Somewhere right now, a person is tapping their card for a $28 salad and not thinking twice about it.
“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary would like a word.
His take on pricey lunches has been picking fights online for more than a year. It even drew in a U.S. senator. Through all of it, O’Leary hasn’t moved an inch.
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One lunch, a lot of opinions
“I can’t stand it when I see kids that are making $70,000 a year spending $28 for lunch,” O’Leary said on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast in June 2025. “I mean, that’s just stupid. Think about that in the context of that being put into an index and making 8% to 10% a year for the next 50 years.”
Here’s what his math looks like on paper. Skip that lunch once a week and put the $28 into an index fund instead. At 8% a year, that steady $1,456 a year turns into about $835,000 after 50 years.
Now picture the lunch as an every-workday habit. That’s $7,280 a year, or more than 10% of a $70,000 salary before taxes. Invested on the same terms, it would grow past $4 million.
There’s also the clock to think about. Someone earning $70,000 makes about $33.65 an hour before taxes. After federal income tax and payroll taxes, a $28 lunch takes over an hour of work to pay for.
Bernie Sanders wasn’t buying it
Not everyone took it as financial wisdom. To plenty of viewers, it sounded like a multimillionaire grading their lunch choices.
“What you have right now is people who are like O’Leary, who are completely separated from the reality that ordinary Americans are experiencing,” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said on “On Sunday with Jack Cocchiarella” in May 2026.
Sanders has a point about the pressure. Inflation is only half the problem for millions of Americans, and lunch is one of the first places people cut.
EzCater’s 2026 Lunch Report puts the typical worker’s weekly lunch tab, groceries included, at a little over $100. That’s lower than last year. More than half of full-time workers also say they go without lunch at least one day a week.
Measured against that tab, a single $28 lunch uses up more than a quarter of the week’s lunch money in one sitting.
O’Leary raises the stakes to 28 years
O’Leary came back in July with the same opinion and gentler words.
“I don’t want to call people stupid. I want to point something out,” O’Leary said on the “Money Rehab” podcast in July.
Then he changed the numbers.
“Is there anything you can buy for $28 that tastes as good as 28 years of compounding at 10%?” he said.
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That shorter timeline matters more than it looks. Fifty years only works for someone fresh out of school. Twenty-eight years is roughly what a 39-year-old has left before turning 67, so his new pitch reaches people in mid-career too.
At 10% for 28 years, one $28 lunch turns into about $404. If it’s a weekly lunch, the total gets close to $195,000.
When the pushback kept coming, O’Leary said, “Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you.” He also talked about packing his own meals and getting his protein from chicken.
He’s in good company. Berkshire Hathaway chairman emeritus Warren Buffett lets the market pick his McDonald’s order.
How to keep your lunch and your future
You can take O’Leary’s point without eating sad desk sandwiches forever.
Count it in work time. Before ordering, figure out how many minutes on the job the meal costs. For a $70,000 earner, a $28 lunch is more than an hour of after-tax pay.
Price it in future dollars. At 8% over 50 years, each dollar grows about 47 times. That makes today’s $28 lunch worth roughly $1,300 down the road.
Charge yourself a lunch tax. Every time you eat out, move the same amount into an index fund. Nothing is off-limits, but every splurge funds its own future.
Let the office feed you. Lots of employers now use catered lunches to bring people back in. Plan your in-office days around those meals.
Those habits matter more as Fidelity and Vanguard issue a sobering outlook for retirees.
No sandwich has ever sent a thank-you note 28 years later. Then again, no spreadsheet has ever fixed a 1 p.m. hunger crash.
O’Leary and Sanders will probably never agree on the $28 lunch, but the answer may come down to whether it’s a weekly treat or the reason there’s nothing left to invest.
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