Saving Money In College: Top 5 ways to save money in college

Post By: COYD Staff
Dated: April 16, 2010

1. Don’t waste money on school supplies

a. Reuse old school supplies: You don’t need to have a different binder for every class. Use peelable stickers on the spine of the binder and when you are finished with that class, just take off that sticker and put on a new one.

b. Buy on sale items and store them in a big box: As you know most sales happen a few weeks before school starts. Buy school supplies for the whole year at the “back to school” sales and then you won’t have to pay full price for supplies you need 2nd semester.

2. Don’t overspend on food

If you have an all you can eat meal plan, don’t purchase food outside of your food plan. First of all, those meal plans are usually extremely over-priced. You are paying well over “market value” for the type of food; however, it is convenient if there aren’t readily available food establishments near the campus. So since you are paying a lot for the meal plans, make sure not to buy extra food outside of the meal plan. With all you can eat meat plans, you can take snacks to go and store them in your room. So when you get the munchies at 11 pm, go for the snacks that you have already paid for instead of buying more food. Plus, most late night food is unhealthy and fattening. So you will not only be saving money but also avoiding the Freshmen 15!!

3. Utilize all cost-saving websites so you can still have a life without going broke
Groupon, FatWallet, Currentcodes, TechBargains, GasBuddy are just a few websites that will help you find the best prices for the things you need and want to do. Do your research and you can pretty much find a bargain website for everything these days.

4. Don’t pay for long distance and software when it’s free online

Below is a list of free software that pretty much fulfills all of your college needs and more…

a. Phone: Skype, Google Talk, SightSpeed
b. Webmail: Gmail, Yahoo Mail
c. Microsoft Office substitutes: OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Google Docs
d. Encyclopedias: Wikipedia, MSN Encarta, Britannica Online
e. Audio/Music: Audacity, EphPod, Pandora
f. Photo Editing/Management: Picasa, Paint, Gimp, Splashup
g. Blogging: WordPress, Blogger, ScribeFire, Ustream.tv
h. Media Players: Winamp, K-Lite
i. 3D Software: Blender
j. Video Screen Recording: Camstudio, Miro, HandBrake
k. Synchronization: Dropbox, Windows Live Sync, Syncplicity
l. Backup: DriveImage XML, MozBackup, SpiderOak
m. Calendars: 30boxes, Google Calendar, Calgoo Calendar,
n. Conferencing: Dabbleboard, Skype, SightSpeed, Tokbox
o. File Transfer: CrossFTP, Filezilla, FireFTP
p. Finance: Billeo, Fuxfer, Mint, Wesabe
q. Graphics: Artweaver, DestroyFlickr, flauntR, Google Sketch Up
r. Networking: AirRadar, GBridge, Axence NetTools

5. Don’t pay for more tuition than you have to
– Many students waste money in college because they don’t study and it takes them more than 4 years to graduate. At the end of the day, tuition is a huge chunk of your “college” bill. You can save on the little things like textbooks and food but if you aren’t studying and passing your classes, you will need longer to graduate and tuition is probably the greatest cost there is. So the best thing you can do save money in college is to finish as fast possible.

That’s it for the Saving Money in College series. In future posts, we will share more tips on how to pay for college but for now, we are signing off on Saving Money IN College. Have a great weekend!