So, I'd like a lesson in Living Cheaply 101.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Alright. Next year, I will no longer be living on the fine dormitories of Virginia Polytechnic University. I have made arrangements to rent an empty bedroom in a townhouse. However, not having my rent and my food taken care of for a year at a time is prompting me to worry about what I can do to save money.

Some unavoidable expenses will be gas and car. I live six miles away from campus. It’s not a bad drive, but it will add up, when done every day. There is a bus route three miles away from the townhouse that goes to Tech, but it would probably be simpler just to walk the six. (This is a reasonable strategy when time is not a factor: I’ve done more than twelve miles a day for fun.)

I will want to be buying food cheaply. I do not have a great deal of personal shelf and fridge room. Fresh fruit and veggies look to have the holy quadrafecta of decent shelf life, cheapness, good nutritional value, and nice flavors. As I have avoided the Freshman 15 for two and a half years so far, I’d like to stick to foods that have at least three of the above, with an emphasis on cheapness and nutrition.

I will need furniture. I plan to shamelessly raid my fellow students’s leavings when the move-out begins.

I have a few money-saving tricks (if a textbook is only needed for readings and not homeworks, I sit down in the college bookstore and do my readings a week at the time and such.), but would appreciate any more. So, what else can I do to save money?

Also: I am currently working on a job. With luck, the art classes still need models.

2

Well, I doubt you’ll be able to go in and read your assignments in the college bookstore, for one thing. You might be able to get your books online for much less than what the college bookstore will charge you (half.com and ebay spring to mind). But sitting down to read the books will be at best impossible, considering the sheer volume of reading, and at best a form of theft.

Fresh fruits and veggies are, IMO, not cost-effective compared to frozen, which can be kept in the freezer without going bad (fresh veggies of course start going bad and that’s a terrible waste of your money - though if you only buy what’s in season you may do better).

You might check out misc.consumers.frugal-living for more discussion of this sort. There are certainly cookbooks for starving students. But the first bit of advice about food is that if you cook from scratch, you’ll save serious money. Carry a sack lunch (or individual little cooler) every single day. Bake a casserole and dish it into Gladware containers in individual servings. Freeze, and eat these every day for a few days until they’re eaten up. Do the same with a used crock-pot (again, portion and freeze). Find a cheap used rice-cooker, which will keep rice warm all day. Learn to cook whole grains, such as whole wheat berries, for filling, low-glycemic, inexpensive breakfast. Don’t give in to the convenience of “convenience” foods. Buy clothing if necessary in thrift stores or at yard sales over this coming summer.

Of course, it’s much easier if you’re willing to eat the same food repeatedly or are not particularly picky about what you eat.

3

This is a useful newsgroup

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/misc.consumers.frugal-living

4

Do you have your own mini fridge (bar fridge)? Depending on your set-up, investing in one might be a good idea. My SO and I spent a year basically using only a mini fridge in our room in a shared house as food storage. It’s amazing how much you can pile into one of those things! We basically had a small collection of recipies that we liked and stuck to that, so we knew what our food budget was every time we went grocery shopping because we always bought the same things (especially for week-day food…we always prepare something more elaborate/expensive on Saturdays). We often buy canned peas (I actually prefer them to fresh or frozen anyways) and corn, and cans of apple juice regularly go on sale here. Do you have a " No Frills" type grocery store in your area? I think they are an Ontarian chain, a grocery store where there really isn’t much other than shelves of food…you pay for bags, you bag your own stuff (or grab an empty oranges or something box from a bin at the back), there’s no butcher or baker, etc (they sell packaged meat and breads). Really just the basics. They sell mostly generic brands, which are often as good or better, especially because you CAN save a LOT of money. Even if you don’t have a store like this, buy generic anyways.

Dumpster-diving furiniture is a great way to get tables and chairs and such, but watch out for fabrics…they mold kind of quickly sometimes :stuck_out_tongue: Goodwill or another such organization could probably provide you with other furniture you might need. You don’t mention whether you have anything already…is there a bed at your parent’s house that you can take? If you have an IKEA nearby, you can get a pretty nice set-up for not too much money.

One way we save quite a bit of money is to not pay to dry our laundry if we don’t have to. We spent a few bucks at Canadian Tire and bought a folding clothes rack which we pull out and can get 2 large loads of clothes on to dry overnight. There’s no point spending money on a dryer when you get the same result for free. For that matter, I HAVE washed clothes by hand when I needed something and didn’t want to start a full load.

