For anyone who likes to eat a lot of food, the meal plan will start to get really hard to stay on course with. By the end of each quarter, there probably will not be enough points to get a meal from. When I checked out most of the food at the food hall, a sandwich was about 11 meal points ($1=1 meal point). The cards are reloadable but are costly to add more points onto the card. There is a larger meal plan that is more advanced than the basic one but it is about 2 thousand more. So looking for more affordable food might be a smart plan to save some money. Luckily, there are some other options that are close by that might save you a couple bucks.
Firstly, across campus, there is Pizza My Heart which accepts meal points and the salads there are HUGE and could last someone for 2 lunches. Obviously, there is also pizza but, it is super good and you would want to eat it all for one lunch.
Next, just next to Pizza My Heart is Safeways. Opening up a Safeways rewards card will give you store wide discounts that can easily save you up to $10 on groceries. The rewards program also gives you one reward every $100 you spend. The rewards are either 10 cents off the gas price. The other reward is the ability to get a couple free grocery items or more discounts. Since the card is free, I don’t see a reason not to get the card. But, the only thing that is not amazing about the card is that the points each month get reset.
Other grocery stores that are nearby include, Smart and Final, Trader Joe’s, and if you want to travel a little further than the other stores, there is a Walmart that is a 20 minute drive away.
Gen Z Finances 