College Food Budget (Need Help)

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I am going back to college within three weeks. I am having a hard time knowing how much I will be spending on food. I want to spend less than $200 dollars a month on food while eating healthy and not starving myself.

I only have a mini fridge and a microwave. We are not allowed to have stoves, toasters, or mini ovens in our campus apartments.

How much does it cost you in food? Any tips for me?

I also wanted to know where I could get coupons for groceries that are not online (it costs 10 cents to print a page at my school, yikes!). Should I get the Sunday paper or something? Thank you.

It would vary significantly depending where you are in the country, but I eat well on probably less than $200/month (I might go a bit over if we count the handful of times I eat out, but $200 definitely buys me groceries for at least a month).


Ah. That makes life more difficult if you cannot properly cook anything. Is there perhaps a shared kitchen that you can access somewhere in the apartment complex? I know my old dorm had a kitchen, but it was 5 floors above me. And the mini fridge makes storage difficult, so it will be harder for you to buy in bulk.


I luckily live a block away from the local grocery store. I stop by periodically and wait for stuff to be on sale- I commonly get bread, orange juice, and other items at two-for-one discounts. Since you don't seem to have any way of preparing food, you'll probably have to stick with basic stuff like sandwiches. Ramen is cheap and will keep you from starving, but try not to let your diet grow too dependent on it. I would say you can buy cereals and oatmeal for breakfast, bread, meat, PB&J, and other stuff for sandwiches, and ramen a few times a week. You should try buying as much fresh fruit and vegetables as you can get- it's about the only way to get healthy food if you aren't able to cook real meals. Avoid the microwave dinners; they taste like crap and aren't much better for you than ramen anyways.

In the United States you can eat fairly healthy for $300 to $350 a month but $200 will be difficult, especially with the food storage and cooking restrictions you have.

The biggest obstacle is actually that you don't have a freezer for frozen chicken and such.

Most people who live in the dorms buy a college meal plan I think.

It's probably actually most cost effective to eat some of your meals at a salad bar/hot bar place that charges by the pound or ounce, provided you don't have a large appetite. A lot of places also have big servings so if you can get a meal for $6.99 and can make three meals of it then that's actually a good bargain.

Things you can buy to make in your dorm:
Instant rice. Fruit, of course. Canned items like green beans, chili, soup. Oatmeal. You can also make eggs in the microwave. Sandwiches...any kind. You can also cook vegetables in the microwave. Again the limiting factor is how much you can fit in the mini fridge. If you can find a freezer of about the same size and a place to plug it in that would help but it might negate and cost saving.

I hope you have a meal plan. That's the best way to get the occasional balanced meal. Ramen noodles and PB&J will be your best friends. The broke college student stereotype is nearly 100% true.

Look for a microwave oven that is a convection type and you will also be able to bake in it, some also have grill mode.

They are more expensive but would give you more food prep options if you can afford one.

I agree with the college meal plan. It is definitely more convenient, you can get healthy options that way, and it is about what you would pay for groceries anyway. At my school, everyone who lives on campus must buy the meal plan, but they all take full advantage of it. I'd look into that. I don't know what else to say...personally, I think it would be really tough to eat completely healthy with just a microwave and a mini fridge.

Perhaps my school is an exception, but the meal plan I was on sophomore year came out to $12/meal for really crappy food. Many times going to the dining hall I wouldn't be able to get anything better than a bowl of cereal with some almost-expired milk. Any bread they had available was stale, the beef was green, etc. Eating on my own is a lot cheaper, and a lot healthier.

It definitely depends on the school. My meal plan is about $5 per meal, as much as you want, at any of 5 different cafeterias. I've only been to 3 of them, but I really like the food and I've heard good things about the other 2 cafeterias as well. And one of the cafeterias won some award for having healthy and organic food. http://www.unt.edu/newuntfeatures/meangreens.htm That same cafeteria is going vegan this year which I'm excited about since I'm not eating dairy anymore.

I was surprised everyone mentioned for me to get the meal plan. The meal plan at my school sucks and is full of junk food with few healthy options available. It costs over $3,800 for the whole academic year, and I only got one unlimited buffet style meal a day at the cafeteria and $600 a year to spend on food with inflated prices at the campus convenience store.

