Do I need more calories?

Me and my girlfriend just moved into our first apartment. When discovering huel we were very interested in this product as a meal replacement to cut down on cooking and be healthier. We are mostly vegetarian and would like to go vegan. Because we don’t make a lot of money our plan was to replace 2 out of 3 of our daily meals per month with the 56,000 calorie subscription for $218 and only spend around $80 per month on food for our 3rd meals. Now with neither of us knowing much about nutrition we obviously failed to consider that we might need more calories… If I am correct we will only be getting about 630 calories each out of two meals that way. I looked up the recommended calorie intake and it’s like 1500 for female, 2500 for male. I guess my question is, is there anyway that will be enough without spending more money? And would we not be getting enough to function? I’m not sure if we could make up those calories on the 3rd meals with $80 a month, but that’s about all we can afford to spend right now. Any input and suggestions would be much appreciated.

An average Resting Metabolic Rate is around 1500-1800 calories for someone in their 20-30’s, which is the minimum you would need to just lay in bed all day. Anything beyond that is going to take into account your activity level, so beyond that it is going to depend on how much you exercise, so 1700-2200 is likely fairly good assuming your not burning a ton of calories with your daily activities.
Note: this is all an estimate and you would be best to consult a dietitian or someone with actual experience as you’ll also need to make sure your getting adequate nutrients, maybe a daily vitamin supplement could offset a poor source of nutrients such as rice, that could adequately fulfill your calorie needs.

Forgive me if this sounds flippant, but a lot depends on what you eat for the 3rd meal. I use the UF/UW Huel with water, which is 500 calories a shake. If I added milk/fruit/something else, I could easily get to the 630 calories per shake you mentioned. Huel recommends http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html to figure out your daily needs. I agree with Ronny that it makes sense to talk to a dietitian or someone with some expertise to identify your calorie needs and some relatively healthy, higher calorie, lower cost foods. Since money is an issue, you could also google to find articles about healthy foods on a budget. The big problem is that high calorie, really unhealthy foods tend to be cheaper, and if you all are planning on doing Huel I am assuming that that isn’t what you are looking for.