<p>To clarify, if you purchase a food plan with a small amount of flexbucks, you can always add flexbucks to it, correct?
Sounds to me as though it's wiser to purchase a food plan with less flexbucks and then purchase Garnet bucks as needed instead. Is this correct?</p>
<p>That is correct.</p>
<p>It’s often smart to just not get a meal plan if you don’t have to, and buy Garnet Bucks as needed. Often there’s some promotion for an extra 10% if you buy $300+ right after the semester starts, and the meal plans really only work if you use every meal available- which I can almost guarantee won’t happen for about 99% of people. </p>
<p>Plus with how much meal plans cost anymore, it’s almost smarter to just pay per meal as you need it. With Garnet Bucks, you still get the 50 cents discount per meal that using the FlexBucks of the meal plans get, and there’s no commitment for both semesters like with a meal plan.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/florida-state-university/1366983-meal-plans.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/florida-state-university/1366983-meal-plans.html</a> This thread has a lot of good info in it.</p>
<p>Forgive my ignorance, but my son’s first semester will begin in Jan., so we don’t have the experience to understand how all this works. My question is, if you just get the garnet bucks instead of the food plan, would you still be able to use financial aid pay for it some of it? And how would that work? Or would deferred payment only apply if you actually purchase food plan?</p>
<p>Where is your son living? </p>
<p>To my knowledge, you can’t buy Garnet Bucks on financial aid deferment. However, I believe that the meal plans cost something like $350 down ($300 down + $50 processing fee). If you aren’t required to get a meal plan, you could just put that $350 towards Garnet Bucks at the start of the semester. </p>
<p>Unless your kid is going to eat every meal at the dining facilities, there’s really no point in getting any of the meal plans if you don’t have to. They’re overpriced beyond belief.</p>
<p>He will be living in Wildwood and not required to purchase a food plan.
To understand this correctly, the meals purchased with the Garnet Bucks are discounted the same as if they were purchasing the same meals but with a food plan? With the exception where you can take advantage of the Garnet Buck promotions they offer once the semester begins and get even more of a discount purchasing the meals with Garnet Bucks?</p>
<p>My son also lives in Wildwood - we chose not to do the meal plan for fall as you would then have to commit to spring as well and we read so many bad things about the plan. We do garnet bucks and they have worked great. I purchase about $300 at the beginning of the semester and it goes on their fsu card and can ONLY be used for food. You can keep track of the balance(and specifically what they are spending and where if you so choose), online thru blackboard. seminole dining/campus dish is the website where you buy more bucks - $ for $ - I’m not sure I understand the .50 discount at the 2 main dining halls unless that is just taken when they check out and swipe their card. Anyway, you can use garnet bucks anywhere on campus and so not limited to the 2 dining halls as you are with the meal plan. about half way thru semester, you can check on website and they usually run a promo, “buy $X of garnet bucks and get 10% free”, so if you buy $500 at that time, you would get $50 free; I think they cap it at $70 free. has worked out great and over the fall semester, I think we spent $1300 or so for garnet bucks, saving about $700 as the cheapest meal plan is about $2K.</p>
<p>Just like clockwork, the third week of the semester hits and there’s a new GarnetBucks promotion available.</p>
<p>For every $100 in GarnetBucks you buy, you get a $10 bonus. The email doesn’t list a limit, but I would guess that there is one somewhere (probably around $1000ish). </p>
<p>Not quite as good as the potential 12% extra from last semester, unfortunately.</p>
<p>The email says to visit SeminoleDining.com, but naturally, that site doesn’t have any mention of the promo on the home page (give it a couple days and it will probably update, though).</p>
<p>Pasbal - I got that promo last semester, but as you say, it is not yet mentioned on seminole dining website even as of today, Jan 31st - did the email come directly from seminole dining?</p>
<p>I just spoke with seminole dining - couldn’t explain why promo not on website, but did say the 10% promo was good thru tomorrow(Friday, 2/1). The next promo will begin on 2/18, and will be $25 for purchasing $200 or more. That promo will run thru March 1st. I asked if the system would give you $25 additional each time if you bought $200 on 2/18, then again on 2/20, etc., but he wasn’t sure and said to call back closer to 2/18, but that the system probably would stop you from doing that and during that time it will be just a one time $25, but I will check when gets closer…</p>
<p>Yeah, the email was direct from Seminole Dining. The one thing I’ve noticed about the Seminole Dining website is that it’s constantly in flux, and not every change they make is a good one (try looking up the hours to places now, it’s a huge pain in the neck). It seems like they can’t go two or three weeks without something getting drastically changed- usually for the worse (which itself is shocking, just because I’ve often found myself thinking that things couldn’t possibly get worse with them).</p>