Archive for the 'Saving Money' Category

By now, most of you are facing the wrath of some bitter finals, but once you’re done, you’ll likely be home free — for a few months, at least (unless you have summer courses or work — but either way, it’s different than your normal school routine, that’s for sure).

As you prepare to leave school, try to sell your books through postings on dormitory walls, craigslist, Amazon, Half.com, or other sites. The first stop (focusing on selling on-campus) is the most ideal exchange of all, since you’ll run in face-to-face with your classmate who can evaluate the book and pay you cash on the spot. The other choices are good, but if you’re already shipping your books home, you’ll probably want to coordinate with whoever is receiving your possessions for shipment options. As you may or may not know, Amazon and eBay/Half work on a rating system so your timeliness is important. Therefore, if you’re not able to ship on time, you may receive negative feedback. Be sure you’re able to coordinate all the details with the buyer (if you can’t get your book on time, don’t sell it until it’s in your hands and you can go to the post office).

Craigslist is the other option for local sales. Usually, the buyer will come visit you and purchase the book similar to an on-campus exchange. If you’re in a small college town, chances are you’re still going to be coordinating with someone who is a classmate. A little note regarding Craigslist: if you’re selling items, you can list them for free, but they eventually expire — make sure to relist them again. Better yet, create an account on Craigslist so that you can store your listings especially if the books don’t sell the first time around.

If you are able to store your books and keep them for the next semester, go for it. It’s probably the best way to be sure you get them off your hands. Your classmates will also be competing against selling the books, but you have an edge if you post your listings beforehand (with informative details, such as “used with highlights and notes in the margins” or “brand new, never used”) and be sure to check back to repost your listings when your competition gets in the way.

Finally, there are also some on-campus exchange services out there — look into those as well. Some are specific to schools, so I won’t be able to give you a detailed list of which schools offer which book-swapping services, but they’re helpful to explore. Just get rid of those books. You definitely won’t need them again!

A recent story on the Filife blog shares a lesson you’re going to want to keep in mind about checking fees. According to the blog writer, banking relationships can be on shaky ground: once you’re assumed to have graduated, they may change your student checking account to one with fees.

Don’t let this be you.

The article goes further to talk about the requirements of several banking institutions in the United States. In a nutshell, here’s the lowdown:

Bank of America: Your initial account is a CampusEdge account. It is then converted to a MyAccess Checking Account and your monthly fees are waived for the first 12 months. If you meet a minimum deposit amount, that fee is waived entirely.

Chase: You’ll be notified before graduation about the transition to a $6/month checking account unless you have direct deposit.

Citibank: After you graduate, you’ll be required to pay $9.50 per account unless all your Citibank accounts are a minimum of $6,000.

The rest of the story is at the Filife blog.

Are you going on a trip for spring break? You may be overwhelmed with school, but you should start looking forward to spring break now (which will hopefully make your classes a lot less stressful too!) Here’s how you should prepare:

Book now. It’s better to book early than later, because fares will go up for trips as you get closer. Also, if you’re traveling in a group, you likely won’t have seats next to your friends because the seats will sell out. The sooner you book, the better off you’ll be.

Look at all-inclusive packages. One winter break, my friends and I went on an all-inclusive hotel+airfare trip to Vegas. It was totally awesome and very cheap compared to buying airfare and hotel separately. It helps a lot to limit your expenses by doing trips like this where the prices are spelled out for you beforehand and not after you arrive.

Overcrowd your hotel room. If you want to make the most of your money, have a long slumber party in your hotel room. Get cots for your friends and split the cost 4 or 5 ways.

Bring your food. Eating out is costly. Bring snacks and other food to nosh on so that you don’t have to pay the high costs for eating. Don’t forget that hotels have bars and buying it is not cheap at all.

Take public transit. Think about it this way: public transit is often cheaper than a cab. If you must do cab, pack in as many people as is allowed legally and split the bill.

Can’t travel? Make the most of your spring break anyway. Take advantage of the local hotspots or just hang out and enjoy the spring with our without your friends. Either way, you’re in for a great time.

If you’re just back in the school groove and looking to buy the cheapest textbooks around, fret no further. Here’s where you should look to get some hot deals on textbooks.

• Half.com. eBay’s “brother” site, half.com, offers books for a pretty good discount. You can also use half.com to get good deals on other items, such as electronics. While half.com is a great place for deals, since you’re working directly with a seller, you may not actually get your book on time, so if that’s the case, borrow in the meantime. By the way, while half.com is a great site in itself, don’t forget to check eBay out because you might find the book there even cheaper!
• Amazon.com. If Half fails, Amazon succeeds — usually. Check the site for new and used books. You can also pay the seller for expedited shipping if you need the book immediately, but media mail is typically a good (and still fast) choice.
• The library. Some college libraries may let you take out the book for an extended period of time if the book is not on reserve. This is a good option, but do it quickly. There’s probably a lot of competition for the same book!
• Share. Share with your classmate. Obviously, this isn’t the best idea (though it might be if you have the same class at different times and therefore don’t have the same homework due at the same time. The other option would be to photocopy only the necessary pages when you’re in a time crunch.
• Ask your professor. Sometimes you don’t have money to the book. It happens. Don’t be afraid to approach your professor because chances are he has one or two in his office. If not, he can point you in the direction of someone who does. And that person might even be a Teaching Assistant, which is another option if the professor path doesn’t pan out.