And don’t pay for cable if you don’t have to. See what you can get with good old bunny ears! (We get 3 channels, a friend in Toronto gets 15!!!) We have enough of the shows we’re interested in, and enough shows that aren’t good enough to watch, which gets us doing something other than watch TV all night! Stay in rather than go out to hang out with friends…it IS cheaper to play your own music and make your own food than a restaurant or club will ever be.

As for the car - I commuted every year of school (about 45km each way) and it DOES add up. I now commute to work 56Km each way. Scope out the cheaper gas stations, use point systems if it appears it will work for you (-2cents/L at Petrocan!), and keep the car well maintained. Better to prevent problems than have to pay for them later! Keep your tires well inflated, and don’t let them get too worn out. See if you can carpool with a housemate. If your particular car is a gas-guzzler, see if you can sell it for something less expensive to run. Or get a bike, if you’re willing to bike the 6mi to school!

I probably just typed a bunch of really obvious things, but I hope some of that helps. I suppose the most obvious is to plan a budget and stick to it. " Set aside" the food and rent money ASAP as you get paid, and don’t spend it on ANYTHING other than what it’s meant to be spent on.

Anyways, I’m tired enough to not be sure if this is coherent, so I’ll end it here and just say Good luck! :slight_smile:

5

food is important, if you can, prepare big meals that can be frozen and protion them into containers that you can then freeze. But if nothing else, dont skimp on this

As for other stuff, check this place out www.Freecycle.org might get some stuff you can use. (assuming you can get the darn site to load).

Definitely check out your local amity/red cross/whatever version you have. Can get a lot of stuff in these places for next to nothing.

6

Will you have any kitchen access? (You mention fridge space, but that could be a personal mini-fridge, I suppose.)

Buy rice and noodles in bulk, with some beef or chicken stock in jar. All of these are cheap and keep forever, and you can use them as a base for lots of meals. Add some inexpensive fresh veggies in a frying pan or crock pot, and you have something that’ll taste good, be good for you, and be very inexpensive. Fresh carrots, green onions, regular onions, and peppers all keep well. I like tomatoes, too, especially in season. Canned tomatoes are cheaper out of season, and obviously keep forever. Fresh garlic is also something good to have around. Of course, you can add meat (chicken, beef, whatever) to this. Look for sales on canned goods.

(If necessary, you can store the rice and noodles in a cheap rubbermaid container in your room.)

I’m deliberately not trying to give you specific recipes here. You can find those anywhere. One trick is to look at the ingredients in various $1.29 Lipton dried noodle/rice meals in a foil bag. Most of the non-creamy ones are basically 10 cents worth of rice or noodles, together with a few spices and beef or chicken stock. You can make something much healthier and cheaper by adding some fresh veggies to your bulk ingredients.

Dried beans (kidney, black) are also cheap when bought in bulk, but more difficult to use when you’re cooking single meals and have limited freezer space.

Are you a breakfast person? If you eat a lot of cereal, try the bulk route again. Anyone you know have a Costco card? For a healthy (although not cheap) addition, buy a pint of berries. In season, they’re not that bad. Bananas are always inexpensive.

A few other extremely cheap meals that aren’t too disgusting: Canned baked beans on toast. Grilled cheese sandwiches - add tomato slices in season. Substitute canned tomato soup in winter (as a side). Make a few grilled cheeses. wrap them in foil and reheat. They aren’t bad, especially if you splurge a little and buy some better cheeses.

Sandwiches - make them in the morning and eat them for lunch. Bread, lettuce, sliced meat and tomatoes are fairly inexpensive. Toast the bread a bit - avoids soggy sandwich syndrome.

I’m trying to remember what else I ate as a college student. I did eat a lot of pizza.

Will you ever be cooking for more than one? If so, things like pasta sauces (canned diced tomatoes and/or puree, garlic, spices, a bit of beef stock and olive oil, maybe a little chopped green onion and diced bell pepper), omelettes (eggs, diced tomato, cheese, green onions, spices), soups (stock, water, diced chicken or beef, noodles or rice, garlic, spices, a bit of olive oil, and 6 of your favorite chopped vegetables - try onions, peppers, potatoes, carrots, beans and frozen corn or peas) and more adventurous stir frys become more feasible. Also, if you have access to a yard or deck, invest in a cheap $10 k-mart mini-grill. Buy a bag of bamboo skewers. Grill burgers, chicken, or sausage together with marinated veggies on the skewers (peppers, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms) and either baked potatoes or corn (in season - fall). Good stuff.

