I just started college this year and I'm beginning to track my expenses. I realized that I'm spending around $1000/month just on food. We have a mandatory dining plan that's $510/month ($17/day). However, the cheapest meals are $7 each, and for a healthy meal that's at least $12. I want to prioritize my health so I usually get the more expensive meals. I buy groceries since the dining plan isn't enough, which comes out to $50-$100/week – I usually get fruit, yogurt, premade meats, and veggies. I don't have easy access to a kitchen so I can't really cook, but I recently bought an electric pot so I can make some simple meals. I also spend $100 -150 eating out every month. How much are other college students spending on food? How do you guys budget while eating healthy? Thanks for any insight!
Spending upwards of $1000/month on food as a college student
byu/imreallyboredidk inFrugal
Posted by imreallyboredidk
13 Comments
Wait? You have a mandatory dining plan that you pay monthly, it doesn’t come out of your tuition? And then this insanely high dining plan doesn’t even get you free meals? Is your college private by chance lol
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Is there a grocery outlet near you? There’s some good deals there, though some products are weird lol. Or try to shop only sales? I’m sorry I can’t think of anything else, that mandatory meal plan is really screwing you over. I think I spend about $500 a month for two adults, and I live in a HCOL city
look into couponing at stores near you. you’d be amazed at how much stuff you can get free or super cheap
Is the mandatory plan for three meals a day? After freshman year my younger kid got a 5 meals a day plan so they would have lunch during the week when on campus and they had a kitchen in their apartment. Last year they would sometimes go study in the dining hall on a Sunday. Pay for a swipe mid morning….have snacks and hot drinks and study…have lunch…study some more with snacks and drinks then leave. It was a quiet warm place to work with outlets for their laptop. The staff didn’t care.
Their college is also lax with people taking extras out as long as they are not obvious about it…so people would grab a banana and apple to go with their one meal swipe or have a small Tupperware in their bag for leftovers.
Every little bit helps.
Do you have other dining plan options? It seems like upgrading to a more expensive plan may be more economical overall if you’re able to get your meals that way instead of buying a lot of extra/a la carte items.
If you only have $17/day and the cheapest meals are $7 each, that sounds like a plan for someone who is either a light eater or only eats one meal and one snack/drink a day.
Get the best bang for your buck that you can with the dining plan (maybe it’s a particular mealtime, maybe it’s meat dishes, maybe it’s the salad bar; it depends) and supplement with healthy and frugal choices that don’t require much cooking—things like eggs, canned beans, rotisserie chicken, frozen fruit and veggies if you have freezer access, canned fish, plain oatmeal in bulk, unsweetened yogurt, easy vegetables like carrots, cucumber, celery, etc.. If you can get a cheap rice cooker (a Walmart Aroma will do the job) and/or a kettle, that will open up a lot of options for you. Make brown rice and then toward the end add some frozen veggies and eggs to steam on top, for example. If you have microwave access, you can also make stuff like baked potatoes/sweet potatoes, rice, and eggs in that; Google how.
When you say you prioritize your health by getting the most expensive meals, what do you mean? What kind of meals are you getting? What are your options?
Can you explain how your meal plan works? This is nothing like the meal plan I had in college and I’m confused
Are you saying your 510.per month covers no food ! You have to pay on top of that ?
So if I understand right, you are getting roughly a $12 dollar meal, 3 or more times a day, so you’re spending roughly $36, which is way over your $17 daily budget. So you’re supplementing with making your own meals.
Ok, questions:
1. Other than the pot, what do you have access to? microwave? fridge? freezer? kettle?
2. Where are you getting your groceries?
3. What does “healthy” mean to you? Lots of fruit and veg? big on protein? organic?
Dorm living makes eating well hard. Students are notoriously broke, busy and have no space. I think I mostly lived off of the pasta bar at our dorm back in the day. By starting to track you’ve made a great start. I think the next step is to figure out what’s the best bang for your buck.
For instance, you can do good healthy breakfasts pretty cheap without much equipment, So I’d skip the dining hall for breakfast and make something like oatmeal in the dorm room. Then you have more to spend on a better lunch or dinner. If you can get your food to go and eat it back in your dorm, you could just get the main, and do sides at your dorm.
Canned and frozen veg are your friends, they’re cheap and nutritious compared to pre-chopped raw veg. Convenience carbs like instant mashed potatoes/noodles/rice where you just have to eat it or add hot water can be great. As long as they’re a part of your diet and not your *only* source of nutrition you should be fine. Don’t get so obsessed with eating healthy that you can’t afford to eat ANYTHING.
I went to a college with a cafeteria that only charged you when you walked in, not on the food you ate. Not very helpful for your situation though.
So you say this is mandatory because you live in a dorm. If you live outside campus, is it still mandatory? Is the dorm way cheaper than appartment?
I don’t have great suggestions for you, but I do want to say that I hate that some colleges are going in this direction (UCSD and Cal Poly are two that I think are like this?). It does make it really hard for students who want to eat well rounded meals, athletes with bigger appetites, etc. If you are living off campus after this year then at least it is an expense that will be over in May or June when you can get off of the meal plan, so just an extra expense for a few more months. In the meantime, if you have access to a Trader Joe’s they have quite a few “healthy-ish” premade items like bowls, frozen items, salads, precooked chicken, etc. Hopefully you could supplement with something like this without breaking the bank. Good luck!