When I would lay out that their trips to the lunch room cost them probably $10+, and multiply that by 5 days a week, etc, that they gave up a new car or a down payment on a house, they would take pause.

I did the same, with leftovers to nuke for lunch, taking one day off to go out to eat with co-workers. Even then I would get water instead of a soda, and my co-workers soon came to see how much less I spent doing so. Before you knew it, we all would skip the beverage and get the tap water.

I finally got DH to brownbag lunch as well. Easily saved $50/week post tax, which at out tax rate was more like extra earnings of $85. Primary reason was to healthier, but the weekly savings really added up. As the kids hit middle school, I would give them lunch money in their account to buy twice a week, and of course plenty of food to whip up a lunch the night before, just as Dad did. I thought it was working well until I got a phone call from the mom of Youngest's friend asking me if everything was OK. Youngest was turning into a mooch, being too cheap to dig into his own pocket, and too lazy to make lunch. We both had a laugh after I told her what I was trying to do, and promised to get her son to stop enabling the mooch.

Youngest always was the one to push the envelope, wanting to know why we didn't have fancy cars like his friends parents, why he didn't get a car at 16, and so on. I would explain that consumerism wasn't my religion and that we had financial goals we were saving towards, like paying for their college and getting Dad retired. Senior year of high school he stunned me by thanking me. "I get it now..." His friends with the fancy cars were stressed beyond belief trying to figure out how to pay for college, and that was a worry he didn't have.

Teaching your kids is never easy, but boy has it been worth it.

IP