How much money was enough to survive a week when you went to school?
August 31, 2024
Me while going through elementary and highschool 2006-2018 50 Croatian kunas were enough to eat and drink from Monday to Friday. Thats roughly 7 euros. Today you can survive a day with 7 euros in Croatia.
26 comments
Primary school was packed lunches as primary schools don’t have cafeteria’s. Secondary education I usually had enough with €2,50 per day.
In Serbia we dont have cafeterias u just have a “large break” it is 20minutes and u can go outta school and buy stuff. A day prolly 200dinars ~ 1.5€
In Ukraine, I was studying from 2005 to 2016. As we know, politics here is very unstable. So I’ll split this in 3 periods
2005 – 2008
2008 – 2013
2014 – 2016
1st period, I’d say maybe at max 10-20 USD per week. For the 2nd one, well, as prices in dollars didn’t go much higher, I would say maybe 25-30. But of course as UAH devalued it felt worse. And finally, for the 3rd period, I’d say 20 USD. But UAH devalued from 5 UAH per dollar to 25. (Now it’s 42)
All schools in Sweden serve lunch for free to the students every day, from the first grade to the twelfth.
You don’t need a penny.
My kids school lunch costs 5-5,50€
They take a lunch box for recess, as most kids do here. Buying something to eat during recess would cost around 3-5€ too and they would have to stand in line for half the recess so they prefer to take something from home.
When I went to Uni almost 20 years ago, lunch in the cafeteria costed around 3€ and it was really good. You could buy snacks throughout the day for 2-3€. A döner was around 3€ and today you pay 7,50€
School lunch is free for kids going to elementary- and high school in Sweden. Most schools has a canteen where warm lunch is served (and if the school doesn’t have a canteen of their own they need to sort out lunch in another way).
Our school canteen had a fixed price of iirc 3.60€ per dish. Which then also was the price of a döner kebab.
Well in middle school I didn’t get any money 90% of the time, so I just ate my packed lunch or didn’t eat at all (my grandma made really crappy sandwiches). In high school I’d get maybe 5-10 RON/day at best (so 1-2€). It meant I could buy a sandwich or a coffee and a croissant or something, at the small store within the school.
They then closed that and we just had vending machines. I got a part time job halfway through highschool so for about a year and a half is have around 400RON (80€) a month of my own money. Since I didn’t spend money every single day, i started getting pizza or a small meal at a restaurant now and then
I survived 0 euros per week on average. Sometimes I had packed sandwiches which I didn’t like. If I asked nicely I could get some small sum like 0.3-0.5 euros.
I ate mostly after coming back to home and before.
It was in Poland.
Back in secondary school we only had one day a week with afternoon classes. The only available food source outside of school was McDonalds. I think the McMenu was around 5€ back then.
During my apprenticeship I remember 20€ lasting me all week. Now I can’t even eat out one day without spending almost double by myself
Zero. School lunches didn’t exist back then, everyone ate at home. I didn’t have to spend any money on food or drink (though I would sometimes buy a coffee from the vending machine in our school’s lobby for 5 shillings, which is about 35 cents).
I ate quite rarely at school and always had big breakfast and then lunch at home. So I didn’t really need it during the day. My parents sometimes gave me something, but I saved it for the holidays.
I have no idea because that very much wasn’t an age where I really had to even think about this stuff and school lunches aren’t that common here.
My grandma made breakfast and lunch for me every weekday except when I wanted to get take-out from one of my favorite places on my way back from school. School was out by 1 pm at the latest until grade 10, after which I would drive home in between classes in my motorscooter or (later) car to eat lunch at home w/ grandma when I had classes in the afternoon.
Sometimes I’d get like a pretzel or Schnitzelbrötchen (bread bun with schnitzel) at our cafeteria, but this was really more to satisfy cravings and nothing I would budget for. Not that it was necessary either for those few euros.
