Analysts: How much are you spending on food per month in NYC?

Is it possible to have food expense only around $500-600 per month in NYC? If so, how are you guys budgeting yourself? Setting a limit of $20-25 a day, cooking, etc..

 

I don't track my spending, but I think I'd be just north of that. Breakfast is cheap, think my go to is like $6. Lunch is around $10. I really don't think prepping lunch is worth the few dollars, but I guess this is how you could get down to that level. Dinner paid for obviously. On the weekend you can get $50 or so expenses if working so that covers everything but breakfast on a typical weekend day. Even if not working, you can typically expense a meal and nobody will ask questions. Big thing is just avoiding expensive restaurants on the weekend if you want to cut back on food spending. This in my class who love the food scene spend way more, but otherwise I think $600 is pretty reasonable

 
Teller:

Places generally give you $25 for dinner. You don't need to spend this entire amount on a single meal. Use half of it to buy yourself lunch for the next day

I know some people (not at my firm), who use the seamless allowance for groceries. Win-win.

GoldenCinderblock: "I keep spending all my money on exotic fish so my armor sucks. Is it possible to romance multiple females? I got with the blue chick so far but I am also interested in the electronic chick and the face mask chick."
 

Agree with the above, but here's a (useful) curveball: learn Spanish. In my experience, most of the workers in midtown are Hispanic. I'm Hispanic. I speak to them in Spanish when I order, ask how they're doing, etc. Believe me, after 486 Wall Street gringos in a row, they appreciate that shit. I often get hooked up.

Believe me. Or don't.

Cuidate, amigo.

 

Step one: Take $500-$600 and remember that number. Step two: Count how many days are in a month (usually between 28 and 31) Step three: Calculate the quotient of the dividend ($500-$600) and the divisor (28-31). Step four: Spend no more on average on food than the resulting quotient ($16.13 - $21.43). Step five: Rinse Step six: Repeat

 

Don't know if you guys know that but there is this app called "mealpal" where you pick 12 or 20 meal per month and pay a fixed amount (so if I pick 20 meal it's $6 per meal =$120/month). For the 12 meals it's a bit more expensive roughly $6.39/meal. I was bringing food to save some $, but found myself saving on time by doing that mealpal thing.

 

I've worked in several restaurants from fast food to upscale. Additionally, I've interned in really expensive cities. The hint on allowances is 100% spot on. People feel "obligated" to spend it a certain way (ie eat a steak the size of your face for dinner). Don't be that analyst that packs on 10 lbs in a summer from this one decision.

Biggest things that will trip you up are social commitments (don't be THAT cheapskate), dating (don't be that cheapskate), and cravings (life without pizza isn't worth living imo).

Highest margins for food are on breakfast/brunch items because the inputs are cheap as hell (eggs are $0.35 for example). Don't eat out for these meals. Additionally, when you're craving something consider the DIY cost. No reason to spend $10 on fried chicken when you can make it at home for $4. This holds for almost every poultry/fish dish (you can make 1/2 lb of salmon in the oven for $6-8).

Download Mint. Track your spending so you can identify the causes of being over budget when the inevitable happens (ie you black out, order $40 in pizza, and pass out before it gets delivered leaving no evidence in the morning).

Array
 

This assumes you have the time or energy to care. I work way too hard for that shit. Barely have time to get to the gym 3-4x a week and sleep 5 hours a night a few times a week. I can't make breakfasts, and when I want to eat/need to eat, I don't have time to figure out what the best deal is.

In my experience, leveraging the expense policy is your best path to a reasonable food budget. I haven't not worked past 7 in like 3 weeks, so dinner is taken care of, and when I go to a cheaper spot like dig inn or sweetgreen for dinner, I always get a second bowl/salad for the next day's lunch. I eat quest bars for breakfast almost exclusively and on the weekends, I'll use my breakfast allowance to buy a bunch for the week. Lunch is pretty much the only meal I end up buying and it's never that bad given the multitude of options we have around us in the 10-15 price point.

 

Breakfast ~$8... Lunch ~$10... Dinner ~$13.00 x 30 days (average in month) = $1,170.

Did I mention I walked to one of the corner stores to get a gallon of milk and it was $6.00!

A pint of ice cream was $5.00!!! Oh here's the best part, I bought an ice cream cone... plain fucking vanilla, right outside central park... 12 FUCKING DOLLARS!

What is wrong with this city!? lol.

FYI: Not an Analyst anymore and I'm originally from Philadelphia suburbs.

 
mswoonc:
Breakfast ~$8... Lunch ~$10... Dinner ~$13.00 x 30 days (average in month) = $1,170.

Did I mention I walked to one of the corner stores to get a gallon of milk and it was $6.00!

A pint of ice cream was $5.00!!! Oh here's the best part, I bought an ice cream cone... plain fucking vanilla, right outside central park... 12 FUCKING DOLLARS!

What is wrong with this city!? lol.

FYI: Not an Analyst anymore and I'm originally from Philadelphia suburbs.

or 3 pieces of chicken from Kings being $18 dollars. I don't even bother to shop in the city.

 

Intermittent fasting and dropping to 2 large-ish meals a day helps a lot if you are capable of doing this type of routine. I would get lunch either at a food cart, or somewhere else relatively cheap (depending on how many orders up to $15, but as cheap as $7, averaging about $11), and then use my full seamless for dinner. I bought protein bars in bulk online as well (averaging out to about $2/day), and was still hitting a reasonable number of calories without spending very much money. Dropping a meal helps considerably

 

If I can just confirm Kazimierz's findings, I have for a long time fasted for various reasons (usually I got so busy I forgot to eat). It was great news to me when I learned that was actually a new dieting technique because it meant I didn't have to do anything different and I still got to sit with the cool kids.

Anyway, I get Seamless almost every night and maybe twice a week order strategically so that I can have lunch the next day through the previous night's Seamless. I usually fast on Sundays, although I might eat a breakfast of oatmeal or something if I wake up starving. I buy food at the store maybe once a month, when I'm feeling like I'll have time to cook on the weekend. Usually the milk goes bad, but thank god eggs stay good for weeks. My breakfast most mornings is either some fruit from the cart guy outside the office or a smoothie. Lunch on days I don't have Seamless v2.0 is usually about $15 worth of carbs and grease, but sometimes I forget to eat that, too.

When all is said and done, I spend about $75-85 a week on meals. The meals I skip are important, and I didn't realise how many it was until I started tracking them for a trainer. But I end up skipping around five or six meals a week (a lot of breakfasts).

There is an important caveat: I travel a lot and when I'm out of NYC, I splurge on food. So my budget if I'm home is probably a monthly $350, but realistically I spend about $500 including the food I buy when I'm away.

 
Kazimierz:
I bought protein bars in bulk online as well (averaging out to about $2/day), and was still hitting a reasonable number of calories without spending very much money.

I don't know what kind you buy, but I would recommend Lara Bars. They are like $1 or so on Amazon and are probably the healthiest thing you could find, in terms of bars.

I inhale these things. I probably have 5 or more per day. They are about 220 cal, so $5 for a very healthy 1100 cal is pretty good.

If you need more protein than that, the Vega products are exceptional (powder).

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

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