College Life Without a Meal Plan
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Higher education brings forth higher costs. Among the many expenses that college entails, food expenses is a category that is easiest to develop frugal habits. During freshmen and sophomore years, I paid $1500 per semester for a campus meal plan. Now, I’ve opted out of that meal plan and chose to cook. And so, every weekend, I’d take the campus bus to the local Waldbaum’s.
Since I just cleared my fridge, let’s take a look of my grocery receipt that has covered my eating necessities for the past 2 weeks:
From the list above (didn’t add tax and such), I can last at least 2 weeks which rounds off to about $25 per week.Eating on campus averages $6.00 per meal at 3 times a day and 7 days a week = $126 per week.
WOW?!
Keep in mind that I can actually spend less if I chose eliminate the junk food, which would also benefit my health. It is possible even to survive on just $10,or less, per week if I just ate pasta!! My diet is considered luxurious compared to the possibilities out there.
Even after stressing the amount of money that can be saved for food, there are still reasons that college students refuse to cook:
- Lazyness: “Why cook when I can just go to the dining hall?”
- Busy class schedule: “I have no time to go back to my dorm to cook.”
- Waking up late: “Class starts in 10 minutes. Guess I’ll skip breakfast.”
- Avoidance: “I don’t know how to cook.”
Time is money. Spending a little more time to prepare food has changed my budget, drastically.
Then again, there are dorm housing fees…
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Excillent said:
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November 15th, 2007 at 6:01 am -
Elizabeth said:
Just stumbled across this post. I’d just like to suggest that maybe you could’ve made a box of mac & cheese instead of buying the singles and put the leftovers in the fridge to eat later. 50 cents for a box is cheaper and makes more. Same thing with buying a 2 liter of soda instead of some of those 12 packs, or you could buy some juice or drink water. Buying a 5 pound package of ground beef is cheaper in the long run as well, since you can form most of it into patties to freeze and cook later, then use a pound for hamburger helper.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:39 pm -
Lyn said:
Where are your fruits and vegetables (other than the lettuce)? Do you take a multi-vitamin?
July 15th, 2009 at 10:32 am -
Simon said:
Sadly, I had very few veggies and fruit in my diet back then. I’ve learned since starting to work out.
I also started drinking protein shakes (which are full of vitamins?).
July 16th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[...] College Life Without a Meal Plan [...]
[...] college came around, I was forced into a college meal plan for the first two years but afterwards, I began buying my own groceries and made the majority of my food. That saved me a [...]