When I would get take out on my way home, it was something like 4 or 5 euros for a Currywurst with a large portion of fries. Schnitzelbrötchen at the cafeteria was probably something like 2 euros. The last school I went to also offered proper school lunches, but you had to like order a day in advance and my grandma would always cook whatever I wanted, so I never had a reason to try and thus don’t remember any prices. It definitely wasn’t something a lot of people used, but I think nowadays its a bit more common.
Croatia – elementary school in the 90s, our parents paid for the school lunches I think twice a year, it was something like 300 – 500 kuna for half a school year. So we didn’t need any money on us, that was paid at the beginning of the year basically, and then again at the beginning of the second half. We had a school cafeteria, which was basically just a large hall which had tables (younger kids got smaller tables and chairs, older kids got taller tables and no chairs).
High school was in the first half of 2000s. We didn’t have paid school lunches anymore, and I didn’t get any allowance. Money was very tight. So I ate a breakfast at home before school, then after school went to my grandma’s for lunch. I would sometimes maybe get some money from my grandma, and buy myself a langos at the kiosk outside of the school, they were initially 3 kuna, then they raised the prices to 5 kuna near the end of my high school.
When I went to primary school in Germany I didn’t get any money at all. I got some bread / tomatoes.
When I was at university and living completely on my own (2009-2014), my father supported me very well. Economy was not good and I thought he might get unemployed, so I lived frugality : went to converences/meetups/coding competitions with snacks. Bought no meat, no sweets.
I think the cheap main dish at my university was about 2.70€. I brought tap water from home. I also ate at home often. Milk was 0.50€/L, IIRC. Cereals… Maybe 1.70€/kg? I guess I needed about 0.4L of milk + 300g cereals per day.
2kg of apples maybe 1€ and I ate 1-2 apples a day. I often cooked instant vegetable spring rolls with rice or peas/carrots with cheap fish.
Overall, I guess I spent about 3€/day on food. That would be 90€/month. Probably less.
I was super fit + slim at the time 😁
Late 1990s. 0 was enough 🙂 We had no money to waste on overpriced food. I skipped lunch and breakfast most of the time. I ate enough when I got home.
I think I spent about a pound a day on lunch (e.g. pie chips and beans or a plain Italian roll, Boursin to spread, packet of crisps, Apple Tango – the cafeteria had full meals for about 80p as well, but it was nicer to go to the shops) and a pound a day on fags (10 B&H). I think the cigs alone would be about a tenner these days.
Also Croatian.
High school from 2001 to 2005.
Got 50 kunas (6-7eur) a week for lunch. Any leftover plus another 50 would give me good time on Saturday evening going out
Elementary school 2-3€ ( enough for a gum, snacks or a soda 1-2x a week)
Highschool 5-10€ ( coffee and a couple of snacks 1-2times a week)
University 35€ ( capital city, enough for groceries and some coffee, fast food, snacks and public transportation)
When I was in elementary I was usually getting 5 PLN per day to school from my parents. I learned how to manage money back then lol
In England, high school 98-03. Lunch could range from 55p (baked potato with topping & school cake) to £1.50 (pizza, chips & cake/ custom sandwich & chocolate bar). Drinks could range from free to £1.
I was living in a dormitory since I was 15, i remember that 3 meals per day were around 200 pln/month in early 00s. It was around 60 USD ? In elementary school month of lunches was around 100 pln, but majority of kids were too poor to pay even that so they were eating for free(for some it was their only decent meal during the day).
Not at school but working as an AuPair in the Netherlands in 2008/9, I got €350 per month. To think that, that was still the going rate a decade later (not sure about now), makes me shudder in my boots!!
Depending, how you look at it. In elementary perhaps , but I didn’t really need to buy anything. I highschool 50kn was definetly not enough, and i was in 2008-2012 in highschool
In primary school, everyone brought a packed lunch and no food was served.
In secondary school (mid to late 2010s), sometimes I brought a packed lunch and other times I ate at the canteen. The food must have been partially subsidised somehow because the prices did not reflect market prices. If I recall correctly, a chicken fillet roll cost €2. €5 or €6 would probably have covered a day’s food.
Some students qualified for free meals based on family circumstances.