Spices: In addition to fresh garlic, I’d buy the following in bulk (you’ve got to find a cheap place for spices - supermarket prices blow, and your own taste should guide you. If you like Thai or Mexican, this’ll vary): Black pepper. Oregano. Basil. Bay leaves. Lemon pepper (for marinades). Red pepper flakes. Dried chives. Rosemary. Sage.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

7

I honestly don’t see why not. I have been a student for the past five years, and I have never purchased books unless I actually wanted to own them. (I am a bit of a book packrat, so that is fairly often, but still.) “Volume of reading” is really not a problem- I’ve done four or five weeks of reading at a time, in the library. And as for “a form of theft” :confused: !

Theft? I don’t think I have a particularly permissive attitude toward theft- I don’t pirate music, movies, or software- and surely I can’t be the only person who comes from a long line of book-lovers who read entire tomes in the comfy chairs at Barnes and Noble? I thought anything was fair game, as long as you don’t break the spine, turn down the pages, or leave a mark. After all, you’re not damaging their goods nor removing them from the property nor depriving the store of a sale. I used to sit for hours reading with various family members in local bookstores, and if a store ever prevented that, I can’t imagine anyone I know patronizing them. Am I utterly off-base?

8

If you’re willing to walk to school, then you’re probably also willing to bike. A decent-quality bicycle should only cost you $200 or so new; you might be able to get one used for much less.

On clothing, you don’t need the latest fashions. If you watch the sales, you can get a pair of jeans for $10 at Walmart, K-Mart, or the equivalent, and a flannel shirt will be about $5 at those same places. Assuming that you do laundry once a week, you only need eight outfits each of summer and winter clothes.

For food, fresh fruits and veggies can be good in season, but the key to saving is in the nonperishables. Wait for a particular item to go on sale, then buy as much as you have cupboard space for (or at least enough to carry you through to the next sale on that item). The next week, stock up on whatever’s on sale that week. On specifics, dried beans and rice alone will give you almost everything you need, nutritionally, and you can spruce them up with a variety of spices and flavorings. Spices will have the highest per-weight price of anything in the store, but the serving size is small enough that they’re still a good buy. You can also get a variety of pastas, potatoes, and canned goods. Eggs are also a good buy: The price doesn’t vary enough to stockpile them, and they don’t last forever, but they’re a very cheap source of tasty protein.

Subscribe to your local paper. The coupon sections will by themselves pay for the paper, and you’ll also get classified ads selling furniture and the like, garage sale announcements, and an inexpensive leisure activity. Or find out what days they run garage sale announcements and ads, and just buy those days.

You don’t say the details of your apartment, but if utilities are not included in the rent, step down the thermostat. If you’re willing to wear a sweater at home, you can stay comfortable down to the mid fifties Farenheit (about 12 C) or so, and in most parts of the world, air conditioning isn’t necessary at all for a healthy person. Also keep lights off when not in use, turn off faucets, and all the other conservation tips you’ve heard, but heating/cooling is usually the big one.

9

Can you buy a half or third meal plan from the university? Those things are a life saver. One meal a day, all you can eat. I got through an entire year at university once on a half plan.

10

I would vote for biking to work in decent weather. To me decent weather is anything that isn’t frighteningly hot. The rest I can take, but sweating like a slob and freckling under the hot sun…no way jose.

Also, find a good Salvation Army or Goodwill store near you and make it your best friend. You can get pots, pans, basic cheapie cutlery and most importantly, clothing for a few bucks.

Just because you will be poor does not mean you have to eat poorly. Don’t get into the habit of Pizza too often. That is a crack habit of the lazy and cheap. I really hate pizza. And they don’t really taste good either and don’t exactly fill you up. They just make you feel like a bloated whale after you scarf one down.

Eating all those carbs in the rice/beans/ramen noodle catagory ( and I have a very healthy relationship with all of them) can cause weight gain. White enriched flour just rips through the system giving little nutrition. Get into the habit of making smart choices about these pastas. Find whole wheat noodles which are a little more money but are better for you, digest better, leave you feeling fuller longer and make you poop better ( When you are older, it is all about the poop.)

