<p>We are trying to work out a freshman budget for the year and would love advice from anyone currently at MIT not participating in the meal plan on how to:</p>
<ul>
<li>BudgetTechCash for food - monthly/semester</li>
<li>Budget non-TechCash for food - monthly/semester</li>
</ul>
<p>We'd also love to hear from anyone on monthly/semester expenses beyond food.</p>
<p>It seems a bit more difficult to calculate at MIT, given the meal situation.</p>
<p>I'm not a current student, but this might be helpful, if you haven't seen it before.</p>
<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/dining/plans/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/dining/plans/index.html</a>
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/dining/plans/techcash.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/dining/plans/techcash.html</a></p>
<p>-Jared</p>
<p>I'd be rather surprised if you spent more than, say, $600/semester total on food. I spend less than that, and I think I spend too much money on food. If it turns out that you eat like a pig or have expensive tastes, you can always put more money on the TechCash account later.</p>
<p>On the other hand, both TechCash and regular cash carry over between terms, so it's not like you lose anything by having more money than you will actually spend during the term. Also note that you can use TechCash (or regular cash, for that matter) to buy your textbooks.</p>
<p>You'd rather have too little TechCash than too little regular cash, because you can't buy everything with TechCash and you can't convert TechCash into regular money.</p>
<p>I'd say that $600 TechCash and $600 regular cash is pretty reasonable. I'd expect that to last at least a term, especially if you aren't using it for textbooks (e.g. if you're paying for textbooks with a credit card that goes to a joint parents/child account).</p>
<p>I spend roughly $100/month on TechCash (=$400/term), eating breakfast and lunch every day on campus, plus snacks a few times a week. I rarely eat dinner on campus, though, and I'm a girl.</p>
<p>When I make dinner every night, my boyfriend and I spend about $75/week at the grocery store. If you plan to order food fairly often, you might need more than that.</p>
<p>And I'd also note that, while it may be slightly more challenging to estimate how much money you'll need to put on your card, a) you can put more on at any time, like Jessie said, and b) you get to choose what you eat -- I can't imagine a better meal plan than what MIT has.</p>
<p>Following sadoian's first link...</p>
<p>They recommend $1400/semester TechCash for meals?! What the hell?! The $2000 that my dad put on my card at the beginning of my MIT career lasted through fall term, IAP, spring term, and most of the summer, and that includes some of my textbooks! And I eat like a pig!</p>
<p>I figure it was a safe estimate, and the amount listed is for 15 meals a week... that is, you eat three full meals on campus every weekday. Averaging $6 a meal (that is, without the preferred dining plan), it works out to be a bit over $1000. I guess they figure some heavy snackage in there or something.</p>
<p>There's probably other ways to save some cash and still be able to eat quite a bit though... the dining plan seems extremely flexible as compared to most other universities in the country.</p>
<p>-Jared</p>
<p>I will also point out that there are grocery stores - one on campus, in the Student Center, that accepts TechCash, and another, a short walk away, that doesn't take TechCash but has a wider selection and better prices.</p>
<p>In my opinion, anyone who buys three full meals a day from Campus Dining is nuts. That's such a huge waste of money, and probably a good way to gain that infamous "freshman 15" as well. Even if you don't cook, buy some breakfast foods from either grocery store, maybe some stuff to microwave or make sandwiches with as well.</p>
<p>I guess it makes sense that the Campus Dining website makes extravagant estimates of how many meals you're going to buy from them...after all, they want you to spend as much money with them as possible. ;)</p>
<p>the dining plan seems extremely flexible as compared to most other universities in the country.</p>
<p>That's the idea. :)</p>
<p>The reason the dining plan seems so flexible compared to other schools is because MIT doesn't have a dining plan. TechCASH is simply money put on your student ID and is used simply as a debit card. There is no meal plan of a certain number of meals. While this is great in that you can really save money, it's not fair to compare it to a meal plan, because in reality it's just having and extra debit card.</p>
<p>Now on the other hand, make friends at BU and use their guest meals (I recommend Warren dining). They get like 10-20 guest meals a semester that they have to use or let go to waste and it's all you can eat with pretty good food. I must say I ate there about 10 times this past semester.</p>
<p>$600 for four months is like 5 dollars a day for all 3 meals? O.o I spend way more than that</p>
<p>Hey, I have a question.</p>
<p>Is anybody here (or your parents) confused about TechCash? There's this new</a> system for food-only purchases, which apparently is being put into place because of student/parent "confusion" with the current system.</p>
<p>Current students are fairly annoyed, at least if you read the emails on mit-talk, although we tend to get annoyed at anything stupid and pointless the administration does without consulting us.</p>
<p>So is anybody confused?</p>
<p>I don't see the point of making expenses so unnecessarily complex. How hard would it be to balance spending and food money? Well, I guess that since we go to MIT, they figure that they have to make everything complicated just to challenge us. :P</p>
<p>It's one of those ironies. We can do math problems up the wazoo, but apparently we can't balance our account.</p>
<p>Wait. So Dining Dollars are exactly like Tech Cash, function OUT of Tech Cash, but can only be spent on food?</p>
<p>So what is this? Some way of protecting us from ourselves?</p>
<p>
[quote]
So what is this? Some way of protecting us from ourselves?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>More like a way of protecting easily-confused or overanxious parents, but yeah, basically.</p>
<p>The Dining Dollars concept is idiotic and redundant. My advice to all of the incoming frosh (and your parents) is not to bother.</p>
<p>River: Note the fact that I actually recommended $1200 (half TechCash, half normal money), not $600. I know plenty of people who feed themselves for $500/semester, but I wouldn't expect everyone to be able or willing to do that.</p>
<p>I think one of the big ironies of the new plan is that you won't be able to use Dining Dollars at LaVerde's (because they sell non-food things also) -- but LaVerde's is probably the place I spend the most of my TechCash food dollars. </p>
<p>I mean, where on campus are you going to reasonably get a healthy breakfast every day if not LaVerde's? Dunkin Donuts =/= healthy.</p>
<p>I second Jessie. Don't even bother with Dining Dollars.</p>
<p>That was totally my thought, although my parents <em>are</em> rather anxious about it.</p>
<p>Mollie:</p>
<p>"From the dining halls, of course!"</p>
<p><em>sigh</em></p>
<p>Like I said on mit-talk, I don't actually think Dining Dollars has any sinister motives behind it. It's just dumb.</p>
<p>So you'd still be able to purchase food using TechCASH and not even bother with Dining Dollars right?</p>
<p>sunshyne: Yep.</p>