I’d bring packed lunches, so nothing. But if you wanted to buy lunch at school or near it, it was roughly 25€/week, maybe a bit less (in Ireland)
26 comments
Primary school was packed lunches as primary schools don’t have cafeteria’s. Secondary education I usually had enough with €2,50 per day.
In Serbia we dont have cafeterias u just have a “large break” it is 20minutes and u can go outta school and buy stuff. A day prolly 200dinars ~ 1.5€
In Ukraine, I was studying from 2005 to 2016. As we know, politics here is very unstable. So I’ll split this in 3 periods
2005 – 2008
2008 – 2013
2014 – 2016
1st period, I’d say maybe at max 10-20 USD per week. For the 2nd one, well, as prices in dollars didn’t go much higher, I would say maybe 25-30. But of course as UAH devalued it felt worse. And finally, for the 3rd period, I’d say 20 USD. But UAH devalued from 5 UAH per dollar to 25. (Now it’s 42)
All schools in Sweden serve lunch for free to the students every day, from the first grade to the twelfth.
You don’t need a penny.
My kids school lunch costs 5-5,50€
They take a lunch box for recess, as most kids do here. Buying something to eat during recess would cost around 3-5€ too and they would have to stand in line for half the recess so they prefer to take something from home.
When I went to Uni almost 20 years ago, lunch in the cafeteria costed around 3€ and it was really good. You could buy snacks throughout the day for 2-3€. A döner was around 3€ and today you pay 7,50€
School lunch is free for kids going to elementary- and high school in Sweden. Most schools has a canteen where warm lunch is served (and if the school doesn’t have a canteen of their own they need to sort out lunch in another way).
Our school canteen had a fixed price of iirc 3.60€ per dish. Which then also was the price of a döner kebab.
Well in middle school I didn’t get any money 90% of the time, so I just ate my packed lunch or didn’t eat at all (my grandma made really crappy sandwiches). In high school I’d get maybe 5-10 RON/day at best (so 1-2€). It meant I could buy a sandwich or a coffee and a croissant or something, at the small store within the school.
They then closed that and we just had vending machines. I got a part time job halfway through highschool so for about a year and a half is have around 400RON (80€) a month of my own money. Since I didn’t spend money every single day, i started getting pizza or a small meal at a restaurant now and then
I survived 0 euros per week on average. Sometimes I had packed sandwiches which I didn’t like. If I asked nicely I could get some small sum like 0.3-0.5 euros.
I ate mostly after coming back to home and before.
It was in Poland.
Back in secondary school we only had one day a week with afternoon classes. The only available food source outside of school was McDonalds. I think the McMenu was around 5€ back then.
During my apprenticeship I remember 20€ lasting me all week. Now I can’t even eat out one day without spending almost double by myself
Zero. School lunches didn’t exist back then, everyone ate at home. I didn’t have to spend any money on food or drink (though I would sometimes buy a coffee from the vending machine in our school’s lobby for 5 shillings, which is about 35 cents).
I ate quite rarely at school and always had big breakfast and then lunch at home. So I didn’t really need it during the day. My parents sometimes gave me something, but I saved it for the holidays.
I have no idea because that very much wasn’t an age where I really had to even think about this stuff and school lunches aren’t that common here.
My grandma made breakfast and lunch for me every weekday except when I wanted to get take-out from one of my favorite places on my way back from school. School was out by 1 pm at the latest until grade 10, after which I would drive home in between classes in my motorscooter or (later) car to eat lunch at home w/ grandma when I had classes in the afternoon.
Sometimes I’d get like a pretzel or Schnitzelbrötchen (bread bun with schnitzel) at our cafeteria, but this was really more to satisfy cravings and nothing I would budget for. Not that it was necessary either for those few euros.
When I would get take out on my way home, it was something like 4 or 5 euros for a Currywurst with a large portion of fries. Schnitzelbrötchen at the cafeteria was probably something like 2 euros. The last school I went to also offered proper school lunches, but you had to like order a day in advance and my grandma would always cook whatever I wanted, so I never had a reason to try and thus don’t remember any prices. It definitely wasn’t something a lot of people used, but I think nowadays its a bit more common.
