brown bagging lunch

i eat 5-6 small meals a day. if i ate all of those meals out, it might get very expensive, so i spend about an hour or two on sundays preparing one or two big dishes that i can dole out and bring for lunch for the entire week. this saves me time and energy in the morning and i can get enough variety during the week by adding in a sandwich here or a protein drink or bar there. a lot of finance pages that i read tell you to keep a journal of things that you spend money on, and by making coffee at home (for instance) you can miraculously save tens of thousands of dollars (i exaggerate). i am not going to start telling you that a save a ton of money with my cooking extravaganza -- actually, eating healthy can oftentimes be on par with spending on a quick bite out for lunch. what it does do for me, though, is give me something that i can pretty comfortably ball park, budget-wise. i know that i'll every week, i'll spend about the same amount on food and it's a number that i can live with. of course, i eat out sometimes for lunch -- you have to for sanity, for business, for fun -- but i know that for the most part that's going to be every now and again and i can live with that.

wasting away in . . .

well, i just returned from a week long vacation in manuel antonio, costa rica. it was a really relaxing and beautiful vacation. it's easy to overspend on vacation, but my wife and i were able to only spend about $100 on souvenirs and by taking advantage of the kitchen in the place that we were staying, we were able to save a ton on eating out -- i think we only dined out three or four times that week!

we vacationed with a group and rented out this amazing house for the week. it was pretty expensive, but once it was divided 10 ways, it ended up being really affordable, and it was a lot of fun vacationing with all of our friends.

we hiked, played on the beach, surfed, and enjoyed the natural beauty of costa rica without spending a ton of money.