Now I am not a consultant so excuse my ignorance....but a friend of mine has recently secured a job at a big 4 and was informing me on the rules regarding expenses.I was impressed by the amounts available, but one thing made me giggle!£15 allowance for breakfast? How on earth can you spend anywhere near £15 pound on cornflakes and coffee?Am I totally ignorant to the cost of meals in hotels or is the quality of hotels so high that the bill is near this amount?What do consultants normally have for breakfast? Not weetabix, thats for sure!

I think you'd be surprised how much breakfast costs at the average 4* hotel. A typical "full English" at a Hilton / Sheraton / Marriott won't leave much change from £20 if it's not included in the room rate. It must have one of the highest mark-ups of any item in the hotel.The guidance in our expense policy is to eat elsewhere if possible -- the expense limit is designed to cover those situations where there isn't a practical alternative to eating in the hotel.And no, the price of the breakfast rarely corresponds to the quality. The best breakfasts I've had in hotels were in Asia, and they were always part of the room rate. Some of the worst were in the UK, where I was charged a fortune for something that even my local cafe wouldn't serve.

Just Googled it. A traditional English breakfast at the Sheraton Park Tower in London is £22. Plus service.

I love a good breakfast

Your company suggests you find breakfast elsewhere?! Is this really practical?It also seems extraordinarily tight. If the £15 breakfast bears little relation to the cost, what of the £1200-2000 a day to employ me?Let's get a sense of proportion

Hey, I didn't write the policy!Still, if you're working in downtown NY, it's easy enough to pick up coffee and a bagel for $5 instead of the $30 in-room breakfast at the hotel. And truthfully, most of the consultants I know prefer the former to the latter. A fry-up every now and again is great, but every day?

Well, that's dandy if you are working in downtown NY but in truth I usually tend to end up working less convenient places and I suspect it is the same for most.There are usually plenty of other options beyond the fry-up, which I very rarely have. Most decent hotels will have good fruit and cereals, etc, which you wouldn't really get in a cafe or at home

Breakfast is the, erm, breakfast of champions!

Nothing like a bit of sausage first thing in the morning.

Eggs - great scrambled, terrible fertilised.