<p>You guys are the best. So many things I hadn’t considered.</p>
<p>D will be living with two other girls, neither of whom cooks. Hmmm.</p>
<p>She isn’t required to have a commuter meal plan, thank goodness, because even though she is living on campus this year, she’s done most all meals in the microwave and meal plan was pretty much wasted.</p>
<p>I am sure I haven’t included everything, like oil, sugar, spices, butter, jelly, flour, eggs…I only included cereal for breakfast and 3 meats for dinner (I am assuming left overs could be used for lunch).</p>
<p>Horizon Organic 1% Milk (1/2 gallon) ($4.49/ea) $4.49<br>
Gala Apples, 4-Pack (Farm Fresh)($4.49/ea) $4.49<br>
Green Seedless Grapes (Farm Fresh)($3.49/lb) $8.38
Raspberries (Farm Fresh, 1/2 pint)($3.99/ea) $3.99<br>
Strawberries (Farm Fresh, 16oz pkg)($5.99/ea) $5.99
Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast, Rais($4.99/lb) $7.24
T-Bone Steak (1.5", USDA Choice, St($14.99/lb) $22.44
Kashi Heart to Heart Cereal, Honey Toasted $4.49
De Cecco Fusilli (16oz)($2.39/ea) $2.39<br>
Extra-Large Farm-Raised Shrimp, $6.00
Boston Lettuce (Farm Fresh)$1.99<br>
Broccoli (Farm Fresh($2.99/ea) $2.99<br>
Green Cucumber (Farm Fresh, Med) $1.49<br>
Radicchio (Farm Fresh)($2.99/ea) $2.99<br>
Scallions (Farm Fresh, bunch)($0.89/ea) $0.89<br>
Sunset Delano Tomatoes (1.1lb)($3.49/ea) $3.49<br>
Estimated Subtotal: $83.79</p>
<p>Oldfort, thank you SO much.</p>
<p>right now (few years out of school), I spend about $50-55/week at the grocery store, plus $15-20/week or so for breakfast at work (pack my lunch).</p>
<p>What about weekends? Do you eat out? Coffee?</p>
<p>In my experience (and that of my kids), eating frugally while living off-campus only works out if the student has ready access to a supermarket.</p>
<p>Unless there’s a supermarket on the path where your student walks every day when going to and from class, this means having a car.</p>
<p>Students who don’t have cars (and neither of mine did while living off campus as undergraduates) end up living on food bought at on-campus eateries (pricey) and take-out food that’s delivered (even pricier). They will need at least as much money for food as they would have needed if they were on a full on-campus meal plan.</p>
<p>But of course, they’re not spending money to buy, insure, fuel, and maintain a car. Maybe it works out.</p>
<p>This term, USC dining is $2550/semester. We just would give our kids the equivalent of the price of the meal plan (or the option to have us purchase the meal plan for them). They always preferred the cash and would spend less than that for cooking & be able to save the rest of the funds for spending money.</p>
<p>I agree that access to a car and/or market is key to being able cook fairly inexpensively. We didn’t get either kiddo a car until their last year at the U, but they managed to get around with their bike and rides from friends. With a car and Costco card, they can buy larger quantities of non-perishables at Costco prices and save over the stores near the U.</p>
<p>zooser, my first year in my apartment building i worked and made about 50 dollars per week. I also worked during the summers and pocketed around 2-3k. All in all that’s about 3-4k total for the year.</p>
<p>all of this together paid for car insurance, gas, cell phone, plus my groceries. I think i probably spent about 30-40 per week on groceries back then. Please keep in mind I very rarely eat breakfast and I had 3 roommates. We took turns buying things like toilet paper, cleaning supplies, flour, milk, eggs, etc and we shared them all so we really were just buying our lunches and if we cooked something for dinner we usually would make enough for everyone or freeze it. I think she should talk to her future roommates and come up with some kind of system. I didn’t know anyone in college that spent 25 dollars on a tbone steak and my roommates boyfriend was in culinary school! We did however purchase chicken and cook it on the grill.</p>
<p>My parents put about 500 dollars of flex money on my student account and I would pick up lunch on campus maybe once or twice a week which would cost about 4 or 5 dollars. Aside from that, occasionally we would order a pizza. We didn’t really eat out much aside from the occasional late night diner run.</p>
<p>now that I live on my own, i probably spend about 50 a week on groceries however I eat out more now - that’s usually between 15-40 a meal depending where the meal is from.</p>
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<p>Out of 5 or 6 different off campus apartments my kids always managed to live within a few blocks of a decent grocery store so they never needed to drive to get groceries. The convenience of a nearby decent grocery is actually something the person should consider when looking for apartments. </p>
<p>I’ve also noticed students using the bus for groceries before when they lived within a few short stops of a grocery.</p>
<p>On Oldfort’s list, eliminate the steak and the cost goes down considerably. There’s no reason for a student to eat steak on the parents’ dime anyway IMO.</p>
<p>Make sure your D discusses the food arrangements with the others in detail and very clearly. If they decide to pool their money and share the food they each need to know they may well end up not happy when one of them ends up invariably consuming noticeably more than the others. Imagine if one’s a petite vegetarian who doesn’t eat junk food and the other is big on steaks and other expensive food and eats a lot and then the other girl is big into frozen dinners and expensive ice cream. Lots of grounds for discontent. </p>
<p>IMO they’re better off buying their own food with the possible exception of certain bulk items like sugar/flour/salt. </p>
<p>…Which brings up the storage of the food in the fridge/cabinets where they need to agree who gets what and respect each others’ territory or else one might dominate and fill the fridge with their stuff and leave little room for others.
