There are many expenses that entail when going to college: tuition, campus fees, room and board, and textbooks; but those are just the expenses that come with going to college. What about life expenses, like food and gas? It’s important to budget yourself. Find out how much you’ll be spending each semester for college and then find out how much you have left over to spend. Chances are, you won’t have very much left over, so you must try your hardest not to spend over that amount.
Cut Costs On Food
When going to college, it’s easy to eat out and it’s easy to do it often. Even if it’s just stopping at Starbucks for a cup of coffee every morning, you’ve already spent close to $60 by the end of the month…just on coffee! Give yourself a budget of, say, $200. That’s a reasonable amount. Record what you spend and promise yourself that you won’t go over that amount. Buy food that’s quick and cheap, like Chef Boyardee and ramen noodles. You may want to throw some shredded mozzarella or parmesan in there for the Chef Boyardee; it improves the taste significantly. Another thing you may want to do is buy a 8 quart crock pot and look up some recipes online to give you ideas as to what to throw in there. After two hours of solid cooking, you should have something that’ll last you the entire week.
Walk More, Drive Less
At UCF, if there was anything that the layout of the campus resembled it could be best described as an onion: it was circular and had many layers. Sure, I could have drove around from class to class, but since many other students had this same idea, I was really better off of just parking my car in one of the garages and walking. Besides, even without the traffic, it was much quicker walking from one end of the campus to the other than driving around the entire loop. With that being said, not only do you save a lot of money on gas, walking is faster too. Plus, you need your exercise.
Focus on the Necessities
You want a new laptop? Or how about a new game system? If it doesn’t fall within your budget, then don’t get it. First, focus on what’s important like books, supplies, and food and the sort. If you have money left over at the end of the month, stick half of it into savings and hold the other half off to the side. Keep doing this at the end of each month until you finally have enough. If you search around on NewEgg.com or TigerDirect.com, you can find a good laptop that can play games and everything for only about $800, so you won’t need to save up a whole lot.
There are other ways you can budget yourself as well, but this pretty much covers the majority of it. If you’re not one for balancing your checkbook, you may want to start now. Doing this gives you an idea as to what you’re spending on a daily basis and will help you decide what you should cut out of your spending. It’s hard to do, but in order for us to be responsible individuals, we must learn cut our expenses where we can and even save a little money while we’re at it.
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