Can any current students studying at Northeastern tell me how their expenses are, and how much do you usually spend on miscellaneous activities (estimate) like eating out, weekends, traveling around the city, etc. Whatever you think could be the rough amount that almost all students end up spending in and around Boston.
It really depends on the student and what you do, but I’ll try to give some ranges:
For eating out, the first year it will be more expensive as a large portion of food money is taken by the meal plan. After your first year, you can actually eat out a lot and still spend significantly less than your meal plan. If you get the 10 meal plan, you can do your other 4 meals out and still keep a good budget.
First Year: $25 or more a week if you want to eat out a good deal, but you could do $0 if you wanted to save money.
Without Meal Plan:
$1250 - eating in, all groceries etc
$1500 - eating out occasionally
$2000 - eating out frequently
Note: the 10 meal plan is $2800 currently, so all of these are actually saving money comparatively.
Travel: $10 to $20 a week if paying by ride - you can get either a discounted semester pass or a monthly pass if you know you want to use the T a lot. A single ride is 2.20 so $10 is about 2 trips into the city, $20 is about 5 per week. Passes are worth it if you’re doing more than 4 trips a week.
Weekends: This is probably the biggest variant as you can certainly find cheaper/free activities, but there’s also plenty that aren’t “college cheap” but are very worth it. I would say $0 to $20 a weekend, averaging around 10 will do just fine.
With Meal Plan Cost Range: $300 - $1000
Without: $1500 - $2500 - includes all food costs
Boston can be an expensive city, but it really does depend on what you’re comfortable with. If you don’t want to spend anything extra, you feasibly could and still have plenty of food and fun - but I personally find that it’s plenty worth spending a bit extra in Boston. I work as a TA here and I use that money and probably spend towards the upper sides of those ranges - it’s by no means needed though.
Hope that helps!
Thank you so much for the detailed reply, that has helped me a lot!! Thank you again.