Other resources:

• Bigwords.com
• Dogears.net
• Facebook Marketplace
• TheNaturalSapphirecompany.com
• BookRenter.com
• SocialBib.com
• Chegg.com
• CheapestTextbooks.com
• AbeBooks.com
• CampusI.com
• Ecampus.com
• DirectTextBook.com

If you’re cheap like most college students, buying an expensive computer is out of the question. Fortunately, you have college students to guide you with what you should do, and Paul Stamatiou is a blogger who does. In his article, he explains how you can build a fully-functional computer using $200 in spare parts. You’ll need to supply your own case (if you have a spare one, or you can get one of these super small Mini-ITX cases), monitor, keyboard, and mouse, but everything else is included in the package: a cheap motherboard ($65), decent RAM ($20), a power supply unit ($50), and a 250GB hard drive ($65). Your operating system will be the free and increasingly popular Ubuntu Linux.

One of the benefits of such a computer is that it doesn’t have to be your main machine. You can use this to set up a home theater to stream the movies you stole bought on iTunes.

The price of your machine might end up being a little higher, but for a small machine that doesn’t cramp up your style or your dorm room, this is a good choice — and if you’ve never built a computer before, you’ll realize how easy it really is.

You might have not listened to the resolutions we proposed just last week about how you shouldn’t rely on your credit card that much. Let’s face it: financial responsibility usually starts with a credit card and you won’t be able to cut yours up just yet. So let’s look at credit cards and see what’s important to know about borrowing.

All credit cards come with a credit limit. Think about that as a pre-approved loan. You can’t spend more than that at any given time, at least until you pay your bills. To get smarter with your credit, you’ll need to follow some guidelines.

Get cozy with your APR. Your APR stands for Annual Percentage Rate, and it’s an important number to know. Your APR tells you how much interest you’ll be paying on the loan over a year. So for example, if you have a 5% APR on a $1000 loan, you’re going to end up paying 0.05*1000=$50. The APR only kicks in if you don’t pay your bills on time, so be timely. This is how credit card companies get you and you can avoid it by paying off your balance. However, in the event that your balance is carried over from bill to bill, try to look for the credit card with the lowest APR.

Avoid the finance charges. The best case scenario is to spend little and pay off everything. Otherwise, your balance will carry over (as previously mentioned) from month to month. You’ll also likely be responsible for other charges, such as transaction fees, service fees, or premiums that are part of the type of card you’ve opted to carry.

Read the fine print. Every credit card comes with some long list of Terms of Service that describes some fees and details them out. If you get charged these amounts, don’t be surprised — when you signed up for your card, after all, you opted in. But if these fees are excessive, you might want to sacrifice a high APR for a no-fee (or low-fee) credit card. It’s all a matter of your financial priorities and what you’re looking for when you spend.

The bottom line when you have a credit card is that you are your best judge, so spend wisely.

Earlier this week, we wrote about the 10 gifts that a digital student would want. However, if you looked at the prices of the items there, they range from $40 for the Leatherman Wave to $1200 for the Nikon D80 (a D40 might be a cheaper alternative).

So while you’re still aching for that awesome Wii (the retail price is $250, by the way, and don’t cave for a $4000 item on eBay… it’s totally not worth it), at least you can be productive with your time to make some gifts that are really cheap. DealLocker shows you how:

Buy food: Some food is costly. Other food is cheap. I just got cake in the mail today from a friend. If you can’t afford something expensive, go with candy.

Make your own food: It’s good to buy food. It’s cheaper to make it yourself. Want to practice your brownie baking skills? Your cookie batch recipe? Go on - here’s your opportunity to shine.

Explore your talents: One great idea is to make a collage of photos, perhaps in a calendar form. If you’re digital like me, a screensaver or website dedicated to the person is nice and very personable.

Recipes: The article suggests that you take the family recipes and create a recipe cookbook. Chances are you don’t really know much about that and would rather find them on the Internet. Find more of those coveted recipes (Cinnabon, for example) and create a digital cookbook (or print it out for kitchen use).

Create gift baskets: Don’t tell anyone that you’re just throwing together junk you got from school, but that can really work. Collect new books, buy lotions or soaps, and put it in a basket or bag and give it to someone you love.

Photograph things: Take pictures and frame them! Capture memorable moments and share them during the holidays.

Coupons for special things: Do you know how to play guitar and know a friend who wants to take lessons? Give them a coupon for a 30 minute lesson. Give another friend a coupon for a 15 minute back massage. You really can have fun with this.

What are your cheap gift ideas that still add personality and spark to the holidays?