University & College - Ways to cut spending....

[mavenu]

Cuz of poor Ben, I'd thought i'd post a couple of these....

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://lifehacker.com/5043180/best-places-to-save-money-on-textbooks'>Saving on TextBooks that you need to by</a>. Course, my favourite was signing the book out of the library and keeping it for the semester... Only opened it twice. Saved $60.

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/08/19/the-frugal-whole-chicken-or-waste-not-want-not/'>Frugal Chicken - the whole chicken</a>. Word to the wise. Don't try to cut up said chicken with paring knife. Takes too long. (Yes, I did that in third year...)

I'd also recommend crockpot cooking.

So what other ideas would you present to students going into their frosh year?

[Todd McCloud]

Acquire a taste for the following: ramen noodles, spaghetti o's, and tuna. Lots of tuna. Everything a growing boy needs.

[Michu]

Going vegetarian 1) isn't easy and 2) isn't wise. And going vegan is 1) not cheap and 2) insanely dumb. Trust me on both.

[Brutland and Norden]

Sleep when the stomach grumbles and ya ain't got anything to eat.Keep a stockpile of instant foods. Not exactly healthy, but it can keep you alive when you woke up at 3am and haven't eaten, or when a hurricane/typhoon passes by.Use library books instead of buying them.

[htz31361849782]

Large jars of Peanut Butter and giant loafes of bread.

[mavenu]

if you need Microsoft office <a class='bbc_url' href='http://lifehacker.com/5040448/microsoft-office-ultimate-91-off-to-students-again'>Get it cheap. (91% off!)</a>

You could also try openoffice.org, which is free.

--

Oh, and make sure you check out student groups/clubs the first couple weeks. They normally have food the first meeting

[Guest]

Your university may offer software on campus license. If they do, make use of it.Avoid credit card debts. Ask students of previous years if you can borrow their coursebooks!If you go somewhere, check if there are student discounts on transport and/or admission.Do budgeting.And indeed, never pass an opportunity for free food.

[mavenu]

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.redflagdeals.com/deals/main.php/articles/schooldorm1/'>Dorm decor on a student budget</a>

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.sidestep.com/airline-fees'>For North America, Airline flight fees for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Reading Week.</a> Includes Canadian companies.

[mavenu]

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/08/10/a-realistic-back-to-school-guide-for-college-students'>A Realistic Back to School Guide for College Students</a>

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/09/02/back-to-college-shopping-guide-off-campus-edition'>Off Campus Version</a>

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ketchup+soup'>Not an ideal receipe for tomoatoe soup</a>

[mavenu]

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://consumerist.com/5048121/fsa-ombudsman-solves-your-federal-student-aid-crises'>US Only: FSA Ombudsman Solves Your Federal Student Aid Crises</a>

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/sav/20000814b.asp'>12 money-management tips for college students</a> (actually, they are good for all of us....)

[mavenu]

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.cracked.com/article_16613_7-college-scholarships-that-require-absolutely-no-talent.html'>Not ideal scholarships</a>

[Kanneronic]

never go out to eat except on special occasions, if you absolutely have to buy a book, try amazon or some other bookstore site, they're usually cheaper than the bookstores on campus. find food on sale. food is usually what people spend the most on, so cutting on that is cutting on a lot. go to clubs and orgs and stuff to get free food. it'll save you oh so much money.

[Somniloquence]

I often found it best to buy one edition prior to what the lecturer's said if I needed the book and could not get a good deal second hand (though our second hand bookshop was really good (most books half price - I think I only had to buy 2 new text books in 3 years).Anyway, back to the main point. Most text books seemed to publish an edition every two years and for my purposes as a student all that was different was the page numbers and the occasional extra chapter (normally on something irrelevant) several times I saved about ?10 doing this.

[Todd McCloud]

Cuz of poor Ben, I'd thought i'd post a couple of these....



