Many college kids can live off of $5 a day in food. Meaning you have an inexpensive breakfast, mac and cheese for lunch and say a sandwich for dinner. $5 a day. That’s pretty reasonable considering if you go an entire semester just at that cost you spend roughly $600 a semester, that is if the student goes home on winter break and has no food costs after that. And the MOST frugal of college students can maybe get that number down to $3 or maybe even $2 a day on food. Which is great, I think if one can be more frugal, then do it.
Yet constantly I can’t. While my boyfriend can make and eat a $1 box of macaroni and cheese for dinner, the same box of me, at the cheapest I have seen is $3. Three times the price for macaroni and cheese. Again and again this is the story. Many people can buy a loaf of bread for about $2, I usually face between $4.50 and often it is in the $6 range. One can buy a pound of pasta for $1, and I am faced with the cheapest, all rice at $2 to $5. When we look at everything else there is a massive gap. And it is not just avoiding grains, if one is sensitive enough to gluten then they have to make sure everything they buy off the store shelf is GLUTEN FREE, meaning that the processing and testing indicates that is has no, or in many cases VERY LITTLE gluten in it. So that means that a jar of jelly can go from $1.50 to $5 or that cereal, even just oatmeal can double in price.
So when I look at my grocery bills I want to cringe, because the reality is that I eat at home most the time and that I am still spending more than college kids that eat out once a day. My biggest problem comes from the financial crunch I face. While in theory most people can budget between $150-200/month in groceries, even if I just ate macaroni and cheese for two meals a day at $3/box I’m looking at $180/month in my macaroni bill. While everyone else can get away with $60/month.
So where does that leave me? I am in college, and the pell grant and other things pay for my tuition fees, and sometimes my books. Then I am left with loans for my living expenses per semester, I also work a part time job just to get by. Which with a semester, (I don’t go home for breaks) I get about $5000 and with my job I get another $1500-2000 over a five month period, until the next semester’s money comes in. so let’s say I have $7000 to work with from late August to late January. I have to pay Sep.-Jan. in rent, which with most apartments in Fort Collins for a two bedroom with a room mate are around $1200/month that means I would be paying about $600/month times five that makes it $3000 gone. Leaving me with $4000. Utilities at another $100 (internet/television, electric, water, trash etc) leaves us at $3500. Let’s take off another $100/month for cell phone and car insurance so we’re at $3000/month. Which is not too bad unless we’re paying for student health insurance which at $1300/semester leaves us at $1700. Take off another $50/month for personal things like tampons, toothpaste etc and we’re at $1450. Which divided by 5 is $290 a month for groceries and other misc. expenses.
$290 a month.
That’s roughly what I am left with every semester to get by, if say I don’t have to buy a new laptop to do school work, or have to leave town in case of a family emergency etc.
The problem is that I do spend almost that much EVERY month to make sure I can eat well. Of course I could cut more expenses here and there, but the point is that when everything is two to three times more expensive for me to eat it becomes a struggle for myself and everyone else in my shoes to get by.
It's not that there needs to be MORE price cuts for food workers to make it cheaper for me, but maybe us with celiac and other allergies (mine include soy, but also upsets to dairy, beans, nuts etc.) need more "income". It makes it really hard to get by and eat everything I need to to stay healthy. I wish I could go buy Burger King Veggie Burgers for $3 when I want something to eat, but instead I spend at leat $6 a meal if not closer to $10 just to eat somewhere where I won't get sick.
So the point is that I feel CSU is really failing people with allergies and extra health related expenses in the way that they have things set up. I imagine even other people without allergies have a hard time getting through the semester, say you without the ability or time to work part time, or you with a sick granny in New York that you fly home regularly to see. I feel you. Also who else has noticed the amount that rent has increased in the last year? When I started CSU most 2-bedroom places I looked into cost about $800/month, now most people are looking at $1200 or more, I have even heard of up to $1300 for studios by campus. That's more expensive than when I lived by downtown denver!
Not that the University has any control over housing prices, but they can adjust their "cost of living" and they could adjust their student housing to be better and more affordable, and they could work locally to establush more reasonably priced homes. Just some ideas, because when a city has only about a 1% vacancy rate it's really hard to fight for something affordable.
Who has thoughts on this? Also, do any of you know about getting tax breaks through the government for celiacs? I plan on saving all my receipts from this month to get a more accurate price count, and I’ll update in October! Thanks for reading.
Want more iformation?
http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/glutenfreecookingbasics/a/highgffoodcosts.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18783640
http://www.city-data.com/city/Fort-Collins-Colorado.html
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