stealth boast that you can afford to spend the best part of £50 a month on fripperies when everyone else is down to value cornflakes and water for breakfast isn’t nice.

It's up to you.

I had to stop eating out like that twice a day. Too much money and not very healthy.

Cutting back to 2 or 3 times a week might be a good compromise.

If you can afford it. Do it

as you said some gave nails done every 3w. Like me. Tho it’s £20

i would buy breakie as it’s early to eat before leaving home. Make lunch. Buy tea

ic you can’t afford it cut down

While I think OP has had a bit of an unfair rap for the London thing this did make me snigger -

God I get this from my London relatives. "We have here what's known as A CAFE, sometimes we also visit a SANDWICH SHOP, there's so much variety here that you wouldn't know about, living in the North and licking moss off a rock or whatever."

OP I do get what you mean. We got into a bad lockdown habit of Maccy D coffee and m & s pastry after food shopping. And they're probably nowhere near as nice as the placed you mention. It's s lovely treat and we've kept it up, I often say to DH that if we lived in a big city I'd put a tonne of weight on and take all day to do an errand as all the lovely indie eateries and coffee shops would be a huge distraction for me, I bloody love eating and having coffee out. It's the ritual, if you get me?

But there are some really really good suggestions from others here I think even if you only cut down half you'll feel the.£ benefit soon.

In the meantime, we're off to London after Christmas and I'll proudly say I love going and being a total tourist, its absolutely one of my favourite cities. Can you recommend any lovely places for breakfast near Tower Bridge Premier Inn? I'll happily authorise this as research for you 😁

I agree with the suggestions to get yourself some really nice containers to make packed lunches and breakfasts feel more exciting. I sound like such a sad nerd but I got far more excited about my packed lunches when I got really nice salad containers with different sections for toppings and dressings and stuff. I also have a cute cup for yoghurt that has a screw-on compartment in the lid that you can put granola or fruit toppings in.

I think I get what you meant about the London thing too. I’ve lived in a few UK cities and they have had excellent lunch options, of course, but nothing quite compares to somewhere like Soho where the variety of choices available is actually overwhelming! I’ve never worked around there but I meet a friend there on her lunchbreaks sometimes and I always get very jealous of how much there is to choose from.

It's both the suggestion that areas outside of london are limited to digging up our own potatoes for lunch from the fields, maybe with a greggs for an occasional treat, but then also the fact that after bragging about london's infinite variety then the places OP actually goes to are...pret and tesco

Hahahaha @latetothefisting

I thought similar.

Seriously though @waitingforautumn , if you even cut out half of your treats you would save a load of cash, and would also enjoy the ones you had even more because they were less frequent.

I totally get you - I'm not in London though so obviously a provincial pleb 😝

Seriously I wouldn't go completely cold turkey. How about taking your "main" and buying a snack out? Or taking lunch but buying breakfast?

This is a really good idea. A few years back I was really envious that everyone around us seemed to have lovely holidays and we just could not seem to save that.

I recalled that many years before my mother gave up smoking and put everything aside. After a year she had thousands saved. She bought alot of emerald and diamond jewellery. I thought about what I could cut back on (which was daily wine and regular nights out at the pub) and put all those savings aside. It amounted to circa £200 a month and since then with those savings (I still drink a bit but nowhere near as much) i have taken the Dcs to Centreparcs; on a 3 day cruise and it went a long way towards boosting the amount we could save for a trip to Lapland to see santa. I became quite - not obsessive- but pleased about what I could do.

For me mentally it was about choosing something I valued more than wine (which is literally pissing money down the drain!) and choosing to make savings for something that makes me really happy.

"We have here what's known as A CAFE, sometimes we also visit a SANDWICH SHOP, there's so much variety here that you wouldn't know about, living in the North and licking moss off a rock or whatever."

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I'd love to have access to a fridge like most office workers do, but my job either involves me being in a truck or travelling around building sites so my options are pretty limited unless I wsnt to carry a cool box around.

Crack on I say.
My husband never takes his lunch when he's in the office (currently only 2 days a week) and who am I to say he can't have those, if that's important to him?

She doesn’t have to read any room.
She’s asking a question specific to her as a young person living in a city which many of us wouldn’t have done.

It’s crazy that people admonish others for asking a question. Not everyone is on the bones of their arsed your know.

"TEN QUID FOR A JAM JAR AND A SPOON!!!!!! 😮

<horrified noise in Northern>"

Kinell. HOW MUCH? 😱

Many of would have done

I used to get a tea every day from the station cafe (plus extras), I shudder to think how much I wasted on it over the course of a few years but it was an indulgence.

As someone else says, bring in tea/coffee most days and have a 'treat day'.

I actually named the meal deal as one of my wise options for when I'm trying to be sensible and avoid everything else!

People are really hunting out reasons to be offended here with all the "WE HAVE CAFÉS WHERE I LIVE TOO, YOU KNOW!" comments.

Agreed! 😂😂😂 I love mumsnet - the unintentional comedy is brilliant 😁😁😁

Agreed with a Bento box or similar. I now put lunches/snacks in there, so e.g. fruit, lunch, chocolate rice cakes.

When I see what I pay for 1/2 dark chocolate rice cakes in e.g. Pret compared to me bringing them in, it soon helps. Or buying Nak'd bars singly as opposed to in a pack.

Hello, thank you for chiming in and for being lovely! I get it, I really do. You sound like you work incredibly hard. I do think we need to give ourselves reasons to live. I'm using the better comments to gather up some wise tips to help me strike a better balance the future is concerning x

I think it depends on how much you really want or need to save money.

I guess you've got into the habit of takeaway breakfast as you're commuting early and 5-6am in the morning feels too early for breakfast. Something like a yogurt and banana to eat on route or a couple of mins before work would be really easy - no prep just grab and go.

If you've got time to go out and buy lunch and eat it, I guess you're on flexi - would it appeal to you if you could have a shorter lunchtime and sometimes get home earlier.

😂😂

I wouldn't bother with taking lunch tbh if you can afford to buy lunch out. I'd economise in other ways.

It's a time/money calculation. I'm not sure it's specifically a London thing but I do think it applies generally to people who work in city centres and have long commutes.

If:

• You have to leave early in the morning.
• You have a busy and draining rush hour commute which might involve standing for 40 minutes on a packed train.
• You may frequently be late home due to travel disruptions.
• You're trying to balance a busy work life with spending enough time with your partner/children; AND
• You earn an above average salary which means you can afford to buy lunch out and still pay your other expenses

then it doesn't seem worth the stress of spending 1.5-2 hours a week preparing packed lunches when you get so much more enjoyment from eating something different every day prepared by someone else. Think about how much you'd pay someone to do that chore for you. Going on what the average cleaner earns around here by way of benchmark (around £17ph), that's around £25.50 worth of time spent preparing packed lunches per week plus the cost of ingredients (let's say around £10-15 for a loaf of bread, block of cheese, fruit, yoghurt and other typical lunch box staples). You could pretty much buy lunch out everyday for that.

It's a low payoff for the increased stress and decreased enjoyment.