Student Credit Card and Credit Education Blog

What’s up guys?

My name is Brad. I currently attend the University of Pittsburgh as an accounting major. I work at a restaurant here in Pittsburgh to help pay for tuition. Between work and school, I have very little free time, but when I do, here’s what I do with it: My main passion is music. I love listening and playing – drums mostly, but also some guitar. I also enjoy playing video games and watching TV (House, CSI, CSI: Miami, ER, Law and Order: SVU).

For me, it’s not hard to save. That’s because almost all of my expenses are prepaid through student loans. I have to pay tuition and room and board (which includes things like rent and a meal plan) ahead of time or there are penalties. Therefore, the majority of my paychecks can go straight to my savings account. Technically, I’ve already succeeded at the $500 dollar challenge. But next time a tuition bill comes around (December 17th) my account gets drained, almost completely. So, my goal isn’t to save $500, but is to put as much money as I can into my savings account so that I can keep the amount of my student loans to a minimum. The more money in my account, the bigger chunk of tuition I can pay on my own. The more I can pay on my own, the less I have to borrow. The less I borrow, the less I pay on interest. Simple, right?

So how do I decide how much I keep and how much goes to savings? Well, to start, I have to make a plan. I find that where most people fall short on their financial planning is that they don’t do it at all. They don’t take the time sit down and make a budget. If they planned this stuff out ahead of time, they could avoid money shortages and also probably find some surprising facts about how much money they spend on what. Here’s what I do. I see how many meals my meal plan covers each week, then figure out how to cover the rest. One of my main strategies: cereal. It’s delicious, nutritious, and best of all, cheap. A big 4 dollar box of cereal and a 3 dollar gallon of milk can probably last about 5 meals. That’s $1.40 per meal. Compare that to eating out, or even at a fast food place. But cereal is bought at the grocery store, which gets visited once every 2 weeks. So how about day-to-day expenses?

I do keep some money handy for spur-of-the-moment purchases and emergencies. Here are some techniques I use. In order to limit these spur-of-the-moment purchases, I only keep $20 cash in my wallet, and that has to last 2 weeks (the time between paychecks). I keep $100 in my checking account to pay for groceries and more expensive spur-of-the-moment purchases. That’s it. I keep $120 (or less depending on how much I have left over from the previous 2 weeks) of my paycheck, the rest goes to my savings account. If my money isn’t available, I can’t spend it, so I don’t. How ’bout them apples?

Sorry for the long post, but stay tuned for some simple tips and tricks I have up my sleeve to save funds.