Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Making your lunch can make your mortgage payment

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I won’t bore you with a detailed breakdown of mathematical wizardry — the spreadsheet below, based on a 241-day work year, summarizes it. (241 days being what’s left once we subtract weekends, two weeks’ vacation, and statutory holidays from 365.) Let’s have a look:
Morning coffee, Tim Horton’s Bologna and cheese sandwich plus small side salad Afternoon coffee, Tim Horton’s Snack  Total
Cost per day $1.50 $8 $1.50 $2 $13
Cost per month $33 $176 $33 $44 $286
Cost per year $361.50 $1,928 $361.50 $482 $3,133
Adjust for your own preferences, but the prices above are based on a typical day’s purchases.

Now let’s look at the cost to brown-bag the same food:
  Coffee beans, unground Whole wheat bread Meat, veggies, sandwich stuffing Cookies/fruit Total
Cost per day $0.47 $0.37 $4.76 $0.80 $6.41
Cost per month $9.95 $7.85 $100.00 $16.80 $134.60
Cost per year $119.40 $90.07 $1,147.62 $192.80 $1,549.89
Doing the math for your own lunch gets a little more complicated. Let’s say a big cup of coffee weighs in at 10 grams of ground beans. You’ve got 454 grams in a pound of coffee, so there’s a cup a day for 45 days. Divide in half and you have a little more than two cups a day for the working month. Perfect



Here is the whole article here

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/personal-finance/article/canadianbusiness/1626/make-your-own-lunch-save-a-mortgage-payment