I don't think this is of any particular use to anyone reading this, but a friend getting her first apartment asked me for advice about cooking for yourself affordably, so to sum it up --

Stop buying boneless skinless chicken breasts. Where I live, they're the same price as steak, literally three times the cost of chicken on the bone, for the luxury of someone else's thirty seconds of labor. If I can't talk you out of cooking white meat, at least stop overpaying for it.

The best bet, really, is to buy a whole chicken. It only takes an hour to cook, only two or three minutes of which require any attention from you. Cold chicken is better than cold beef or cold pork, and you can make chicken salad, chicken sandwiches, chicken soup, chicken fried rice, during the week. It'll cost you about the same as lunch at Taco Bell.

Stop being grossed out about food.

Stop being grossed out about food.

Stop being grossed out about food.

You can't be an adult if you can't cook, and you can't cook much if food makes you say ew. Most people think raw chicken is weird to handle at first, but you get over it quickly unless you continue to indulge in the revulsion. It just isn't a big deal. If food grosses you out, you'll wind up spending more paying other people to touch it for you than you are on the food itself, even if you're not eating out -- and that's just ridiculous, especially for anyone on a budget. This is why so many people rely on unhealthy things like Hot Pockets for their fast cheap meals -- they don't require premeditation or physical contact with ingredients.

Stop thinking in terms of recipes. If you think in terms of recipes, you won't get past "oh I can't make that because I don't have X." Take some of that leftover chicken and toss it in the pan with leftover rice, soy sauce, and whatever vegetables you have around. Don't skip fried rice just because you don't have any eggs or onions.

When you're first starting cooking, perceived time-consumption will be greater than once you're used to it, and you'll come home feeling unmotivated and will wind up ordering pizza or eating ice cream. Either fight that for a few months, or shift as much of your cooking to the weekend as possible, and get over any reluctance about eating leftovers. Making something like a chicken -- as opposed to a pot of stew -- is an especially good thing because it's flexible, you can do multiple things with the "leftovers."

Stop being grossed out by food! Given the speed with which some people abandon leftovers, you'd think that cooking actually reduced the shelf life of food.

With the exception of lasagna, Asian noodle dishes keep better than Italian pasta dishes.

Learn to make soup, because it's pretty easy to make a single serving of it.

Rice poisoning is not uncommon. It's caused by bacteria which thrive in cooked rice left at room temperature for long periods. Don't leave your pot of rice on the stove overnight -- put it in the fridge.

Keep rice, noodles, a bag of frozen peas, a sauce of some kind, and Zip-Loc freezer bags on hand. The best way to buy meat is to buy the "family packs" (when applicable) and redivide them among the Zip-Loc bags, freezing everything you aren't going to use the next day. The bags are handy for leftovers too.

Like I said, this is probably all obvious to anyone reading this.