That’s not true. Keeping a room cool requires constantly working against whatever heat gradient your appartment has. If you’re gone all day, the apartment will probably reach ambient temps in an hour or two, and there’s no reason to constantly cool it.
Also not true. The average computer uses maybe 30W of electricity while idle. Most power supplies can provide about 300W max power. There’s no way that a computer booting up for 5 minutes will equal the power consumption of it running all day.
Laundromats (and there are a LOT of them, this is a college town) cost approximately $1.50 to wash and $2 - $2.50 to dry.
This is why I own a washer and dryer. Also, I’d never have clean clothes because I hate laundromats with a burning passion.
Electricity: Before you even move into an apartment / home, you can call your power utility and ask what the average monthly bill was in previous years. Sometimes, the amount is significant enough to negate any deal you’re getting on rent.
As another poster mentioned, ask if you can get on equalized monthly billing. It’s nice to know exactly what you’re going to pay each month.
A tip from my dad (who works for a power company): Set your hot water heater to 120. It costs a lot of money to super-heat your water for no particular reason. In addition, you’re far less likely to scald yourself. If you don’t know how to do it yourself, either your landlord or the power utility will do it for you.
When you’re starting out, it’s hard to tell what you’ll need from the grocery store and what you won’t. One way to get a handle on it is to plan a week long menu in advance and then do your shopping list based on that menu. After a while, you start to figure out what kinds of things you’ll need and you won’t need to plan your menus so far in advance.
When you shop, only buy things on your list. Unless you realize that you really did forget something (which is why it’s best to keep a running list that you update as you realize you need something rather than trying to remember it all at once), it’s likely an impulse buy that you should skip.
Coupons can save you money but only if they’re used for things you would buy anyway. That’s where having a list helps out. If it’s not on your list, don’t add it because you have a coupon.
The freezer suggestion is a good one. There are many times when you’re coming home from a rough day and the last thing you want to do is cook something elaborate. Knowing you have that chile or lasagna in the freezer keeps you from stopping and getting take out.
Anecdotal, perhaps, but a buddy of mine and I lived in nearly identical apartments in the same building one year. He ran his AC nearly 24x7, I ran mine for 2-3 hours/day when I was home from work before bedtime. My electric bill about 25% of his total ($40/month vs $200+ per month).
Sorry, but according to this cite:
Just thought you should know
Well, back to the savings bit - I don’t think anybody has mentioned how easy it is to save automatically. Get the bank to take a certain amount out of your paycheck before you even see it - put some in an IRA or if you have one your 401K or whatever, and some in your savings fund.
These days I’ve read one can have a money market account even if you don’t have much money, as long as you’re automatically putting money into it. You might want to look into it, as there’s no penalties for taking money out early for emergencies like in a CD or similar, and it makes much, much better interest than your savings account.
Congrats.
Let me go against the grain, slightly, on paper plates and plastic cups - If you have the space and initial investment, get some of each and stick them in a shelf. If you have a largish group over (to watch sports, or, in my case, play D&D) they can come in handy. It’s not like either will spoil.
You’re in California, so this may not apply, but always have your heat set to kick on at some minimum temperature - I hear 60 degrees as a usual figure - to keep pipes from freezing in the winter.
Congrats.
Let me go against the grain, slightly, on paper plates and plastic cups - If you have the space and initial investment, get some of each and stick them in a shelf. If you have a largish group over (to watch sports, or, in my case, play D&D) they can come in handy. It’s not like either will spoil.
You’re in California, so this may not apply, but always have your heat set to kick on at some minimum temperature - I hear 60 degrees as a usual figure - to keep pipes from freezing in the winter.
While all of this nuts and bolts stuff is really going to prove helpful, let me add something from personal experience.
If at all possible, live by yourself. Everybody needs to learn how to deal with living alone, and not having folks around all the time. You DON’T want to go from your parents’ house, to a room-mate situation, to a live-in girlfriend, to a marriage without ever having had the experience of living by yourself. I did and when I had the chance to live by myself I couldn’t believe the difference it made.
As cliched as it may sound, I was the Master of My Domain and the King of My Castel. To quote Frank Burns, “I can go out, I can stay in. Out, In. In, Out.” You answer to absolutely, positively no one else when it comes to anything at al having to do with your living arrangements. You learn to do for yourself, and you learn alot about yourself (or at least I did).
My .02, but damn I wish someone had told me that when I was getting started.
I brought my Spanish views on energy over when I lived in the US… none of my US friends believed my energy bills!
I agree with CandidGamera on the plates thing. Buy “real ones” for day to day, paper ones for when you have any kind of party. There’s few things that blow more than spending all morning cooking, then several hours making sure everything goes smoothly, and then everybody leaves and you have a pile of dirty dishes that looks like Everest only greasier.
Check out if your place allows for ropedrying clothes, San Jose sounds like the kind of place where it’s a bit dumb (if not downright irresponsible) to use a dryer when stuff will actually take less time to dry on a line. Some neighborhoods don’t allow it, though, because they think it “looks poor”. Hereabouts you can buy a folding clothesline for inside the house, which takes about 5’x2’ all unfolded and that’s enough for anything smaller than bedclothes.
