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College Students - How...do you save money?

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Matlock

Banned
Just what the topic says. I'm living extremely cheap now, what with rotating out bottles of water for drinking and filling them with tap water...and eating bagels for a sort of early lunch with peanut butter (individual packs, swiped from the cafeteria)...Meaning that until dinner, my costs are way down to maybe $0.50 a day for that kind of stuff.

But outside of just that line of thought, what else is there to do to stretch your dollar?

I mean, the only other one I can think of is to buy books online from reellers/foreign countries, but that's not even close to being what I figure some of you folks know of.
 

NotMSRP

Member
Water till dinner time. I bring in containers into my backpack and load them up at the dining hall. Good enough to last me for several days. Also Xerox is your friend.
 

swoon

Member
get a on campus job/work study. you'll make like 300 bux a month which is a lot if you live on campus and whatnot
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
sell weed.

EDIT: And don't smoke weed.
 

Matlock

Banned
NotMSRP said:
Water till dinner time. I bring in containers into my backpack and load them up at the dining hall. Good enough to last me for several days. Also Xerox is your friend.

What's this about Xerox?
 

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
My campus has this bonus bucks thing where you get so many with your mealplan. Well, it turns out you pay for them as much as their worth in real cash ($1 = $1) but all the on campus stores sell stuff at 2-3 times their value on average. So I took the meal plan that has the least amount of the BS bucks. Now i can get a frozen pizza at walmart for $0.90 versus the $7.09 I'd pay on campus.

Buy the cheapest laundry detergent. You likely use some crappy on campus washing machines. What's the point in investing monies on it?

Speaking of laundry, wear pants/shorts as many days as possible until they are dirty. Makes the difference of paying $30 less on laundry per month. This time of year, it's so hot outside anyway, so you're going to sweat and use lots of deoderant anyway.


I don't agree with the job thing. It's all relative to your major.

Like this weekend I spent 12 hours programming on saturday and about 12 today on signals and systems. It's like this a lot for me. Work is out of the question. Seems computer engineers get the bulk load of Electrical engineering and computer science at my school. I hope I can play WoW beta stress testing next weekend. Ah, 3 day weekends.
 

Miguel

Member
Actually...Xerox could work. Especially with that site someone had posted a few months back where you could basically add unlimited credits to machines which have a coin/dollar slot. RAWK.
 

Neo_ZX

Member
But if you get caught you're fucked.

I managed to save a ton of cash riding with people in class back when I didn't have a car. Man it's only been a year... [/reflection] But it depends how far off campus you live.

Anyways if you gotta stretch yo cash, don't buy food in school. Make all your own food. Live off KD if you have to.

Photocopy books. Maybe using the Canon copier trick. Someone I heard got caught and the consequences weren't friendly. I think it was either he got kicked out of school or criminal charges. I went to class for 2 weeks before I decided to buy the book or not. A friend had a photocopier at his work so a lot of ppl paid for those services and put it in a paper binder which was cheaper than the official deal.

Don't socialize. It will cost you eventually.

I had a job working 9 hours a week and I got by comfortably. My workplace had such a shift luckily. Try to find something similar. Maybe in the school's IT support. They don't give you many hours there.
 
I had the best job in college. It was at this radio station... they were so laid back. I don't think I showed up on time for work once. And they let me work extra hours on the weekends whenever I wanted - and since nobody else was around on weekends I could just goof off and do homework and get paid for it. Had it all four years - the only job I've ever worked that I didn't hate. Ah, college.
 

Poody

What program do you use to photoshop a picture?
Buy books from half.com. Slanging weed only works if you invest in lbs. Sneak food/utensils out of the commons! After eating at the commons for a month you will get sick of the food so eventually i just cashed out most of the mealplan for frozen foods. If you really get along with you're roomates then share laundry with him. Never volunteer to drive for food runs!
 

Matlock

Banned
seismologist said:
get a job in a computer lab or somewhere you can do homework while you "work", heh. You kill 2 birds with one stone.

Ah, how I miss library work back at the branch.
 

AntoneM

Member
Getting off the meal plan (if at all possible) is the #1 way to save money. Not having a car will save a bunch as well. Don't buy a printer for your computer, if you already have one then just take the paper from your dorms comp lab. As mentioned above, do as little laundry as possible (Febreeze can be your friend). Finaly, get you know your local VG and music pirate, for me it was my TA and I got tons of free movies and games from him (mind you this was all for the DC and I own 25 legit games so back off!) yeah that last one is illegal but you are asking for the best ways to save money and despite being illegal, free games and movies will save a bunch of cash.
 

