<p>no kidding, everything is expensive. get used to that haha. it just comes down to how much you value your time. personally, my time is pretty valuable. when classes really pick up, college is not just about hanging out on landis and playing frisbee/football all day. do as much as you can of that in the first couple of weeks because it doesnt last the whole semester. the last time i cooked for myself, i ended up skipping class because the food took too long to cook on those cheap stoves. also, the kitchen is a priviledge, not a right. if someone else leaves a mess, the maintenance people can lock you floor’s kitchen (tradgedy of the commons). this happened to me once and i had to walk down two floors to use another kitchen. trust me, its not worth dealing with all the time. then you also have to factor in the time (and gas) it takes to actually go get groceries and find a parking spot on campus, and then find a place to store them in your room (small fridge and dont forget theres also another person living in there). besides, the dining hall is a social place too. its not just simple dollars and cents. there are a lot of underlying variables here that you can only pick up on once youve been here a while. im not saying its impossible, but if you would rather deal with that all the time and save a few bucks (and probably gain a few pounds) thats up to you. and shawn, the lowest cost plan isnt always the most economic anyway. plus you have to take the flex bucks into account when figuing that out. my roomate would rather eat mac n cheese for the rest of his life so he just has garnet bucks. he spends about 300 a month on food and hes pretty cheap about it plus most of the food we have on stock was shipped up to us from our parents. i spent 1600 on the 125 block meal plan. dinners are more expensive than lunches so if i only had dinner my meal plan would really be worth 125x$10= $1250 + $300 in flex bucks. so if theres really only a $50 difference between what i paid and what its valued at, i consider that a convienience fee. which i will gladly pay. my roommate will probably spend easily over the $1200 average hes been on plus what we have from our parents and he still goes to the dining hall from time to time because of the convienience and the need for a filling meal. i get more food, more options, and i save a lot more time. im not saying its a better deal, but its deffinately worth it.</p>
<p>A convenience fee to pre-order all of your meals, when you could just put all your money in a garnet bucks account and pay less for the exact same thing? Typically, when you buy something in bulk AND preorder, there’s a discount… not a fee. The smaller plans and block plans are scam-like plans which are there to trap people who are MANDATED by their hall to purchase a meal plan, and don’t want to spend more than say… $1600.</p>
<p>When using Garnet Bucks, Lunch costs $7.49 per meal and Dinner costs $10.49 per meal. The 125 block plan costs per meal $1300 (when subtracting the flex bucks) / 125 = $10.21. Considering there are 16 weeks in a semester X 7 nights = 112, you will likely use some of the meals for lunch. Assuming you use 112 meals for dinner and 13 meals for lunch (and this is a stretch… it’s unlikely you use it THIS much for dinner), it will only only cost you $1272.25 to pay for the meals using Garnet Bucks. Same convenience, same food, same everything… you just didn’t give them a $1300 advance payment, and you gave yourself a little more freedom if you decide you don’t want to always eat meal plan. Plus you saved $27.75.</p>
<p>The 150 block when doing a similar calculation comes to $9.86 per meal or $1480 for 150 meals. Based on 112 meals used for dinner and 38 for lunch, the cost comes to $1459.50 Again, you save, didn’t have to prepay, and give yourself some freedom.</p>
<p>These figures PROVE that aramark takes advantage of the fact that some people are mandated to buy mealplans. Don’t be fooled.</p>
<p>im not saying its not a scam haha im saying its a scam thats still worth it</p>
<p>what kind of meal service do you have matt125?</p>
<p>Matt uses Garnet Bucks.</p>
<p>I do a combination of garnet bucks, the employee block plan, and cooking myself. My freshman year, I lived in Cawthon, so I had to have a meal plan. I did the ten meals a week, where I think it comes out to be about a wash in comparison to buying your meals separate and paying for the plan. The thing about the weekly plan is that the meals don’t roll over, so you really need to use all your meals every week for it to be worth it.</p>
<p>Oh well I guess I have to figure out something.
Thanks for all of your replies! They were a great help…</p>