Whole grain breads will keep you filled up longer. White bread is just naaaaasty.

Peanut butter and jelly are the God and Goddess of the poor schlub. Treat them well.
Maybe a small meal for breakfast with* loads of water.* Make a sandwich for your lunch with a liter of water ( filled at your place) and pick up the habit of stopping off at a corner grocery market for an apple or banana on your way home.

Water is the best & cheapest thing you can do for yourself.

You can probably live off the internet at the library to save some cash and give up cable.

Really, you are in the best time of your life ( poor, over stressed and being pulled in many directions, but it is the best time of your life! Really!) Give up TV for a couple of months and just enjoy it all.

Savor the poorness of it all. When you get a Real Job in the Real World and get a Big Fookin’ Mortgage one day, you won’t have time to savor that level of destitution. You’ll be too exhausted, bloated and crabby.

Get your books & magazines from the library and dumpster diving is always fun, fun fun!

Post whatever your furniture/car/bike/whatever needs are on a community bulletin board. Maybe you can car pool or something.

Toss out your credit card and only call for a new one if there is an emergency. Like life threatening, not " Hey, the new Ipod’s are out!" Avoid buying any thing new technical when it first comes out as in 6 months it will be cheaper and mostly obselete. Pay cash for everything possible. And by cash, I mean no debit card

Whatever you do do not give up health insurance!

A book to look at is ** The tightwad gazette** by Amy Dacycin ( or something like that.) get the compendium. Great stuff in there that gives great ideas that can be used at various levels of enforced destitution or just anal retentive penny pinching.

#1 way to say money: Always wear a condom. ( ok, always wear a condom during sex.) :slight_smile:

Have fun! I envy you at this level of future despair.

11

Check the library. Often, there will be a copy of the textbook for your class on reserve. This will avoid the “bookstores aren’t lending libraries” problem.

12

Rice or macaroni cooks ok in a crockpot.
Drain the water add a can of cream of mushroom or chicken soup and a can of vegies and some precooked meat- ham ,bologna, weiners,tuna, and you can eat for a week. Add some cheese for a variation.
Or start with mac n cheese
Variations
mixed vegetables
Crm of celery soup
Sloppy joe mix
A can of tomatos
You’ll get used to dried milk after a while.
then add instant mashed potatos which can be made into potato soup if you just add a couple of boullion cubes and some more milk.
Hot cereal is pretty cheap. Oatmeal can be added to about everything to extend it or soak up too much liquid. Instant mashed will extend and soak up too.
You can make a sandwich out of about anything with tortilla shells.
Well there is a start. Not much fat in a diet like that.

Best of luck

13

Except that you ARE depriving the store of a sale. Books in a library have been purchased for the library and are kept for loan. Books in a bookstore are for sale, and are there to be purchased. If you read your entire semester’s worth of reading at the bookstore - assuming the place doesn’t catch you and throw you out on your butt, since University Bookstores in my experience are not exactly set up with big comfy chairs - you have not purchased the book. Thus, depriving them of a sale.

Now, maybe your local college bookstore has big fat overstuffed chairs in every corner, inviting students to sit and read for hours. It’s been 20 years since I was in college. I seem to remember heaps and piles of books, mountains of books, and hard linoleum floors, with circulating employees to make sure nobody steals anything. And I still think it dishonest. If the university wanted to make such books available in unlimited quantity to anybody who didn’t feel like paying for them, they’d have a hundred copies of each in the libraries. They don’t.

14

MOre of an opinion thread.

Moved from GQ.

15

sigh

I really want to agree with, Chotii–I don’t download music or even make copies of friends CDs–but in the case of textbooks:

Fuck 'em.

