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If your school is like my alma mater, you only get a certain amount of food per meal swipe at most dining halls. Otherwise, you may have all buffet-style dining halls where you can load enough food on your plate to feed your whole dorm. Even if you have that buffet style dining hall, meal plans generally are not a wise financial choice. Want to know why they are a waste of money? Keep reading.
1. The Fixed Cost Aspect
Meal plans are typically paid for up front. For example, at my alma mater, you can purchase a plan of 14 meals per week with 225 dining dollars for a total of $1,575. Subtracting the 225 dining dollars leaves us with $1350.
Now, let us assume that there are 15 weeks in a typical semester. This would put that average cost per meal just above $6. That price may not seem too bad.
However, this assumes that you are using EVERY last meal on the plan. Every time you go out to eat, cook at home, or simply skip a meal, you are essentially LOSING $6 since you’ve already paid for every meal up front at the beginning of the semester.
Who knows at the beginning of the semester how much food they’re going to consume over the course of the next 15 weeks anyways? This provides a great segue into my next point…
2. They’re Expensive
$6 per meal doesn’t sound like much.
If you use all 14 meals per week, your total food bill would be over $330 per month! That is a lot of money dedicated just towards food for ONLY 2 meals a day, NOT 3.
Even if you took on loans to afford that, you’ll eventually be paying those loans back. I quickly realized this my sophomore year when I moved off campus and had little money. Rather than fork over $1500 or so, I forced myself to enjoy grocery shopping and cooking.
At the store, I learned to compare prices (not absolute prices, but prices per weight) and to find good deals on food.
Using the power of the internet, I taught myself how to cook simple recipes and meal prep for the week ahead. I was able to cut my monthly food bill to $120-$130 a month by being vigilant about what I eat. I mostly ate healthy foods by default as they were the most inexpensive, but that’s a topic for another time.
What if you don’t have a reliable means of transportation to a grocery store?
Don’t worry! Shipt, a grocery delivery company, can deliver groceries directly to your door for just over $8 a month! You won’t ever have to go to the store again!
3. You Miss Out On Learning to Cook
College is a time of personal growth and development. You learn how to be a grown man/woman within the relatively safe confines of academia.
As a student, you should take every opportunity to learn new things whenever possible. When you buy a meal plan after your freshman year (typically when they’re no longer required), you’re denying yourself the learning experience of a lifetime: cooking your own meals.
Once you graduate from college, there are no more meal plans. You either cook food for yourself or you eat at some form of restaurant.
Like a meal plan, that lifestyle can add up fast. You may mess up a lot at first if you have limited cooking experience, but you have to fail before you succeed!
Once you learn to cook some basic recipes, you should learn to meal prep so that eating cheap, healthy food during the week is the only choice. I personally set aside about 1-2 hours every Sunday to whip up all my lunches and some dinners, package them up in microwave-safe containers
Cooking and planning ahead are important skills that will serve you well financially for the rest of your life if you take the time to learn them now.
Meal Plans Are A Dumb Financial Decision
Swiping a card and instantly being able to get a “free” meal sounds great. And that’s usually what you university wants you to think. You buy a meal plan, they get your money no matter how many of those meals you actually use.
When you look at the numbers, meal plans are actually a giant waste of money. You have to use every meal to even make the purchase worthwhile. Also, meal plans are so much more expensive than a weekly grocery run. In addition, gaining cooking knowledge will serve you long past your college years.
So make the educated decision (since you’re in college) and don’t buy a meal plan.
“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” -Yogi Berra