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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

>Every desk in those office towers is a person who needs to get lunch.

Do you have any insight into why so many people buy lunch instead of bringing it? I've had a desk job for about 20 years now and I think I've bought lunch maybe 10 times when for some reason I wasn't able to make my lunch that day. It seems to me that buying lunch is more expensive and a person will probably eat more calories. I can't imagine it is a time issue, I probably spend less than 5 minutes putting a lunch together every day. That is far less than the time required to go somewhere for lunch. I assume it also isn't an issue of wanting to get away from the desk - most office places I've seen have lots of places a person can go and eat.

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I go out for lunch basically every day.

Price: Within reason, who cares? I don't have a wife or kids or any obligations really. What good is a six figure salary if I have to micromanage what I'm spending on food?

Calories: Diets don't work, so who cares? If the meal is too big to finish then I'll take half home for dinner, like I did today.

Time: IDK if you eat a cold turkey sandwich for lunch every single day or what, but it would probably take me 30-60 minutes to make the things I often eat for lunch, if I even had the ingredients. I don't have the benefit of hours of kitchen prep before the restaurant opens.

Getting away: This is a big part of it actually. Not just leaving my desk, but leaving the office entirely. Walking around the downtown, remembering what it's like to be a human being in the sunlight.

I realize these answers may not match your lifestyle but I'm just trying to give the insight you asked for, from a person who does this.

> Price: Within reason, who cares? I don't have a wife or kids or any obligations really. What good is a six figure salary if I have to micromanage what I'm spending on food?

This mentality always blows me away and I am genuinely curious.

Has it not occurred to you that if you spend less, you can work less? (i.e. part time or retire sooner)

I cut things like this out of my spending, now I work a couple of years then travel a couple of years, first time I drove to South America, now I'm driving around Africa.

To be honest, I like my job, it brings me fulfillment in my life and I don't have a lot of other sources of that (as stated no wife/kids). I'm not really interested in restricting my lifestyle now to hasten my retirement, although I'm certainly not so stupid that I don't save for retirement. I just don't bother to minmax my finances.

I find the type of travel you describe stressful. I also don't like the insecurity of part-time work. Maybe I'll feel differently later, but at age 31 that lifestyle is just not for me.

how much do you spend on food? I eat out every work day and I spend on average 5$ per meal. how much less could you possibly be spending per unit?

I translated food costs to my income per-day, after taxes/rent.

The choices were:

* 1 work day allocated to making/eating 20 personally made meals a month

* 2 work days allocated to eating 20 professionally meals a month.

Factoring in time, variety, and the fact that professional meals taste better than mine - yes, I absolutely eat out most days. I'll pinch pennies on bigger items like car insurance or rent, but food was simply a good cost-benefit trade off.

YMMV; cost-benefit is subjective.

Important point: you may or may not have any control of the number of paid work days you have. The time you save won't trade against the average value of your time, but the rate at which you can trade time for money at the margin. So if you save an hour and spend $30, you wind up behind in cash-flow if you can't monetize your extra time.

And, uhh, most fixed-salary programmers don't have great options for spending an extra hour a week and winding up with more cash.

In my opinion, eating out is definitely a luxury. If/when I get serious about saving more money, cooking my own meals is absolutely the first thing to do.

Saving money is not my point here... it's saving personal time. Every month I have surplus income, after expenditures/long-term savings, but never have I had surplus time. There are always more things to do!

I am committed to ~160 work hours / month. Of that, I spend 10 work hours buying lunch - versus spending 2 work hours and 5 personal hours making my own lunch. Spending 8 work hours to buy 5 personal hours is worthwhile for me.

Theoretically, you can work less. Then again, it's hard to guarantee the market won't tank and hurt your savings, that taxes won't go up, that a minor healthcare crisis won't screw you over, etc. etc.

The notion of "retirement" is a quaint one.

Unless you are eating $20-30 lunches every day, the difference really isn't that great. It really boils down to: spend money to save time, or spend time to save money?

A typical week of lunches for me is one meal out with coworkers (~$15), three meals at the work cafeteria ($6-8, we'll assume $8), and one day WFH that we won't count. Average cost of $9.75 per meal, and no time invested. If I was taking my lunch, I'd probably be looking at $2-3 worth of food per day, and at least 15 min of prep time per day; more if you count extra time needed for grocery shopping and so on. I'm not pulling in a fat SV 6 figure salary, but even so my hourly rate is upwards of $40 per hour, so the meal prep time alone is equal to what I'm spending on lunch.

Personally, I'd rather have the time than the money. YMMV.

Even if you value your time at $40/hr doesn't mean you're going to GAIN any income for the time spent prepping food. Since I don't get a paid lunch break, I prefer to eat at my desk and work through lunch. This way I can leave an hour or so earlier each day.

I figure I've been able to save an extra $25,000 since I started consistency bringing my lunch ten or so years ago.

$10/day for lunch x 240 working days is $2400. For someone on a high wage, that's nothing. It's certainly not make-or-break in terms of holidays. Plus you don't spend your own time preparing your own lunch, and you get to sample lots of different kinds of food (if you're in the right place).

Also, self-made lunch isn't free. It's cheaper, but it's not 100% cheaper. The difference isn't between $10 and $0, but between $10 and, say, $4. A lot cheaper, but it lowers the 'saved' amount (at the cost of adding in shopping + preparing labour)

$2400 a year is nothing?

