Saving Money on FOOD!!!

We eat food everyday. The most radical way to save money on food is...to not eat at all! However, we have to eat because we are college students! We need the energy to study, work out, go out, hang out, and endure our crazy college lives!

What is the secret?

We all know the secret to saving money on food is to shop for groceries, cook at home, and eat out less. What the others did not tell you is that you cannot simply just shop at any grocery store and expect to save money on your food consumption! For example, a grocery store on UCSD campus charges way too much for groceries! The average cost for a box of cereal is about $8 there! Okay, now let us look at the cereal price for on this week's ad for Food4Less...

WOW!!!
Look at that!
$2.50 a box!






Don't like these brands of cereal? Well, you are in luck because they have many other brands of cereals as well! They may not be as cheap as $2.50 a box but definitely way cheaper than $8 a box.

Maybe you LOVE soda! Well look at this!

$0.78 for a 2 liter bottle! That is equivalent to about 68 ounces! A 20 oz bottle of soda costs more than $1.50 on campus!



Bottom line is that Food4Less has many great deals! I can go on forever listing their great deals but I think you get the point. Check out their website by clicking on this Food4Less picture on the right to see more of their deals with their online ad!


Compare!

Your local grocery stores may have good prices on groceries as well. You probably get them in your mailbox each week. Take a few minutes to glance over the groceries that interest you and compare the prices from one store to the other. The majority of the time the grocery stores will have similar prices but once in a while the stores will have a special deal on a few particular products! Look out for these and capitalize on the savings!

SUPER DEAL!
Here is a deal that you should definitely take advantage of! This is literally a once in a lifetime opportunity! (simply because the deal only applies to first time customers) Regardless, you should take this deal! Here is how it works... VONS.com sells groceries online and they will also deliver it straight to your house! The typical delivery fee is anywhere from $10 to $20 depending on timeliness and amount of your order. But wait! There's a deal! The deal applies to first time customers who sign up at VONS.com and order $50 of groceries. Then you can enter code CJSAVINGS at checkout and you will get $15 OFF and FREE DELIVERY! The code may expire so try it out and if it does not work then try searching on Google for an updated code! You can buy the "Buy one, get one free" (BOGO) products and save even more! Check out this link to The Sassy Saver  where Melissa shows the different items she bought using this method to get about $50 worth of groceries for $8 to $11!

Eat out less! 
Now with all this food you should not need to eat out as often! It is okay for times when you are too busy or tired to cook or when you and your friends just want to go out to eat together. Also keep in mind that you and your friends can all eat together at home too! From my experiences, food at a potluck with home-cooked dishes are often times way better than most restaurants can offer! On top of the better food, the cost for a home-cooked meal is about 33% of the cost of a restaurant meal!

Current Deal!
$5 for $10 worth of food! 
from buywithme.com
Check this out! 50% off at Porkyland @BuyWithMe

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The Basics of Saving and Making Money in College

What to expect:

I am an undergraduate senior at University of California San Diego (UCSD). I am writing some tips on how to save money and make money while in college. This information is based on what I have learned from my 3 and a half years at college. I understand that everyone's college experience is different so see what information I provide applies to you and take it for what it is. There is a lot of information that is useful to aid you save and make money but I will not be covering any of these tips in detail. Thus, these blog entries will be brief but will provide you with an idea of where to start.

Problem:
 
Many students in college face the difficulty of managing the little money that they do have. There is one expense for college students that is non-negotiable and that is registration fees. This includes all of the fees that cover administrative and educational costs in order to attend the school. After this expense is taken care of, we can now move on to saving and making money.

Saving:

Instead of overwhelmingly overloading you with a giant list of over 100 things you can do to help save money while you are in college, I will be covering the three main categories over the course of the next few weeks that I feel have the largest impact on a student's expenditures. The three categories are food, entertainment, and housing. More than 75% of my expenses fell within these three categories during my freshmen year of college. However, those expenses have shrunk down to about 50% of my total expenses each month and I get to put the remaining 25% into my savings account.

Making:

After the next three blog entries about saving money, I will be writing about making money while in college. Some of the suggestions I have will be covering how to use websites such as Craigslist and Ebay to make money. I will also be writing about promotions such as free cash offers that students can take advantage of to earn money.

Links:
 
Here is a link from Collegescholarships.org that provides an extensive list of tips on how to save money while you are in college. There are many good recommendations but some many not apply to you. Some of the recommendations have a good description of how to go about on achieving the goal, but many of them are general tips on practical things you can do as a student to save money.
Collegescholarships' 118 Ways to Save Money in College