I just calculated the average purchase amount at Chipotle in the last 30 days across all FamZoo cards. It came to $15.05. That’s a solid chunk of change for a meal. On a sobering inflationary side note, it was only around $7 when I made the same calculation back in May, 2016.
Here are the average purchase amounts for some of the most popular fast food destinations among FamZoo cardholders (sorted by decreasing popularity):
| McDonald’s | $9.39 |
| Chick-fil-A | $14.78 |
| Chipotle | $15.05 |
| Taco Bell | $13.70 |
| Wendy’s | $11.49 |
| Burger King | $11.30 |
| Subway | $13.32 |
| Panera Bread | $14.53 |
| Panda Express | $13.95 |
In contrast, ChatGPT concludes that a typical homemade lunch ranges from $2.35 to $8.00. The range is broad because so many different factors come into play: quality of ingredients, prices by location, and meal complexity. Some sage advice courtesy of the bot brain: reduce costs further by buying in bulk and using leftovers. To simplify our back-to-school math, let’s peg the price of a typical brown bag lunch at a generous $5 even.
Eyeballing the FamZoo stats above, I think it is fair to ballpark an average fast-food lunch excursion at about $13.
Given those assumptions, brown bagging lunch saves about $8 a pop. For a full school week, that’s $40. Real money. It’s healthier. It’s cheaper. But, it’s more work and less “cool” from a typical teen perspective.
So, how do you get your kid on board and even pitching in?
Incentives.
Surely you can afford to share some of that $8 windfall with your kid to motivate a frugal, healthy habit.
So, why not pay your kid a bonus buck or two to brown bag it for school lunch? Maybe one buck if you pack it and two bucks if they do.
That’s $10 a week in potential extra earnings. Roll out the FamZoo Savings Planner tool to show the kids how those brown bag lunch bonuses could compound over time — especially if they’re raking in some sweet parent-paid compound interest along the way.
Not keen on doling out bonuses? John Lanza over at The Money Mammals shared an alternate strategy:
“We told [the kids] they’d have to use their allowance to buy lunch at school, whereas we’d provide them fixings to make their own lunches. They chose the latter.”
Less allowance spent on lunch means more money in their pockets for other stuff — or, better yet, for saving.
As in all things FamZoo, choose the approach that fits your family best.
Either way, the family will save money, the kids will eat better, and the incentives (or disincentives) will align to make the good habit stick.
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