<p>What would be a reasonable monthly budget for a student living off campus and cooking for him/herself? What are some simple, cheap lunches?</p>
<p>A few considerations:</p>
<p>Does the student have access to a supermarket? Or only to expensive convenience stores? How difficult/time-consuming is it for the student to buy food to cook at home? (If the student does not have a car, for example, and must take a series of three buses to get to a supermarket, cooking may be a problem.)</p>
<p>Will the student’s schedule allow him/her to come home for lunch? If not, how many hours will elapse between the time when the student prepares a carried lunch and the time when it is eaten? (This matters because if the time is too long, no perishables can be included in the lunch.)</p>
<p>Will the student be sharing the off-campus house or apartment with others? If it is shared, will the residents cook and eat meals together or separately?</p>
<p>I have to make this decision soon, too, starting the end of August.
On campus housing with kitchens & no meal plan, single room in a theme type house.
What is reasonable to give a 21 year old kid? How do we know we aren’t subsidizing the beer for everybody else? LOL…</p>
<p>I am currently taking summer classes, and though I’m living in a dorm, I am doing all my own grocery shopping/cooking. I have been spending approximately 50 dollars a week, plus or minus. I do most of my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s, and a little bit elsewhere when necessary - I am a fairly small girl, so I think that might not be enough for boys who eat a lot, athletes, etc., but it does cover breakfast, lunch, dinner and some snacks for me. I try to eat fairly healthily, and so I will sometimes pay the premium for quality in terms of fish, poultry, etc., but on the other hand I try to save by purchasing raw ingredients as opposed to prepared stuff, which tends to be more expensive. </p>
<p>For simple, cheap lunches - two things I have been doing a lot are 1) making mini tortilla wraps - I use mini whole wheat tortillas, put a slice of turkey, a slice of cheese, some spinach leaves, mustard, and role into a wrap. 2) making english muffin pizzas - again, i take whole wheat english muffins, and on each of the two halves, i put some tomato sauce, mushrooms/other veggies, and a little bit of cheese, then stick in the oven. These two are quite simple, fairly cheap (tomato sauce, etc. lasts for a long time), and I would like to think decently healthy ;)</p>
<p>I do more real cooking for dinner, and tend to mostly eat fish, poultry, occasionally other meats, tofu, etc. Oh, and editing to add that I also tend to eat vegetables/fruit with both lunch and dinner, so sometimes I do spend more on produce.</p>
<p>In the case of my son, he’ll have a convenient local supermarket. </p>
<p>Thanks, California Dancer, for the figure. I do suspect that my 6’4" son probably eats more than a dancer, but $50/week is a good starting point.</p>
<p>Edited to add: and I’ll also start him off with some standard foods for the cupboard and fridge: oil, sugar, flour, soy sauce, salt, pepper, chili powder, vinegar, sesame oil, peanut butter, spaghetti.</p>
<p>Cardinal, there’s this thread from several weeks ago: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1150988-whats-reasonable-weekly-groceries.html?highlight=food+off+campus[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1150988-whats-reasonable-weekly-groceries.html?highlight=food+off+campus</a></p>
<p>Also, I posted the same question in the Northwestern U. forum, in order to get numbers more specific to the food costs in Evanston.</p>
<p>Like SLU Mom, I want to cover basic groceries, but don’t want to be subsidizing beer or more than the occasional restaurant meal. Like you, I also plan to stock the pantry with staples and basics at the beginning of the school year.</p>
<p>I just moved into an apartment for the first time last week. I spent about 100 at the grocery store. (College Park, Maryland) But I had to buy a lot of things I won’t buy again for a few months, or my roommates will get next time (ie garbage bags, dish soap). I anticipate maybe 20 dollars when I go tomorrow or Sunday. I bought meat (chicken and steak) in more of a family size (5 steaks, about 10 pieces of chicken) for about 5 dollars a piece so I won’t need to buy that a gain for a couple weeks. I also bought several cans of tomato sauce (2 dollars each) that will make about three or four batches of sauce–each of which give me about two nights left over.
Really I’m only going for eggs, half and half and cold cuts and bread as I started working and need to pack lunch.
My biggest expense comes from going out with friends and buying alcohol because it quickly adds up.