For Internet access, check out combo plans from your local phone service (for DSL) or cable provider.
The least cost-effective motors are the ones used for heating and cooling. Being careful about how you spend energy can make an enormous difference. My take:
My roommate (who never followed those rules) went away for a month and our FPL bill for that month was 1/4 the usual. That’s over 100$ difference.
Best wishes 
A little something else:
when my brother was in college, he and his roomies would go to the supermarket together. Since he got married, he’s been in charge of shopping and cooking (his wife, who couldn’t cook at all but is a lot neater, does cleaning). He has a memory like a sieve for home stuff, so he made a little excel spreadsheet listing usual items and leaving extra space at the bottom and printed out a few copies. He keeps one copy on the fridge, puts an X on stuff he sees he’ll have to buy and rechecks the Most Frequent Items (in their case, milk, cookies and fruit) before leaving for the store.
Works better for him than Mom’s strips-of-paper system.
Stay away from the warehouse grocery stores for now. Unless you have a chest freezer, buying 36 burritos at a time is going to be too expensive for you.
It’s going to be a bit pricey starting out, because you’re going to need to buy towels, washclothes, detergent, cleaning supplies, hook up electricity, cable, water and sewer, etc. Maybe you can throw a housewarming party?
I would also suggest living alone first. You need to experience being on your own for awhile.
Check out the outlet stores. There used to be a Corningware store near my work and I would stop in there whenever I had some extra cash and get a few plates or glasses or what have you. Unfortunately, they’ve closed up, but you can get good stuff cheap at the outlet stores. (And yes, this is my pattern 
)
Do not, do not, do NOT ever buy from those Rent to Own places. They are hideously expensive for what you get.
Scour the paper. We got my daughter’s dresser for $40 through the classifieds. If you’re smart now, you’ll build a nice nest egg. Resist charging anything more than essentials. If you don’t have the cash, save for it.
Good luck!
If you end up getting an apartment, apartmentratings.com is a good site to find out about various complexes where you want to live. Mr. Neville and I used this site when we were looking for an apartment.
Wow, that is so freaky, we have that exact pattern for our breakfast crockery! Small world…
Well, we have paper plates, cups, bowls and flatware that we use for casual eating - i do protein shakes occasionally for snacks, and the 12 oz paper cups are perfect for this [atkins stirrable powder, doesnt need a blender like the old stuff=) yay!] and if all you want is a sandwich, or a bit of leftover tabbouleh salad or pickeld veggies [something not hot and sppillable] a paper bowl is perfect, and plastic flatware works just fine. If all i am getting is some celery/carrotsticks/cauliflower florettes I just wrap them in paper towel and chuck the used paper towel in the garbage. YMMV, what are your eating habits? Work around them. If all you are doing is everybody grazing, then you can have a household policy of using disposawares when appropriate for the type of food. I do know some people with eating ‘fetishes’ like an exboyfriend REFUSED to drink out of plastic cups, so I had to buy a single glass for him because my recycled collection of McDonalds and Slurpy cups wouldnt work :rolleyes: if you are perfectly happy eating cheesy mac out of the skillet with the cooking spoon, go for it=)
We have one of the vacuum packing machines, and know how to use it…so we tend to buy in bulk. Leftovers go into the new more or less disposable ‘tupperware’ by ziplock and glad [they stack better than ziploc bags…] if I notice something more than 3 days old, a quick emptying of the container into the garbage can. If the container is yucky [it happens, tomato sauce stains or whatever] then it is cheap enough to throw away and not be guilty=) Dont know about your comunity, but garbage gets collected and goes to some sort of facility for disposal…for more permanent food storage [freezered stuff - like specifically made soup stock condensates/meat glaze/demiglace, compound butters, stuff like that] we got one of the sets of containers on the little spinning rack. Very nice, everything stores when empty so nicely. We actually got 2 of them, but half the total containers are in use at any given time=)
Hm, dont know about the opaque containers, we have always bought the brand here that uses them, and go through it fast enough to not worry about it.
If you know the stuff you always buy, and see coupons for it, go for it. I wouldn’t buy something different just because you have a coupon for it.
I prefer to have laundry at home, saves a LOT of time, you never have to worry about if someone else washed something heinous in it that might affect your own clothing [we once ended up with grey sheets because someone had dyed something black in a laundromat machine.] Also, you can wash exclusively in cold water [we do, never had any problem with it] and opt to dry on racks in your living room/closelines in the bathroom/back yard/deck. If you get one of the stacked small load washer/dryer units that is totally electric, it can go with you when you move. There are also washer only units that are fairly inexpensive and hook up to a sink and store in a closet somewhere.
Well, you said the obvious turn it off if you arent using it. That covers a lot. If you want to save cash on air conditioning, barrier drapes to keep hot sunlight out of the house work. Also the inverse works in the winter. In winter days open the blinds to let the sun heat up the furniture and floors, close the drapes at night to insulate the windows so they dont radiate heat out. Try to only do full loads of laundry/dishes. Ask you utility company for suggestions. There are a whole line of fluorescent light bulbs designed to replace incandescent bulbs that take a lot less electricity. Again the utility company can help. Ask them for an ‘energy audit’ if they have that service=)