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