How To Make $60 A Day Just By Eating At Subway

One of the best things about being an employee of the federal government is all the opportunities for additional training.  It’s especially nice when you get to travel to the training site, since the government pays you what’s known as “per diem” for your meals and incidentals.  This can be a big pay bump for some people, so I’d like to offer my advice on how you can earn up to 60 extra dollars per day while you’re traveling.

 I enjoy eating out as much as the next person, but if you’re raising a family then you should never pass up the chance to tuck away some extra cash for a rainy day.  Here’s a good link you might want to bookmark as it shows the current per diem rates for all the geographic areas within the United States.  The money allotted for your hotel and meals will vary by the cost of living in your area, but for the District of Columbia it’s currently listed as $71 per day.               

 As much as I love to eat, I don’t see how anyone could burn through $71 for a single day’s meals, unless they were going out to sit-down restaurants three times each day.  I’d be willing to bet that if you challenged yourself, a single person could probably get by on $71 for an entire week of groceries.  That’s generally what I try to accomplish, and here’s how:

At night, I usually just grab a foot-long sandwich from Subway.  It’ll normally cost $5 or $6, although maybe a little more if I splurge on those cookies.  I’ll eat half of it at night for dinner, then wrap the rest up for a brown bag lunch the next day.  For breakfast, I just eat at the free hotel buffet, which is why it’s so important to research the amenities before you book your stay!  Unless I feel like going out with a group of coworkers, I can usually eat for the entire day on less than $10.  Over the course of a five day work week, that’s an easy $300 that you’ve just tucked in your pocket.

It’s a good idea to check how your agency’s policies work before you go on travel, since there’s a wide range of variance here.  Some agencies have instituted a sliding scale for per diems, where the rate for lodging, meals and incidentals will be reduced to 75% after 60 days, 50% after 120 days, and so forth.  Others, like the Department of Defense, will allow you to collect per diem indefinitely while you’re on extended TDY.  A few years back some soldiers got into hot water for actually buying houses with their lodging cash, seeing as how they were rating nearly $200 a day for hotels or apartments!

I also recommend that you don’t count on this extra income stream until you actually have it in hand.  Don’t rely on per diems from business travel to cover your car note, for example.  Tuck the extra money away for a rainy day, and consider it one more layer of security that you get from working for the federal government.