Textbooks are such a Og-damned rip-off. You are forced into purchasing the assigned text, and in order to keep sales going, textbook companies “revise” their texts every two or three years (as often as it is cost effective to get away with), which mostly consists of rearranging a few sections and changing the values in the problems enough that you can’t just use an old text. The texts themselves are so ridiculously overpriced–the last math text I bought, a couple of years ago, was over $150–and horribly edited, with mistakes galore. (I’m talking about engineering and science texts, here…I assume the same is true in business and liberal arts curriculums.) In every single case, I’ve gotten far more value out of the $15 Schaum’s Outlines and $35 REA Problem Solvers than I’ve ever gotten out of an engineering text. I had a Signal Processing text that was so bad even the instructor who selected it couldn’t make heads or tails of it half the time, with mistakes not only in the solved problems but in the examples, and it was a 3rd Edition! And efff the bookstores; they make a farking killing, buying back used books at 10% of the cover and reselling them at 60-70%. Arrrgh!

If I ever go back, get a PhD, and take a professorship, I’m assigning Schaum’s Outlines as the text, and to the moon with the textbook companies. I know they have expenses, and that it’s a very limited margin of profit for them, but if they can’t provide a measure of quality for three figures then they need to go out of business. The best damn classes I had in school were the ones where the instructor basically dispensed with the text and taught strictly from their own notes (and Dr. Parris, I’m talking about you.)

Textbooks? College bookstores? Up theirs.

We now return you to your regular budgetary considerations.

Stranger

16

Keep a meticulous record of everything you spend. Everything. Then review it each week and add up the totals. Decide which expenses you could have avoided.

Learn the difference between necessities and luxuries.

Buy things on sale. But only if you need it. Don’t buy something because it’s on sale.

If you smoke, quit. It’s a really expensive habit.

Buy generics whenever possible.

Learn to cook your own food. Otherwise you’ll be paying somebody else to do it.

Try to keep some money on hand for emergencies. Because eventually you’ll have one.

17

I second the garage sale suggestion. See if you can find a version of the local paper online to check for sales from mid-March to June. Then hit a whole bunch on a Saturday morning. Plot out a route and pick moving sales and multi-family sales.

Church and synagague rummage sales are also great. You can often find lots of clothing, books and even furniture at very low prices.

Ask a friend if they want to come with you so you can save money on gas.

18

A lot of this is just repeating some of what’s already been said for emphasis. Also, it should be noted that it was recently pointed out to me that my cheap living plans are somewhat UK optimised. For example, I used to recommend people switch to a mostly vegan diet. Not entirely vegan - e.g. milk is cheaper than soy milk - but here in the UK meat and dairy are two of the biggest food expenses. The US on the other hand has various farming subsidies that we don’t, for example making cheap cheese much much cheaper.

First of all: Cycle. 6 miles is a little far, but given the amount you’ll be saving by not driving it’s probably worth it (although you’ll still have the car, so will have to be paying insurance, etc. I’d imagine and thus not saving as much as you could be.)

Second of all, someone mentioned dried beans. This is a good suggestion, but more specifically you might want to consider dried lentils. They have all the advantages of dried beans, but they’re much more versatile and they don’t need presoaking. They’re actually quite a good meal on their own if you just cook them in stock or something (Random cooking tip: See if you can find some sort of yeast extract - e.g. marmite - to use in stocks. It’s cheap, tasty and provides various goodnesses. On the other hand I don’t know how easy it is to find in the US).

Speaking of which, make your own stock. I don’t mean use a stock recipe, I mean proper stock making - whenever you’ve cooked meat, veg, etc. give the leftover bits a wash, bung them in a pan of water and simmer it for ages. Doesn’t cost you anything and produces some fairly decent stock. (Note: I’m vegetarian, so my knowledge of the use of meat in stock is a little sketchy. There may be something more you need to do for stocks using meat. Look it up - the net is a great tool.)

This may be obvious, but no snacks. They are a major budget killer. If you absolutely have to have snacks, try buying a bag of popcorn kernels and popping them in a pan (not microwave popcorn!). It’s relatively cheap and stores well.

Also I’d like to second, third, whatever number it is now the `cook everything from scratch’ advice. It cuts down the budget so very much.

Hmm. I think that’s it for now. Although I would just like to agree with Stranger on a Train about textbooks: The textbook industry is evil incarnate. Thankfully I don’t have assigned texts for my courses, so I’m not forced to buy textbooks, but it’s still ridiculous.

19

For clothes and furniture hit the thrifts. Decent (often very decent) stuff is available at a fraction the price of retail stores.

20

Now, see…I’d do the exact opposite. I’d hand wash nearly everything I own and then haul it to a dryer. I hate stiff towels and clothes. Nothing says “poverty” like wrinkled, stiff laundry.