The College Student's Guide to Eating (Well) for Under $35 a Week

So you have paid for classes and books and now there is less than $50 left over for the week, in fact there is only $35 for you to eat on for a week. What now? You want to be independent and not call home begging for money so you have to find a way to have a week's worth of meals for under $5 a day.

First off you have to make a conscious decision that you will not go out to eat and that you can drink water or tea instead of beer and soda. Beer and soda, while good, are a waste of money and can eat into a weekly food budget very quickly. If you must have a soda fix get a single generic canned soda from a vending machine. These can normally be bought for a quarter.

Go to your school library or student center, anywhere you can find a daily newspaper, and find the advertisements for the local grocery stores. These will generally be in the Wednesday paper. If you can't find them go directly to the grocery store but only get the sales paper and nothing else. You will want at least 2 to compare, but the more advertisements you have the more options you will have for your grocery shopping.

After looking over the sales papers make a note of the meats that are on sale. Chicken quarters are normally the cheapest meat to buy and come in ten pound packages. This is way more than one college student needs. A ten pound packages of leg quarters generally cost under $5.00. For variety pick one of the sales meats you found in the advertisements and get the smallest portion possible. You do not want to spend over $10.00 for your meat products for the week.

Rice, beans and potatoes are all cheap side dishes to go with your chicken. Buy the two pounds of the cheapest rice you can find along with two pounds of beans. You should be able to find one pound packages of beans for under a dollar. A five pound package of potatoes will run you about $3.00 unless you can find them on sale. Three cans of vegetables will last you all week if you refrigerate left overs and use them for dinner the next day. Generic vegetables will cost less than one dollar a can.

Peanut butter and a small jar of jelly will help you get through the lunch hour when you do not have leftovers from the night before. These will also give you a great snack option if you get hungry while studying. If you can find bananas on sale go ahead and pick some up. These will offer a way to get your sweet tooth satisfied. If you can find chips on sale pick up one bag to go with your sandwich lunches.

For a drink variety pick up a can of orange juice concentrate and a can of apple juice concentrate. Neither is very expensive and they will make nearly two quarts of juice a piece. For milk go to the baking aisle and get a small box of powdered milk. Each day you will mix up a batch of milk for the next day. This will save you plenty of money seeing as how one box of powdered milk will last you a few weeks.

Find your closest bakery outlet store. Many of the major bread makers offer their bread and pastries at a deep discount. Go to the counter and ask the attendant if they have any duck bread. This is normally slightly stale bread that is fed to the ducks in local parks but when they run out many stores will allow you to pick bread off the shelves at the same price. Some of these outlets will sell six loaves of duck bread for two dollars. Your local bakery outlet will also be a great place to stock up on breakfast items like bagels and muffins. One package of bagels and one package of muffins will be plenty to get you through the week. Just make sure that your breakfast budget does not exceed $3.00.

Your last stop will be the dollar store where you can find jars of spices offered for 50 cents a jar. Pick up a couple different spices for cooking with such as lemon pepper or season salt. You may also want to pick up salt and pepper if you tend to use them on your food.

After you have done your shopping plan out a menu and stick with it. Make sure you take into account breakfast, lunch and dinner. Cook enough at dinner so that you have left overs for lunch the next day. At the end of the week any food you have left over makes next week's shopping that much easier since you do not have to rebuy things that you have not used completely. Continue to watch the sales papers so that when your favorite food is on sale you can grab it while staying within your $35 a week budget.