At the beginning of school, there are already enough costs to deal with. Food, housing, and tuition are at the forefront of college costs. Over the past decades, however, the price of textbooks has been dramatically increasing.
Some classes require numerous novels, others require textbooks that cost hundreds of dollars. The problem is that most of these books you will never need past the semester and if you try to sell them back when done using them to a street vendor it will often be at a price less than 10% of what you originally paid for it. Here is a great way to save money and avoid following the old system.
First off, don’t buy textbooks from the official bookstore, these are extremely overpriced. At the very least, buy them online through amazon.com or something similar.
A better option, however, is to merely rent the textbook for the semester! This means that you pay a fee to rent the book (typically under 50% of the actual cost of the book) and at the end of the semester you mail it back in (if you fail to mail or return the book, or if you find the book useful and want to keep it you can then buy it at the full price).
The website I use for this is Chegg.
Check it out, see what you think. Here are some additional features of Chegg.
- For every book you rent, Chegg plants a single tree to further your paper savings.
- Chegg pays the full shipping cost for returning your books.
- You can sell books you no longer use back to Chegg.
- Every semester, chegg has a wider range of books to rent out.
So what are you waiting for? Look up some of your textbooks, see how much you can save and rent them for the semester. Chegg.
Even if you are operating purely based off of the check card that comes with your Checking Account or a credit card, I would highly recommend opening a savings account as well.
Here’s the reason why, by just having money sit in a checking account you are actually losing money. The US inflation rate is presently around 3-4% which means the value of your money is decreasing by that much every year if you have it just sitting in a zero interest checking account (That would be between $300-400 lost if you had $10,000 earning zero interest for a year).
Instead, what you should do is put any money you don’t need on a daily basis in a savings account and I have one that I recommend that will earn you over 3% in interest.
Continue reading ‘How To: Get 3.3% Interest On A Savings Account’
For several months now I’ve been absolutely thrilled with my Chase Blue Freedom Rewards Card. The card works by tracking your purchases every month and then categorizing them. For all purchases made in the top 3 categories for that month (out of 15 categories total) you receive 3% cash back and for all remaining purchases you receive 1% cash back.
But wait, there’s more. There’s no annual fee, and you get a bonus of $50 just for signing up for the card. That’s right, $50 with no strings attached. The APR is decent but if you’re smart you won’t ever go over your credit limit anyway. If you are paying your bill off every month you’re saving 1-3% a purchase completely for free. Finally, if you save your rewards until they hit $200 then they’ll give you an extra bonus of $50.
Overall, it’s definitely worth a look. It’s accepted anywhere they take Visa and it is easy to set up automatic payment of the bill, or to do it electronically every month from your bank account. I’ve never actually been in a Chase Bank and set the entire thing up online. I use Bank of America and simply transfer in the amount that I owe about twice a month as opposed to paying it off merely once a month.
If you’re still using your parents’ credit card, it’s about time to start getting your own credit rating and a credit card is a great way to begin that process. Furthermore, for those of you spending money on gas it’s nice to get to take an extra 1-3% off the price (at $4/gallon and at 3% cash back that’s $.12 less per gallon). Be responsible with it, and you’ll soon be saving money on every purchase.
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