So I had to cram all my food in at once with my meal plan because that was all I was getting for the day. There were no veggies available at the convenience stores, so I was malnourished. I lost 20+ pounds and constantly had bad constipation and stomach problems. Ugh... At least this time I have a choice on what I put into my mouth and body.

Here's my plan to eat for the week for about $40 dollars to $25 dollars a week:

-Morning (Have a Nutrition Shake: $7)
-Snack (Grainy snack like oats, nutrigrain bar, or something like that)
-Lunch (Have a Sandwich with a small side of chips/crackers. Loaf of Bread: $4 a week. PB&J or just Peanut Butter: $3. Chips/Crackers: $3)
-Snack (Piece of Fruit or veggie: $3)
-Dinner (A vegetarian dish like steamed veggies with beans, cheese pizza, corn tortilla with green verde sauce, beans and onions, or something I can make for the week by buying ingredients under $10)

I prefer to avoid anything processed, salty, or with meat in it.

My experience matches yours pretty closely. At my school, anyone living on campus is required to buy a meal plan. Sophomore year I was constantly malnourished. Probably lost 15-20 pounds, and I was already on the thin side of healthy. It was a huge part of my decision to move off campus- surviving four years on dining hall food would be a remarkable feat for me.

Here's my plan to eat for the week for about $40 dollars to $25 dollars a week:


That looks pretty reasonable, and it seems like your estimates are probably slanted to give you a bit of breathing room, which is good.

no way i could do that. i like my food way too much.. i know grocery stores have microwavable dinners for sometimes a dollar a piece, but i'm pretty sure those are unhealthy.

When you come from a lower middle class family and want to avoid taking out an additional $2,000 dollars in loans, you find yourself willing to make sacrifices.

And I'm still growing which worries me even more. Over this summer I grew an inch, and I consumed a lot of food. I have never consumed this much food in my life. There was one instance where I ate two boxes of crackers, pizza, burgers, apples and went to bed with a huge stomach weighing an extra two pounds. Then I wake up in the morning with a flat stomach, stretch marks on my legs, and I lost one pound.

I hope I stop growing when I get back to college so I don't overspend my food budget.



If you do not mind me asking, what university do you go to? Same thing also happened in my Sophomore year. I am entering my junior year.

In my freshman year, the food plan was great. I had two meals a day and over $1,000 in money per quarter to spend at the store. Then they cut the meal plans to something far less generous my Sophomore year.

University of Miami. We have different meal plans, none of which seem as generous as yours. You can have 20, 14, or 8 meals a week in the dining hall, and a couple hundred bucks to spend at Subway or the food court (the amount varies depending on which plan). Freshman year I had the 14 meal plan, never once used all of them. Sophomore year I was on the 8 meal plan, still didn't usually eat all of them. The 8 meal plan averages to something like $12-$13/meal if you use every single meal, and even the 20 meal plan (the best "value") is about $8/meal. Typically they make an effort to give decent food the first week or two of the year, and during parents' weekend when there are visitors, but for the rest of the year they let it slide. There were times when I was not able to find anything edible in there at all.

Our dining halls are run by an outside corporation called Chartwell's. They handle dining services at a lot of universities. It's possible your school is also selling you Charty's poison.

Do you already have a job right now?

If not maybe while going to school you could try to find work in a restaurant or any food related business and ask them if there is an employee discount. Maybe the pay would suck but you could have better meals.

I went to an open house (to check out a Masters program) at a rural university about 2 hours away, and I was amazed by the cafeteria. Best cafeteria I have ever soon--I would pay to go there as a restaurant! Too bad your school has awful food. I don't know how processed those microwave meals are with the veggies, grains, and chicken, but you may have to live off things that for your university time. Supplemented with fruits and veggies, and stuff like that. I am sure you can make do with just a microwave. You can eat slightly processed foods that are much healthier than other processed foods. Are you allowed to have a kettle in your room? You could make oatmeal in the mornings that way. That is healthy. Carrot sticks and hummus, even some mini pitas and hummus are quite healthy too. You can have salads and sandwiches which are easily storable in your mini fridge.

yeah saving on the loans is probably a good idea, i dont really know, but when you save on food by buying cheap food you end up paying for it when you have to lose weight and spend money on that. i'm sure there is a way to cut down your weight cheaply just haven't figured it out yet. pair of running shoes, shorts, and ipod?