That's enough for two people to fly from Los Angeles to Paris, stay a week in a 4-star hotel, and fly back. Or to buy the highest spec Macbook Pro, every year, with change. In a year and a half, it's enough to buy a used BMW convertible.

Yes, but what if I already have a BMW and don't have enough free holiday for the trip to Paris, but really want to relax for a bit rather than make my own lunch?

Yes, buying lunch is a "luxury", but a small, daily one. Don't make me bring Orwell on food into this..

Hmm. The cost of buying lunch to me is 2% of before tax salary or 3% of after tax salary. Assuming a 45-year career, that's over 300 days. But of course making your own sandwiches isn't free for ingredients, nor time. You're trading time in your "youth" for time in your old age.

I do like the idea of going travelling, but you're not going to do it by cutting out lunch (unless it's something pricier like a proper sit-down lunch with waiters and drinks). Effectively you're moving your hedonism around so you can take it all in one go, rather than day-to-day.

I buy lunch most days and only eat 2 meals a day, my meals range from $6-11.

I pay ~$50 for 5/14 meals a week. I'm happy with that. I also spend a grand total of 120/month on transportation costs (includes costs of car, maintenance, gas, and insurance).

People have different priorities.

> Calories: Diets don't work, so who cares?

Umm, eating less than your caloric need makes you lose weight. Eating more makes you gain weight.

The world is full of people who were unable to maintain a diet. If you can't maintain a diet, then that diet doesn't work.

No, that means that you can't maintain a diet.

If something fails for lack of maintenance, it doesn't work. It's kind've self-evident.

The diet didn't fail. The person failed. There's a pretty big difference. If someone's diet plan consists of "don't each a cheesecake every week," and they continue doing that, you don't say "this no cheesecake thing is nonsense, that doesn't work!" You wonder why that person doesn't just stop eating the cheesecake.

Next you'll be telling me that the US won the Vietnam war. I mean, the politicians failed and the military failed, but the plan would have worked if they could have seen it through. Therefore the war worked.

So if my car fails because I never change the oil, cars don't work?

Not all calories are created equal.

Interesting. I prefer to eat a home-made lunch at my desk or chilling outside with co-workers for 15-20m, then leave work 45m early. This reduces time wasted on commuting by avoiding peak hour and gets me home by around 4:30pm (after a 7:10am start). But everyone needs to find what works for them, and within the limits of their employer's tolerances.

"Calories: Diets don't work, so who cares?"

If you're implying that calorie restriction isn't an effective way of losing and controlling body fat then I'd like a source for this wild and absurd claim which counters absolutely mountains of evidence.

I think they're saying "diets" don't work. It's true. Take all the diet attempts and divide by successes. Even counting calories fails if you don't count them.

Anecdata, but since I started bringing lunch to work I lost 9kg (~20lb) and that has been the only change in my regime.

It does make a difference in the quality of the food you get if it is home-made vs restaurant/snack bar/cafeteria, even in Germany where the meals are not ridiculously large as in the US.

If you can't manage calories-in focus on calories-out.

You can manage calories in.

I think the best to do a bit of both and gradually increase the exercise or keep a better track of calories.

At least to my palette, whatever I can buy is going to be tastier than what I can make. It's also fun to spend money on things and get out of the office.

For me, it's the exact reverse. :) I rarely buy a lunch that I couldn't have made better myself, for less money. But then again I also find cooking fun, whereas for others it's a time sink.

I love cooking. And sure I could, possibly, make a better burger or taco at home than the one I buy at the food truck, but I'm not going to be able to do so at work.

I wish I could cook at work!

There are plenty of meals that you can make in advance and reheat at work, but I see your point. Working remotely makes this a non-issue, though. :)

Socialisation is a big part of it - going as a team to grab lunch from a specific place; I'm sure there are plenty of anthropological studies on groups sharing food as part of bonding etc.

I've always viewed it as a work expense. The guy bringing his lunch misses out on the conversations that happen and friendships that form over lunch. Whether it's technical conversations, office gossip or just discussing life events, it's an important bonding experience that more easily leads to becoming a close-knit team. There's something subconscious going on with conversations over food that bypasses some of the filters/walls we put up and isn't really replicated in normal work conversations. It's a bit like storytelling that way. I'm guessing it's because primitive humans only shared food with members of their tribe.

At $15/day, 200 days per year, it costs around $3k/yr, which really isn't that much when you consider tech salaries and the benefits it brings. The only downside is I have to be hyper conscious about eating healthy since meals out are optimized for taste, not health (i.e. lots of butter and salt and other stuff that makes it taste really good but not particularly good for me to eat).

Do you have any insight into why so many people buy lunch instead of bringing it?

I'm one of a handful of people at my office who never brings lunch and for me it's all about getting away from my desk leaving the office building, getting a walk in and looking for something interesting to eat. I'll often walk to one of the places where food trucks tend to congregate and see if there's something good there. Sometimes I'll take the chance to try out that new restaurant I know I'll never get to otherwise. Yes, it costs a fair bit, but eating a brought lunch in the lunch room would destroy the entire joy of lunch for me.

If you work downtown SF you are likely making 80-100k and have a bit of disposable income that you can spend socializing with other people while eating out.

> I can't imagine it is a time issue, I probably spend less than 5 minutes putting a lunch together every day.

It's not a time issue, it's an organization and mental energy issue.

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