Defensor

Mistaken iRobbery!
I don't spend it :p
I'm a full time student and a part time worker. But luckly this year I got Financial Aid to help me out. SPEND! SPEND! SPEND!
 

fart

Savant
eat nothing but rice and soy beans

WORK every second you aren't studying (and study every second you aren't working)

buy nothing you don't absolutely require to survive. xerox books or live in the library.

blow your car up. walk or bike everywhere.

if you don't live in a dorm, sleep on someone's couch for four years. pitch 20$ in every 6 months and tell them you've done your part.

don't post on gaf

don't post on gaf

don't post on gaf

stop posting on gaf
 

Poody

What program do you use to photoshop a picture?
Piracy runs rampant in dorms. Our dorm setup a p2p community with dc++
 

Miguel

Member
If caught doing the copier trick...


Cena.gif

"YOU CAN'T SEE ME! YOU CAN'T SEE ME!"
 

Blackie

Member
I don't spend money on anything but food. No paying for movies, cds, and I leach internet off another guys wireless connection. I do buy videogames though.

I get my t-shirts for free when they do those free t-shirts for signing up for a credit card deal they do on my campus. I don't buy clothes, period.

I leech off my parents as much as possible and work every spare second I can as well.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Undergrad Scholarship & State School +1

I did end up working 40-50 hours a week at three jobs my last two years while getting two degrees, but that was mostly because of unforeseen medical expenses.

Of course, I am nicely racking up the debt in law school now. Who would have thought a $10,000/yr grant could some almost irrelevant?
 

teiresias

Member
Like this weekend I spent 12 hours programming on saturday and about 12 today on signals and systems. It's like this a lot for me. Work is out of the question. Seems computer engineers get the bulk load of Electrical engineering and computer science at my school. I hope I can play WoW beta stress testing next weekend. Ah, 3 day weekends.

I was an electrical engineering major (did the computer engineering "specialization" which was the "test" for the computer engineering curriculum that was later created, so my degree isn't actually in computer engineering), and I worked the whole time I was in school.

My first job was in the library in the reference section. Basically dusted books, helped with a book shift and shelf addition (where you basically shift and dust EVERY book in the reference section). Filed updated journals, etc. No time to do homework while on the job.

For a while I had two jobs while in school, the library and the local IMAX theater. After about a year though I dropped the library and did IMAX exclusively since I sit there running movies and could bring my laptop and do homework while I was working. I still work every other weekend at the IMAX theater even though I'm at NASA as an intern now.

Then, of course, I had an academic scholarship all through undergrad and got alot of refund money back from some other scholarships I had, not to mention I was living at home since I lived close to school.

I haven't fared so well saving money in graduate school though having to have an apartment and all, but my stipend helped, but I had alot of car trouble which drained me to the toon of nearly 3k *sigh*.
 

Tritroid

Member
College students are supposed to have money? :lol

News to me.

While my tuition is paid through loans, the book/supply fees clear me out of any type of money I had going for myself. Not to mention my car/phone bills.

But I do have an on-campus job (which pays me shit), so at least that's something. I also plan to find another job for evening hours because I'm simply not making enough money.

If you don't already have a job, and are complaining about how you don't have money in college, get off your ass and find one.
 

DCX

DCX
Neo_ZX said:
Photocopy books. Maybe using the Canon copier trick. Someone I heard got caught and the consequences weren't friendly. I think it was either he got kicked out of school or criminal charges.
What's the Cannon Copier Trick?

DCX
 
Neo_ZX said:
Photocopy books. Maybe using the Canon copier trick. Someone I heard got caught and the consequences weren't friendly. I think it was either he got kicked out of school or criminal charges. I went to class for 2 weeks before I decided to buy the book or not. A friend had a photocopier at his work so a lot of ppl paid for those services and put it in a paper binder which was cheaper than the official deal.


I used to photocopy books like a SOB, the key is to

1. Go to a copy center away from the school. Don't do this near a school they are hip to the game and will report you go 30 to 45 minutes away from school. They'll never know the difference. Also if possible go to a copy center with pisspoor customer service. The less likely they are to help you the less likely they are to report you.

2. Copy the chapters that are listed on the syllabus first. Don't waste time going page by page.
 

Celicar

Banned
Why are you worried about saving money??

You should be out spending money on booze and what not. These are your college years! Don't waste them saving money and eating shit food and staying in your dorm on Friday nights.
 
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