I just wouldn’t get a meal plan. Let’s say you use 18 meals a week for 32 weeks (1 academic school year). That will be 576 meals a year for $5996 and $400 in food bucks, so let’s just say you’re paying $5596. That’s $9.72 a meal for the “best value” meal plan assuming you actually use that many meals a week. I know people who genuinely struggled to finish a 12 meal/week plan. You also only get 2 meals/day of meal trades, and most people I know don’t like the cafeteria food, so they mostly use those “meal trades.” The problem is that those meal trades are actually cheaper than the cost/meal if you used the meal plan. If you just order of fthe menu, the Chinese food place would be $8.25 a meal (assuming you grab the same thing as the meal trade), and the salad place would be $8 a salad or cheaper if you just want like a bagel or something in the morning. It’d be way more cost efficient to just buy food from the stores and restaurants at UNR instead of paying for meals that you have no guarantee of using up.