Meal Plans

College meal plans are quite expensive. If you calculate how much each meal costs, it will cost $7-8 a meal. Sure, at your standard restaurant, that's the lower end cost of entrées, but it's not realistic to eat out at a restaurant at every meal for a college student. Depending on the school, $5,000-6,000 is the cost of their premium gold meal plans. That means that 19 (or more depending on the school) meals will be served a week.

But the problem with this usually mandatory plan is that it's not cost efficient for the student. Nor is it a profit maker for the school, surprisingly. I would have thought that they would make more money with those unused points and uneaten meals.

If I were to take the money that the average student had to pay for a week's worth of cafeteria food and spend it elsewhere, here's how I'd spend it:

• One three course meal at a upper scale restaurant
• Two bars of dark chocolate (Dark chocolate is wonderful.)
• Seven boxes of pasta
• One jar of pesto sauce
• Three bags of bagged spinach and/or kale
• 2 quarts of yogurt 
• 5 pounds of oranges
• 2 florets of broccoli
• 2 boxes of granola bars
• 1 family pack of chicken
• 2 dozen freshly baked cookies (a must)
• 3 cans of baked beans (why not?) 
• 1 bag pretzels (I like salty food.) 

Yes, I threw in the fancy restaurant part just to point out the ridiculous extra amount of money that's being spent unnecessarily on the overpriced meal plans. I'm sure that I would have at least $10 leftover every week from buying must own food instead of depending on the college cafeteria.  If I didn't go to the hypothetical restaurant, I'd probably have more than $70 saved a week. $70 x 35 weeks = $2, 450 saved. Then again, I'm splurging, so if I cut back even more, I wouldn't spend more than $1,000 on food a year. But living a life like that is not enjoyable. 

So, if I can, I'd opt out of these meal plans. I don't need an extra $3,000 a year in debt. I'll go the frugal, debt free route.