A Single Grain of Rice

Once in boy scouts we were given the task of feeding a group, where every person only got $1. There was a pretty large group, but at the end of the activity we had spaghetti, garlic bread, a salad, and finished it off with cake. Each person ate for a buck. Fast forward to college times. When people think of college food they think of Ramen, mac and cheese, dollar menu items, and other bland, cheap, and generally unhealthy food.

There are three factors in everything that we can buy.

Inexpensive

High quality

Convenient or quick

Generally speaking, you can only have two of these. It’s almost always the case that to get more of any one of these things, you sacrifice in the other areas. For instance, rice and beans are two of the cheapest foods you can buy. I bought a 25 lb bag of rice for $8, and I’ve had it and been eating from it for over a year. According to google, a pound of rice makes 11 servings, so I bought 275 meals worth of rice, which breaks down to about 2 cents per meal. My wife hates waiting the 15 minutes for rice to cook, so she likes the instant rice, which only takes about half the time to make, but it costs a lot more. It’s still fairly inexpensive because a box of instant rice would only cost a couple dollars, but you don’t get 6lbs, which is what $2 gets you of regular rice. If I want it even easier, I can go to my favorite Hawaiian barbeque place, and get a side of rice for $2. My wife likes fried rice. I can make fried rice from scratch for less than $1 and it takes about 20 minutes and feeds both of us. You can add a side of it for about $4 when you’re eating out, and it feeds one person.

I have a ridiculous metabolism. I’m almost always hungry. If I go out to eat, it takes a lot for me to eat until I’m full. I’m a sucker for Arby’s. Curly fries are amazing, so I get a large fry. I’ve stopped ordering soda because when you become an adult you get heartburn, and soda is expensive (in terms of rice, its 3-6 lbs.) So I get my large fry, and I get 2 of the beef and cheddar sandwiches, and I load them up with Arby’s sauce. All in all, this costs about $10. Sometimes at the end of it all, I am still hungry, but it holds me over for an hour or two. If I spend $10 per meal on both my wife and I, it’ll cost $1,800 per month, or $21,600 per year. Yikes. And people wonder how student loans get so high.

If you want to save money, spend more time cooking and start your food storage. If you want to be able to afford better food, spend more time cooking.

Enough of my ramblings, comment below your favorite cheap meal! Bonus points if you’ve got a meal that costs less than a dollar and doesn’t come from a box!