<a class='bbc_url' href='http://lifehacker.com/5043180/best-places-to-save-money-on-textbooks'>Saving on TextBooks that you need to by</a>. Course, my favourite was signing the book out of the library and keeping it for the semester... Only opened it twice. Saved $60.



<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/08/19/the-frugal-whole-chicken-or-waste-not-want-not/'><strong class='bbc'>Frugal Chicken - the whole chicken</strong></a>. Word to the wise. Don't try to cut up said chicken with paring knife. Takes too long. (Yes, I did that in third year...)



I'd also recommend crockpot cooking.



So what other ideas would you present to students going into their frosh year?

I can vouch for this.... giblet stew, though it sounds bad, is pure awesome.

[Daytime to Night]

I actually find that cooking decent meals rather than easy stuff is great fun, wastes time when you're still recovering and dont want to leave the house and is very productive (and a good social activity too!). Plus then you wont be so tempted to order in

[mavenu]

A few sites for the rest of us non-students (perhaps we should change the name of this thread now...)

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.thesimpledollar.com/'>The Simple Dollar</a> The Simple Dollar is for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds - we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/retirement/5-ways-to-cut-elder-care-costs/'>Cutting Eldery-care Costs</a>

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://consumerist.com/5154278/calculate-how-long-till-your-portfolio-recovers'>Calculate how long your portfolio will take to recover</a>

[mavenu]

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://consumerist.com/5158899/learn-to-make-depression-era-recipes-with-93+year+old-clara'>Depression Era Cooking Receipes</a>

Cheap! Filling! Historical!

[Bodhisattva Babes]

I live right near University Street and College Avenue :lol:

[Caer Rialis]

Enjoy the library. Skip the internet, the library, with high backed chairs, perhaps a roaring fire. All you need is a snifter of brandy and a good novel by Dickins, Dreiser, or Defoe, or a collection of Cicero's philosophical writings. Nothing better in education

[Haor Chall]

Get a job.

[Bodhisattva Babes]

or eat every other day...

[mavenu]

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/dining/06mini.html?_r=1&8dpc'>using the freezer to save bucks</a>

IF I tried to sell you a new appliance that could help you save money, reduce food waste and get meals on the table faster, the only thing you?d ask would be ?How much??

The answer is ?Nothing.? You already own it. For just as the stove comes with a hidden and often overlooked bonus ? the broiler ? so does the refrigerator: the freezer. Why not use it?

I know: you do. In that messy box you have some ice cubes, some stuff you bought frozen ? a pizza? Lean Gourmet? peas? ? and maybe, if you cook a lot, some stock or hastily stored leftovers. You also have a load of things you?ve already forgotten about and will eventually toss, even though you would have been guilt-struck if you had discarded them when they were fresh.

But if you conscientiously use the freezer in two ways, you?ll value it as never before. The first: take raw ingredients you have too much of ? or whose life you simply wish to prolong ? and freeze them. The second: take things you?ve already cooked ? basics like stock, beans, grains and the like, or fully cooked dishes ? and freeze them.

To the extent that you do both of these tasks regularly, and keep your freezer organized, you?ll make your cooking cheaper, more efficient and faster.

[mavenu]

amusing article from salon today. the best of the value menu of fast food places.

The past few years have been an age of unprecedented food snobbery, a time of green markets and artisanal produce, when even casual foodies are addicted to "Top Chef" and restaurants list their heirloom ingredients like a wine list. From food blogs to best-selling books, food is not just part of a national conversation, it's also an aspirational lifestyle -- to eat organic is to live the good life.

Meanwhile, fast food restaurants became symbolic of our cultural rot. "Fast Food Nation" and, later, "Super Size Me" waved tent-size flags about the dangers of American overindulgence. For a certain segment of the population, what once seemed like a guilty pleasure became more akin to moral defeat. Comedian Patton Oswalt seemed to sum it all up when he called one egregious KFC meal a "failure dish in a sadness bowl."

