Lunch time! How saving your lunch money can pay off in the long run.

If you are anything like me, lunch is your favorite time of every workday. I spend my morning looking forward to it. Every now and then, I decide I will start making my lunch for work everyday. I usually last about three days before I resort to paying $10 for a sandwich somewhere. Yes, I am talking about you, Beach Club at Jimmy John's. So this year, I've set up a reward system for myself as motivation to stick with this brilliant plan.

At the beginning of the week, I start with $50 in cash. This money can only be spent only on lunch. If I get lazy and buy my lunch somewhere, the money is gone. But, if I take my own lunch, at the end of the week this cash goes into my piggy bank. Each day of the work week is worth $10 (Chicago prices). That means that if at the end of the week I have taken my lunch everyday I will have $50 to put in my bank. In my case, this is literally a little bank in the shape of a safe that sits on my desk. You could put yours in an actual bank if you'd like but I enjoy seeing the cash pile up before my eyes. After one month, I will have $200 if I make my lunch everyday.

Confession time: So far in January I have taken my lunch everyday except for two days. That's pretty good I think.

Now, the plan is to reward myself with the money I am saving. So my plan is to use this money for spending money on my dream trip. A rough estimate tells me that I will have about $1000 before my trip. I will use $500 of it for spending money and put the other $500 in the bank.

Let's be honest, it isn't hard to slap together a sandwich. It's only slightly easier (and much costlier) to pay someone to do it for us. Plus you never know what you are really getting if you aren't making it yourself. The key is motivation. So figure out what will motivate you, and put the money towards it. A trip, a new television, paying off debt- whatever works! There is no wrong reason to save money.