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Replies to: College Meal Plans - When does it make sense to buy the "Maximum" plan?
So if the price difference between the maximum and smaller meal plans is small, the alternative food options are poor, and the student is a hungry athlete, that may suggest that the maximum meal plan is a good option. But if the smaller or no meal plan costs substantially less, the student likes cooking, lives where there is a kitchen and near a convenient grocery store, and eats relatively little, then a smaller or no meal plan may be a better choice.
The meal plan at Wellesley College costs $7,442 per year and Northeastern charges $6,990.
Other schools are much lower. I'm not sure that many people would get their monies worth at almost $36 per day.
They were free to eat as much as they wanted, but eating every meal at the dining hall didn't work with their schedule sometimes. If they ran out of flex dollars to buy food at other campus places, we would either add more or they could use a credit card we gave them.
My son doesn't eat breakfast, but he often has lunch, late lunch and then dinner before having a late-night snack at the convenience store or the food truck.
The cafeteria closest to my kid's dorm has what I consider to be very inconvenient hours. 7-9am for breakfast, 10:30-2 for lunch, and 5-8:30 for dinner. Those hours are very unrealistic for many people, since class times goes anywhere from 8am to 8pm. There's another cafeteria in another dorm that is open late hours until 1:30am, but it's a good 15-20 minute uphill hike. If you're doing a max plan but the cafeteria open hours are when you have classes, well, it doesn't do much good.
Based on his recent appetite, I would guess that the cost of the meal plan will be offset whennour grocery bill here at home plummets in late August...
First, let's look at the big eater who is going to eat 3 meals a day every single day. For purposes of this analysis, I have excluded flex bucks as my assumption is that these get spent during the semester for coffee/icecreams, etc.
There are 16 weeks in a semester so there are 336 possible meals if you assume 7 days a week and never miss a single meal. This student could either choose to buy the meal plan or to pay each time they visit the cafeteria. The price of the cafeteria is $6.99 breakfast, $8.49 lunch and $8.99 dinner which averages to $8.16 per meal.
The Open access meal plan is $2,300 less $450 in flex bucks or $1,850 for the cafeteria. Buying all those meals would cost $2,741, which means that the savings are $891. Once a student starts to miss meals, this saving is eaten into. A student that misses 1 meal a week would realize $130 less in savings( 16 * $8.16 average). Given this, the breakeven is about 14 meals per week and below 14 meals per week, it cost more to have a meal plan. A student that only eats an average of 10 meals per week will lose about $500 on the meal plan.
For a smaller eater, I assume that that breakfast will be skipped every day and that the 10 meals per week plan will be selected. This meal plan cost $1,765 per semester less $550 in flex bucks or $1,125. Given the same 16 weeks, there are 160 possible meals in total. A student that eats every single meal will realize a savings of $183. A student that misses one meal per week would realize $140 less in savings (16 * $8.74 average). The break-even is between 8 and 9 meals a week. A student that only eats an average of 5 meals per week will lose about $500 on the meal plan.
The above analysis assumes that the meals lost are simply not eaten but the reality is that the student often prefers Chipotle, a slice of pizza, kababs or other "cheap eats". If you factor in the additional spending the meal plan looks even worse from an economic standpoint.
In summary, a meal plan converts real money into a food club membership. Go often enough and you can make it work but for the majority of students, the meal plan is simply not a good deal. My recommendation is to take the cost of the big eater plan ($2,300) and break it down into 16 weeks of payments or $143.75 per week and deposit it into the students account every Thursday and let the student figure out how to most efficiently and effectively spend those dollars every week. My guess is that they will figure out places to eat that they really like and find a place that has $6 taco Tuesdays. They will also splurge and go out with friends and spend $30 on Sushi but those times will need to be infrequent as the budget just does not allow too many splurges.
If your student blows all of their money and calls you on Monday begging for more money? Agree that you will send them as much as they need but that you will reduce the following weeks by 125% said amount.
The numbers here are for UF but the approach is universal. Of course, some schools require that a student in a dorm purchase a meal plan or there might be a situation in a small rural college that the only place to eat is in the cafeteria. But if given the option, put pencil to paper to figure out the breakeven and weekly spend and compare this to the individual needs of your student.
S18 will start unlimited. He eats a lot and will use this semester to see what plan works best for spring.
For them, it just seems easier to keep it simple while they figure out everything else. If there was a bigger cost difference, I might look a little closer.
It amazes me what some schools charge for meal plans. My son attends a school that is consistently ranked in the Top 10 for food and the maximum meal plan costs $5,500.