So if you’re funding your son or daughter I’d think 200 to 300 a month is fine if you don’t want to be funding nights out.</p>
<p>My son was on campus and using a meal plan for two years and off campus for two years. The two years off campus we gave him the amount of the least expensive meal plan. He told me that it was ample and, in fact, it incouraged him to learn “food economics” on his own.</p>
<p>BTW-- at the college he attended, his schedule was such that he could fix lunch at the apartment every day.</p>
<p>Experiences differ.</p>
<p>I had two kids at different colleges, both without cars and without supermarkets within walking distance.</p>
<p>When they moved off-campus, both found cooking to be extremely inconvenient because of difficulty in obtaining anything to cook. Traveling to distant supermarkets by bus was time-consuming, and the amount of food that could be obtained in this way was limited to what the student could carry (and what wouldn’t melt during the long trip home). The cost of taxis was prohibitive. </p>
<p>Both students ate many meals at on-campus facilities that accepted cash and relied on takeout food for other meals. The cost ended up being comparable to or greater than that of a full meal plan for a student living on-campus.</p>
<p>I wish it had been cheaper, but they and I never figured out workable way to reduce costs.</p>
<p>Full disclosure. My son had a car both off campus years. He already knew HOW to cook. He was solo the first year in the apartment, but had a roommate the second year. They split the cost of some of the staples to buy cheaper in bulk.</p>
<p>Maybe $200/ per month will actually work from what California Dancer said. D is about a size 3 (wish I was!) and is a vegetarian, so does not purchase meat but lots of fruits, vegetables, wraps, yogurts, cheeses, etc. I was planning on getting her Wegman’s gift cards & mailing them to her. We won’t be moving her in, she is already there for the summer anyway in a sublet apt. If the $200/month isn’t enough, she will tell us that.</p>
<p>My D is a vegetarian and did most of her own cooking freshman year since her dorm was apartment style. She has a Trader Joe’s within walking distance of the apartment she will be in for the fall and will do most of her shopping there. D said that she will be able to come home for lunch during the fall semester. </p>
<p>I think $40 per week is going to be more than enough for her. She eats lots of veggies and fruits along with eggs and cheese. Her normal breakfast is vanilla yogurt that she adds fruit into. Lunch will be be a sandwich with egg salad, cheese and veggies or if it’s cold grilled cheese or PB&J if she is in a hurry. Dinner is normally pasta or rice with a salad or another veggie. She also likes omelets for dinner sometimes. Snacks are fruits and veggies with cream cheese or peanut butter or some type of bar.</p>
<p>D loves to bake and makes cookies, breads, cupcakes or cakeballs for all occaisions which her roommates love!</p>
<p>Yes, I agree that cooking for oneself is not always practical - part of the reason I’m able to do this is that a) I’m not quite as busy taking summer classes as I am during the year, so fitting in a once a week grocery shopping trip isn’t too bad and b) I take the bus there, which is less than convenient, but it’s not too bad since I have the time and it isn’t snowing or anything like that, but at least I can take the bus there. </p>
<p>I manage to carry all my groceries by hand - it’s manageable. The walk from my dorm to the bus stop is a little longer than ideal, but it works. </p>
<p>For next year, I get out early from classes on Fridays, so I plan to do my weekly grocery shopping on Friday afternoons. I don’t know exactly what I’ll do when it snows in terms of the walk and such, but I think it should still work…or at least that’s what I’m hoping!</p>
<p>There are a couple good threads about this, we gave S1 $50 a week for food so $200 a month. He and his room mate shopped together and they ate very well and fed others on $100 a week for several years. Disclosure both S1 and his roommate have worked many years in restaurants so they knew how to shop and how to prepare food and they were roommates for 3 years. Another disclosure, they didn’t buy a ton of booze with it even after they both turned 21 and they both had cars so could could get to the farmers market or wherever they wanted to purchase food and sundries. They threw fabulous Thanksgiving meals for the stay-on-campus friends. We’re planning the same $50 a week for S2 who also has spent 3 years working in restaurants. S2 hopes to continue to Thanksgiving tradition having visited and spent one Thanksgiving with his brother. S1’s roommate starts culinary school in August after completing his BA and S1 is in the food and beverage biz in operations since his May graduation. Sorry couldn’t curtail the brag 
I don’t get to do that very often. In 2007 S1 was one of those 3.0 - 3.3 kids but he found “his way” and is on his way. S2 asked me to make a recipe book for him this summer of our family favorites as he moves off campus for his sophomore year.</p>
<p>Just to add some levity…I lived in a house with 12 women in college in the mid seventies and we all kicked in $6 a week for groceries and ate like champions…often filling our house with “other kids” who wanted to eat “our food.” $70 bucks would fill 2 carts every week back then. I baked bread at a food co-op on Saturdays and my “job” in the house was to make the bread for the month (by hand). Cooking is fun! Teach your kids.</p>
<p>I also recommend roommates pool their money and cook together. I know that’s really tough, but pooling the money and making “real meals” goes much, much further than having individual fridges with labeled food. If the kids can make it work, it can be alot of fun and will generate great memories (and photos). S1’s Facebook is filled with dinner parties and great grill outs and great meals shared with friends. It’s amazing what grilled chicken and roasted potatoes and corn from the farm market (less than $20 and usually leftovers) make for good memories. Learning to bone a chicken is a great thing to know. I know, because I learned how to bone a chicken living in that house with 12 women. Food is love and I’m not Jewish :-)</p>
My son is spending about $200 to $250 a month on food. He does a combination of eating out (lots of good, quick, healthy choices in his college town) and some cooking. He typically shops at a local Costco every few weeks with his roomates. They eat well…buying fresh veggies, fish, poultry, etc…They do have to drive to the store but some of the roomates have a car.
Another option is to ship your child staples on a regular basis through Amazon or another service. You can order a delivery of pasta, sauce, peanut butter, honey, taco shells or wraps and other things that a student might like. That way, they can shop locally for fruit and produce, meat, etc. and other perishables. This way you can reduce the amount of money you send if you think they will spend it on booze.