I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich almost every week day for lunch from high school through grad school. I loved them. Through high school and college (as a commuter), my parents supplied me with plenty of food. Even though I had other options, the sublime combination of salty peanut butter and sweet jelly was impossible to beat. It helped that it was also the easiest lunch to make at 6 am when I had to get up for high school. And by college it was just my routine. This carried on through grad school, when I also realized how economical it was. On a research assistant’s salary, I needed the thriftiness on daily lunches so I could hit the Thirsty Moose on the weekend. I never felt like I was depriving myself because I enjoyed eating PBJs. But my lunch habits changed when Covid hit.
I moved home at the start of the pandemic. There was no point in me remaining in my New Hampshire apartment when the school was closed and my friends were also quarantining themselves. At home, I got in the habit of having hot lunches almost every day- often in the form of leftovers. And maybe after a solid decade of subsisting on PBJs, I was sick of them. Whatever the root cause was, I did not resume my PBJ habit when I started my real job. I ate leftovers as much as possible, since having a hot lunch is fun. But for the past 6 months or so I’ve been having turkey sandwiches with cheese, spinach, and avocado. It’s a great filling lunch- I’m pretty full with just the sandwich and a piece of fruit. So I haven’t needed my PBJs… until recently.
Lunchless Mondays
We (mostly Marisa) go grocery shopping on Mondays. And we typically don’t have leftovers from the weekend available, so I’m left in a lunch desert on Monday morning. For a few weeks I defaulted to the lazy option and went to the Subway that’s a short walk from my building. The days of the $5 foot long are long gone. Now, a foot long sandwich and a bag of chips pushes $10. After doing this a couple times, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was wasting money on mediocre sandwiches. So the next Monday I went spelunking in the mostly empty fridge and found my jar of raspberry jam. I remembered my years of devouring PBJS. I knew they were the best Monday option- even though it didn’t excite my appetite like my turkey-avocado affairs. And yet, by the time lunch rolled around, I was too hungry to care. I enjoyed that PBJ, maybe a little less than I enjoy my usual lunches. But do I really need a fancy lunch every day? Sometimes you only need something to give you the energy to get through the day. And if PBJs are good enough for NBA superstars, they’re good enough for me.
PBJs- the Secret to Financial Success
Yes, if you eat one PBJ per week, you can retire at 40. Well, ok, one PBJ per week is not going to be the difference maker in anyone’s financial life. But my PBJ Mondays are just one small habit that contributes to a lifestyle that values saving. If I decided to make Subway Mondays a habit instead of PBJ Mondays, I would be spending $520/year on mediocre sandwiches. That’s not a life changing amount of money either way- it’s less than $50/month. But saving $520/year in addition to other money saving habits, it does make a big difference. Combine PBJ Mondays with my practice of making my own coffee 6 days/week. Between the two, that’s about $1000/year that I’m not spending on unnecessary luxuries. Forty years from now, investing an extra $1000/year means an extra $200k in a retirement account (assuming 7% interest, see for yourself). I still get to have very nice turkey-avocado sandwiches 4x/week and my Sunday iced coffee feels special. On the flip side, having a PBJ once a week and fresh hot coffee all week aren’t exactly sacrifices. Instead they’re deliberate lifestyle choices- ones that I know will pay off over the course of my life. It highlights another important secret about good personal finance- it’s often boring. It’s not that exciting to consistently invest in index funds every month. And living below your means certainly isn’t flashy. But it’s in the mundane that fortunes are made. Yes, sometimes that even takes the form of a Monday afternoon peanut butter and jelly sandwich (always on wheat bread, never on white).
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