But an economic crisis has a way of upending the landscape. Whole Foods suffered a body blow, fine dining restaurants slashed their prices, while McDonald's emerged from 2008 one of only two stocks to actually close up, with a 4.5 percent increase. (The second was that other vilified corporation, Wal-Mart.) Fast food restaurants like Wendy's have seen a boost in sales, too, no doubt buoyed by a newfound desperation for cheap eats. And while I have no sense that penny-pinching gourmands have fled Chez Panisse for the Golden Arches -- I suspect, instead, they are at home, stirring their beans, curing their own bacon, learning to make their own cheese -- it sure does seem as if cheap, easy comfort food is making a comeback.

And so fast food restaurants have been touting their value menus -- from McDonald's iconic dollar items to KFC's brand-new Ultimate Value Menu to Taco Bell's almost criminally cheap 79-99 cent beef-and-cheese volcanoes. What can you possibly get for a dollar? That's what I wanted to find out.

Will she do a spurlock? find out here: <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/05/12/value_meals/index.html'>article link</a>

[mavenu]

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.cookforgood.com/'>Cook for good</a>

Cook for Good if you want to save money by cooking and eating delicious food. You'll be doing good, too: good for your health, good for your family, and good for your community and your planet.

Eat well on an average of $1.16 a meal for the regular plan and only $1.67 for the "green" plan which uses mostly organic or sustainably raised ingredients (prices from April 2009 using the winter menu). You'll find the shopping lists, menu plans, and recipes here that make it all come together. Plus, you'll find the way to put time on your side, cooking several dishes at once and cutting back on dirty dishes by half.

Update May 14 ? Using the new spring menu, you can eat well on an average of $1.20 a meal for the regular plan and only $1.80 for the "green" plan. The cart cost for the organic ingredients comes out to just $1.99 a meal, matching the food-stamp allowance in North Carolina, which was raised on April 1st. The cart cost shows how much you'd actually have to spend at the grocery store buying everything on the shopping lists, even though you will have some ingredients left over, such as part of a bottle of oil.
How Does it Work?

Take ten minutes a week and make a pot of beans and you've started to Cook for Good. Take an hour and make that pot of beans, plus yogurt, pudding, and pasta sauce and you are well on your way.

Better yet, go the whole route.

* Go to the grocery store and farmers' market one morning.
* That evening, soak two kinds of beans and mix up yogurt, pudding or ice cream, bread dough, and pizza dough ... all in about an hour and a half. Have some warm pudding or home-made ice cream as your reward.
* The next day, cook the beans, make two kinds of pasta sauce plus pizza sauce, cookies or cake, salad, two loaves of bread, and pizza, plus a few baked potatoes or roasted vegetables to make best use of the oven. Do all this in about three and a half hours.
`

[mavenu]

I often found it best to buy one edition prior to what the lecturer's said if I needed the book and could not get a good deal second hand (though our second hand bookshop was really good (most books half price - I think I only had to buy 2 new text books in 3 years).

Anyway, back to the main point. Most text books seemed to publish an edition every two years and for my purposes as a student all that was different was the page numbers and the occasional extra chapter (normally on something irrelevant) several times I saved about ?10 doing this.

<a class='bbc_url' href='http://lifehacker.com/5334002/get-your-textbooks-for-free-or-cheap'>other ways to save on your textbooks</a>

Gamble

I call this "textbook gambling"?that is, with this method you're not even going to try to find a book until the moment you need it. A lot of the time you'll find your professor has added at least a book or two to your syllabus that you never once crack open for class. You'll get half of your books for free by not buying books you never use.

Sometimes, teachers will cut a book last-second or the university syllabus requires a certain book for College English, but your teacher doesn't use it. Sometimes, the teachers' lectures cover all of the reading material and there's no need to read at all. These variables can eliminate a lot of your books?so if you've got the guts for it, skip buying books in advance.

It's a little tricky; at any time, the teacher might deploy a surprise reading assignment. Until you can obtain a permanent copy, ask the TA to make copies of the first few assignments (tell them you added the class last-second).