I am in the process of cutting back my somewhat ridiculous spending habit...I mean seriously five debit card swipes a day!!! And while I fully love saving money (when I try), I refuse to sacrifice my daily pleasures for lack of funds. So here are a few of my favorite ways to get by on a college budget:
- Itunes - Between picks of the week, free trailers for your Ipod, and podcasts this is a mecca for those who like free things. Bonus for those who go to Starbucks and pick up those free music selections they have at the counter. Podcasts are my favorite by far of the free things you can get off Itunes here are a few of my favorites: The MastHead with Marie Claire, How-To Girl (my newest favorite!), Frommers, Fordor, ModTV
- Gossip Rags - So most people know I absolutely love to read celebrity gossip and wont settle for being kept in the dark when it comes to my favorite Britney trash talk. Needless to say the best places to find it when scrimping is online. Here are some of my faves: http://www.perezhilton.com/, http://www.popsugar.com/, http://www.people.com/
- Magazines - These are my complete and utter guilty pleasure and also the biggest waste of my money. I find that there are two extremely great places for me to read free magazines...the gym and my locale bookstore's coffee area. Enough said
- Movies - While going out to one is great and the in the grocery store kiosks make Blockbuster's look like the biggest money suckers ever...it is still nice to save as much as one can on entertainment these days. I find that onDemand has great movies under the "Free Movie" section and I recently discovered if you have one of the premium channels you also get a whole other section of free movies (Newsies, anyone?!). In addition to this there are also usually great selections of movies at local libraries (see next section on libraries).
- Libraries - I cannot get enough of the Boston Public Library (http://www.bpl.org/). I can take out movies, books, CDs, and get into a lot of museums on passes. A lot of other libraries are similar to the BPL...check yours out
- Museums - A lot of museums tend to have cost free nights, these can be helpful when scrimping. In addition Bank of America is having their Museums on Us Month, which I recently discovered on a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts (http://www.mfa.org/). If you have a Bank of America card you can totally save on museum admissions.
- Food - This one is a no brainer for me. When I remember to I try to print out coupons. These little suckers aren't just made for grandmas, with them you can save tons of money. And with the help of the internet you can find a coupon for just about everything on your shopping list! Also if you like to go out to eat like I do then your in luck, because coupons are out there for restaurants as well (who knew!). And if you really want to scrimp you can sign up for your favorite restaurants mailing lists (send these e-mails to your junk e-mail account) and a lot of times you can get a coupon for a free appetizer and/or entree on your b-day
Well I hope you all enjoyed me little tips on saving, now if only I would do the same!
No comments:
Post a Comment