…Which brings up cleanliness - i.e. cleaning the old food out of the fridge. It’s disgusting but some of these nice cute young girls seem perfectly content leaving 6 month old food in the fridge that’s starting to evolve new life forms. </p>
<p>Really, the food talk is an important one and they need to sort it out and be clear up front since it can really cause some discontent and end up leaving one or two of them on the short end of the stick. They might even want to write it formally in a contract between them and all sign it so there’s no room for one to claim amnesia.</p>
<p>For both of my kids it was much cheaper to eat on their own off-campus compared to the meal plan on-campus which IMO was a rip-off.</p>
<p>Our kids mostly seem to have come to comfortable agreements with their apartment mates. For S, whatever he bought and/or cooked, room mate was happy to share and contribute toward. For D, she worked out where everyone could fit their things into the fridge and mostly cooked their own food (one person was vegan, one was kosher, one was semi-vegetarian and D was an omnivore). </p>
<p>It would make for fewer disagreements down the road if the people all make agreements up front so there is no confusion or agruments later.</p>
<p>Frozen fruits and veggies are a great deal, too. They keep longer (ha) and they have the same nutritional benefits. For those who can’t make frequent trips :)</p>
<p>We would prefer our kids to eat good quality food, but in smaller quantity. H always served organic food at home, and he nags at our kids to eat healthy. Food costs so little in this country compare to everything else, I don’t know why we would want our kids to skim on it. I think it is better to eat a good piece steak instead of going to see a movie.</p>
<p>If you were to take the steak out and your kid is a meat eater, he/she would still need to spend $5-10 to buy another kind of meat. Of course, with the shopping list I created, I also left out potato/rice/bread.</p>
<p>My youngest eats a lot. ( she is an athlete).
I think the food on oldforts list would last her about three days. If she ate lunch out.
;)</p>
<p>My daughter is living with three other young women this year. Last year, she lived with two of them along with two young men, and sublet from the third for a semester-she and my daughter both did a junior semester abroad, one in the fall and one in the spring. I am impressed with their organization this year. They eat a mostly vegetarian diet, partly for health and partly because of expense. At the beginning of the year, they bought staples in bulk from a food co-op. Each young woman is responsible for one evening meal a week and they try to eat together as a house as often as possible. They “window shop” the deli/prepared foods at Whole Foods and then recreate the dishes at home. They keep spreadsheets on expenses and reconcile everything at the end of the month. According to my daughter, each of them is asking for Trader Joe’s gift cards for Christmas. The Sunday before Thanksgiving they hosted more than a dozen friends for dinner and my daughter roasted her first turkey. My daughter pays for food out of her work study wages so I don’t know exactly what her food budget is. She has always been frugal with her money,as opposed to ours ;-), though. And she has become a huge fan of quinoa!</p>
<p>Zooser: we give D1 $300 for food each month (we transfer it right into her account.) There’s a Publix at the edge of campus that she walks to. She eats more produce than the average college student, and doesn’t eat things like ramen (both because of her tastes & being conscious of nutrition.) This also gives her enough $$ to go to Chipotle each week & pick up sushi another.</p>
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<p>It might make sense when you look at the need to create 5 breakfast for 10 dollars, 7 lunches for 20 dollars, and seven dinners for another 35 dollars or so. That is already well over 50 dollars and does not include any condiments, drinks like bottle water, coffee or tea in the mornings … name it. And that assumes all meals are cooked at home. </p>
<p>Take a look at Oldfort’s list. As she wrote it does not include eggs, butter, etc, but it also does not include bread. And by the way, I am not sure what bread you get for pennies a serving, but I know the ones I buy are quite a bit more. </p>
<p>I just think that staying within the 200 dollars mark would be hard without adopting a broke graduate student diet of ramen noodles and not much else.</p>
<p>Then it must greatly, greatly vary by area because I have never eaten Ramen and I feed two people on $200. Yes, one of us is a meat eater. </p>
<p>And I did look at OF lists. I also see my grocery bill every week.</p>
<p>Different people need different budgets. I see $200 as most typical.</p>
<p>Oh yes, different people and different budgets. I am not trying to convince you; just saying that if I would have to spend between 75 and 120 dollars a week to survive with healthful foods, and depending if I account for the total cost of maintaining condiments and other basic needs. </p>
<p>By the way, do you feed two people for 100 dollars each a month?</p>
<p>DD attends school in DC and $50/week would buy coffee. The school requires students to purchase some mealplan dollars but the dining options are VERY limited and not appealing to kids who like to eat fresh/healthy so it becomes throw away money (not with parents approval). DD does cereal or a banana for breakfast, lunch is usally a microwavable frozen item from Whole foods for around $6.75 and dinner is often eaten out because that is what kids do on an urban campus. Between city taxes and the cost of dining out, the budget would be very different that for at a suburban university campus with easy access to a full service grocery store. Easily $18/day. IT is hard to cook for one person and not cost effective when you measure true costs of condiments, etc.</p>
<p>My daughter seems to go out for pizza & beer every week. I would really hate to tell her she had to cut it out.
I think if you can afford it, it is better to estimate too much than too little.
A good rule of thumb could be what the residential board plan would be, and add a little more or less depending on how proximity to good grocery stores and how much she plans to eat out.</p>