Food and the Bottom Line

One of the most frequent questions I'm asked by my parents when I'm home, as well as the families of prospective students, is "what do you eat at college?" So, I decided to dedicate this post to all those fine folks I never did have the time/patience to answer over break.

Essentially, as a (hopefully, at least semi-)independent person living away from home, the choice is one between eating out and cooking. Yeah, yeah, there's various degrees--take-out, delivery etc.--but they don't matter because at the end of the day there's a choice: either pay somebody to cook or do it yourself.

I'm not going to try to pass judgment on any solution to the food dilemma; instead, I'm hoping in this post to explore the best way to go about one solution.

I don't ever intend to be asked where the proverbial beef is-- especially not in a post that's all about cooking and the money it saves you.
So, without further ado, here's the steps:

1. Get the ingredients
2. Cook
3. ???
4. Eat
5. Profit

1. Get the Ingredients: My parents got divorced when I was ten, but they had a joint custody agreement where my brother and I went back and forth frequently. So throughout middle and high school, I had the privilege of watching not just one, but two sets of cupboards fill up on weekly basis. This was all thanks to the mystical process called "errands". Be careful--cooking at school is easy in theory, but that's in part because as kids in the U.S. we get used to having people shop for us.
When you shop there are couple of considerations to keep in your mind; to get at them, let's look at what economists might call the "comparative advantage" of cooking--that is, roughly speaking, what it's best at: cooking saves money compared to buying prepared food. The upshot of this is that it really doesn't make sense to buy that expensive French cheese or whatever, unless you have a concrete plan to use over and over again. Think about how many meals you're getting out of everything you buy. Also, use GWorld whenever you can...got to protect that bank account for paying back loans!

2. Cook: I grew up with two completely different styles of cooking because of my parents' different cultural backgrounds. One thing to note is that you should always be flexible; don't just ape what the person who taught you did. It's all about experimentation.

3. ???: The whole process can be unpredictable. That said, try to manipulate your risks by avoiding explosions, fires or miscellaneous immolation. This is something best done by cleaning (somewhat) regularly, leaving a lot of space to prepare food and taking it slow if you have to.

4. Eat: make sure to share. Also, make sure to save leftovers-- that's practically the whole reason why you're doing this. I mean, it clearly has to be a ration utility calculation, right? Not a frenzied attempt to show the Man that you can stand alone. No way, right? Guys?
Seriously, save it. It's not glamorous but then again, I'd rather pay the price in fashion than regularly drop $10 for a meal. Plus, to be perfectly honest, there's nothing that cool about being irrational-- at least not when it comes to money.

5. Profit: This is where the fun part comes in. I just paid off over 25% of my entire student loan balance the other day by building up my savings. PRO TIP: you can control the costs of going to school. Here's how to figure out where the savings can come in based on GW's very own Cost of Attendance breakdown:

 Tuition+ Housing Costs+ other fees+ "living expenses" (food)=CoA.

The GW tuition is outrageously high-- at least on paper. But that's a topic for another day. Housing is pricey in DC, no matter which way ou slice it, but the school sure doesn't make things easier. As a freshman, you have a $1700-per-semester meal plan inflicted on you by the Man. $700 of that money has to be spent on Sodexho-made food products-but the other $1000 on that GWorld is yours to spend. Make it last, and protect your bank account, by cooking as much as possible.