The next step in saving money is to be a bargain hunter with every aspect of your life. For starters, check sites like slickdeals.net and groupon.com regularly to find both deals around you and online. You may be asking why since both of these sites deal nothing with academics but saving while in college doesn't stop at academics. Both of these sites can offer deals which can save you hundreds of dollars in the long run.
For example, I found this deal on slickdeals about 6 months ago have have been using it whenever I buy anything on amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/student/signup/info. With a .edu email address, you can get a non-renewing 1 year sub to amazon prime for free. This means free 2 day shipping on anything amazon sells themselves and anything from their participating partners.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Textbook cont.
As mentioned before, a cheap alternative to buying textbooks online is renting them. For most people, the idea of renting a textbook is completely foreign but it can save you up to half the cost of a new book. The site which I use to rent most of my textbooks is coursesmart.com
Now I know a lot of people struggle to read books on the computer but it is well worth the savings. The first time I rented a textbook, it took me twice as long to read through it. But it didn't take long for me to adapt and now I can read through an eTextbook as quickly as I can a normal one.
So how does it work? You just go on coursemart and enter in the ISBN to see if they have your book or not. You pay for a 180 day subscription to the book and you can choose to access it on the web (so you can use over multiple computers) or download it as a pdf file (but can only be used on 1 computer). I usually choose to access it on the web because it is 2010 and there is internet access wherever I go and they have a neat highlight function in their browser reader.
The downside of renting is that you don't get a physical copy to sell after the semester. But come on now, how many of you actually sell them yourselves and not take the lazy route of getting pennies of a dollar by selling to your bookstore during buybacks?
Now I know a lot of people struggle to read books on the computer but it is well worth the savings. The first time I rented a textbook, it took me twice as long to read through it. But it didn't take long for me to adapt and now I can read through an eTextbook as quickly as I can a normal one.
So how does it work? You just go on coursemart and enter in the ISBN to see if they have your book or not. You pay for a 180 day subscription to the book and you can choose to access it on the web (so you can use over multiple computers) or download it as a pdf file (but can only be used on 1 computer). I usually choose to access it on the web because it is 2010 and there is internet access wherever I go and they have a neat highlight function in their browser reader.
The downside of renting is that you don't get a physical copy to sell after the semester. But come on now, how many of you actually sell them yourselves and not take the lazy route of getting pennies of a dollar by selling to your bookstore during buybacks?
Sunday, January 16, 2011
First things first...
Textbooks. Everyone hates buying textbooks. Spending hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars on textbooks for one semester is a common theme across schools in the nation. Everyone knows that buying textbooks from the school's bookstore is a goddamn ripoff and yet, most people do it. A much cheaper way of buying textbooks is through the internet. Sites such as abebooks.com and amazon.com can save you hundreds of dollars on used books. Of course, a problem arises when the greedy publishers change the chapters around and alter a few aspects here and there every 2 years and call it a new edition. In this case, shopping online would only save a couple of dollars so I would suggest renting the book online (more on this later), or holding off on the class for one semester if possible.
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