One of my goals in moving in to my office was cutting expenses. In following through with this goal, I’ve been tracking the progress of my food budget since Day One. So I thought I’d provide a little mid-month report to let everyone know how I’m doing on that front.

I aimed to remain disciplined with my meal costs so I could both save money and learn more about just how much my new lifestyle would cost. I’d never tracked my meal expenditures before, but I determined that before moving out of my apartment I must have been spending roughly $175 per week on food–including dining out–which amounted to roughly $700 per month. This includes regular fresh home juicing and a diet consisting largely of organic, gluten- and dairy-free foods, as well as products low in or free of preservatives. Because I believe what I eat becomes integrated in who I am, I’m very careful about what I put into my body. But I’ll spare you that lecture for now!

Keeping myself on the same grocery plan would have been impossible. I have no kitchen in the office, no juicer, and no appliances except for a microwave. So I have limited methods for preparing food at my disposal. Space is also extremely limited. Although these facts would save time usually spent on preparing food, I feared that I would spend more by purchasing prepared meals. At least the kinds of prepared foods I was willing to eat.

Considering all of this, I decided to set a goal of staying under $20. per day on my food expenses. This would, I believed, put me at $100 less than my average monthly expenditures and still allow me to maintain my needs for convenience and my desires for well-being.

In order to track my progress, I developed an Excel spreadsheet to detail each meal expense and maintain a running tally for my daily and month-to-date totals. I also specified exactly what I was eating by placing a comment with each cell, explaining what the meal consisted of and where I purchased it. This tracking is done every few days, at my leisure, by reviewing saved receipts and inputting data when I had time available. So far, it’s been a very manageable process. I recommend it to anyone who’s as nerdy as I am.

Here’s a look at my calculations, recorded in Book Antiqua font:

After 15 days–roughly half of the month–I have achieved a daily average of $17.59 spent on eating. That’s pretty good.

How did I manage to stay under $20 per day?

All things considered, I’ve found it much easier than anticipated. First of all, buying pre-made juice in place of preparing my own from fresh fruit and vegetables on a daily basis made a huge cost difference. Also, taking advantage of free meals courtesy of Eric’s wedding and lunch events through my job allowed me to offset the otherwise expensive meal costs from socializing at the wedding and here in Los Angeles. Finally, I rediscovered the deliciousness of two affordable meals: oatmeal and the double-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Both of these small meals cost under $1.00 each, and gave me more flexibility with my wallet when approaching evenings where I knew I’d be spending more on food.

Halfway into the month, I am finding my meal plan to be executable without problems. So I’ve set a new goal for myself: To maintain a $15. per day food expense limit. For the remainder of the month, I will try to cut my meal costs as significantly as possible without having it affect my social life or adversely affecting my health, weight or physical condition. Reaching the $15/day threshold would mean I’d be operating on 75% the forecasted budget for the month, which would put a smile on this dork’s face.

Just to get an idea of what saving $5. per day might add up to, consider that in an average 30-day month, a $5.00 per day contribution to a separate fund will net you $150. Over the course of one calendar (or fiscal!) year, this total will amount to $1,825. If one were to put this money toward a vacation fund, he could find himself comfortably covering air travel costs to, for example, Rio de Janeiro, which might cost a traveler $1,200 if booking at non-peak times on a few weeks’ notice. Hostel accommodations priced at a reasonable $30 per night for ten days would still leave said traveler with $325 of expendable income for a craftily-executed vacation. And that’s with zero impact on one’s existing budget.

For someone operating on a modest salary in a city with a relatively high cost of living, this savings held major appeal.

I now have renewed focus for myself coming into the end of the month. I am feeling very good about my place in the experiment, and am starting to wonder if I should extend my office stay beyond this first month.

– TOH