Croatia – elementary school in the 90s, our parents paid for the school lunches I think twice a year, it was something like 300 – 500 kuna for half a school year. So we didn’t need any money on us, that was paid at the beginning of the year basically, and then again at the beginning of the second half. We had a school cafeteria, which was basically just a large hall which had tables (younger kids got smaller tables and chairs, older kids got taller tables and no chairs).
High school was in the first half of 2000s. We didn’t have paid school lunches anymore, and I didn’t get any allowance. Money was very tight. So I ate a breakfast at home before school, then after school went to my grandma’s for lunch. I would sometimes maybe get some money from my grandma, and buy myself a langos at the kiosk outside of the school, they were initially 3 kuna, then they raised the prices to 5 kuna near the end of my high school.
When I went to primary school in Germany I didn’t get any money at all. I got some bread / tomatoes.
When I was at university and living completely on my own (2009-2014), my father supported me very well. Economy was not good and I thought he might get unemployed, so I lived frugality : went to converences/meetups/coding competitions with snacks. Bought no meat, no sweets.
I think the cheap main dish at my university was about 2.70€. I brought tap water from home. I also ate at home often. Milk was 0.50€/L, IIRC. Cereals… Maybe 1.70€/kg? I guess I needed about 0.4L of milk + 300g cereals per day.
2kg of apples maybe 1€ and I ate 1-2 apples a day. I often cooked instant vegetable spring rolls with rice or peas/carrots with cheap fish.
Overall, I guess I spent about 3€/day on food. That would be 90€/month. Probably less.
I was super fit + slim at the time 😁
Late 1990s. 0 was enough 🙂 We had no money to waste on overpriced food. I skipped lunch and breakfast most of the time. I ate enough when I got home.
I think I spent about a pound a day on lunch (e.g. pie chips and beans or a plain Italian roll, Boursin to spread, packet of crisps, Apple Tango – the cafeteria had full meals for about 80p as well, but it was nicer to go to the shops) and a pound a day on fags (10 B&H). I think the cigs alone would be about a tenner these days.
Also Croatian.
High school from 2001 to 2005.
Got 50 kunas (6-7eur) a week for lunch. Any leftover plus another 50 would give me good time on Saturday evening going out
Elementary school 2-3€ ( enough for a gum, snacks or a soda 1-2x a week)
Highschool 5-10€ ( coffee and a couple of snacks 1-2times a week)
University 35€ ( capital city, enough for groceries and some coffee, fast food, snacks and public transportation)
When I was in elementary I was usually getting 5 PLN per day to school from my parents. I learned how to manage money back then lol
In England, high school 98-03. Lunch could range from 55p (baked potato with topping & school cake) to £1.50 (pizza, chips & cake/ custom sandwich & chocolate bar). Drinks could range from free to £1.
I was living in a dormitory since I was 15, i remember that 3 meals per day were around 200 pln/month in early 00s. It was around 60 USD ? In elementary school month of lunches was around 100 pln, but majority of kids were too poor to pay even that so they were eating for free(for some it was their only decent meal during the day).
Not at school but working as an AuPair in the Netherlands in 2008/9, I got €350 per month. To think that, that was still the going rate a decade later (not sure about now), makes me shudder in my boots!!
Depending, how you look at it. In elementary perhaps , but I didn’t really need to buy anything. I highschool 50kn was definetly not enough, and i was in 2008-2012 in highschool
In primary school, everyone brought a packed lunch and no food was served.
In secondary school (mid to late 2010s), sometimes I brought a packed lunch and other times I ate at the canteen. The food must have been partially subsidised somehow because the prices did not reflect market prices. If I recall correctly, a chicken fillet roll cost €2. €5 or €6 would probably have covered a day’s food.
Some students qualified for free meals based on family circumstances.
I’d bring packed lunches, so nothing. But if you wanted to buy lunch at school or near it, it was roughly 25€/week, maybe a bit less (in Ireland)