The best way to save money in college is to learn how to cook for yourself. I know so many people who go out to eat every single night for dinner, they door dash to their house, and the best way to save money is just cooking on your own. And the biggest trap that you can fall into is going out to eat for every meal. As long as you cook for yourself, it's going to be cheaper than going out to eat every night.
I have learned to save money through meal planning because I'm definitely the type of person to just like blow on food if I don't if I'm not prepared and I don't have food at my house but especially since being married but anyone can do it I sit down every two weeks plan out my meals for every single night and then I in the same session I buy all of the things necessary for those meals so I know that for two weeks I have stuff to eat with all the ingredients that I that I've purchased or whatever and it just takes like an hour or so for two weeks worth of food and you will save so much money buying it cooking yourself rather than going out to eat every single day of your life
I wasted a ton of money my first year here because I spent it all on going out to eat. Because I never had groceries in my house, I wasn't really good at planning meals. So, a good strategy to save money is to make sure each week you make a plan for the meals you're going to eat that week so you don't spend all your money on eating out.
If you want to save money on food and you're looking for a meal for the night, look at the BYU campus calendar, look at all the events, and see if J-Dogs is sponsoring anything. There's probably an event with food somewhere on campus every single day.
If you don't have a car or anything like that, just get your groceries delivered through like Walmart Plus. They have a student version that's only $4 like a month or whatever. Just get your groceries delivered. That way you're not spending time walking to Walmart because like don't go to the creamery. It's just way too expensive. Go to Walmart, like either pick up your groceries, have them delivered. It's just so much easier. It'll save money in the long run. And also by just ordering online, you're just gonna get what you need, not like what you want. You know what I'm saying? So you're not just gonna like splurge on like the most random-ish.
One good way to save money is Just looking for like the cheapest apartment available because Like it's not like you're gonna be here a long time and even the cheap apartments are pretty expensive you know, so like When you start making real money, that's when you can get good apartments, but for now, it's not it's not necessary You could save an extra couple hundred dollars just from doing this. So Yep
One of the best ways I've learned how to save money is to write out a budget each week. It helps so much in saving for school, saving for food, saving for dates.
I'd say if you really want to save money, do your best to get scholarships and maintain them. If you start out strong especially and just maintain those grades and apply for whatever scholarships you can qualify for, then you are still eligible for both your scholarship and FAFSA. So while I was in school, I actually got paid to be in school simply because for a lot of the time my my tuition was covered by my grades and then I'd still get the grant. I also recommend the Scholly app and just look for any little scholarship that you can find and then of course live on a budget as well and in other areas. I mean to do really well in school, it's not like you're going to get rich going to college, but you don't have to go into a ton of debt especially at BYU. Just do your best to maintain those grades and it won't hurt you in the long run.
There's so many different activities and stuff on campus going around that have free food, so just look for those. If you're trying to save money on food, there's always some club or some event going on that offers pizza, and it's usually Costco pizza, and you can take as much as you want. There used to be an app, I can't remember what it was called, but there used to be an app that would keep track of stuff going on on campus and the free food events. So you could look it up, and you could look up by date and time, and it would tell you where on campus it had food, and what was the event and stuff like that. It's just a great way to meet people and have free food.
All right, my best piece of advice for saving money is to don't spend it, right? That's the smart aleck way, but honestly, like the most, the more activities you can do where you don't spend money, the better. So try to just find free things. There are a lot of free activities that BYU has to offer. If you're looking for a bite to eat as well, a lot of the clubs almost always have food at their meetings. So sign up for a few clubs, go to those meetings as well. One way that I learned in my mission to save money is the envelope method. You just have some envelopes for activities, or random, or saving, or textbooks, school, whatever, and every time you get paid or you have money, you put money into the envelopes. So you know you can't spend money that's not inside the envelopes. It helps you to be more frugal and to save your money.
Try a dinner group with your roommates or maybe some other people that live around you and take turns making dinner for each other and then you only have to make dinner once a week or something like that and it's so much more cost effective than going out or buying all your groceries by yourself.
The biggest thing on saving money is going to events that offer free food. Not only will it help you meet other people and be able to expand your circle a little bit, but also give you free food because food is so expensive in college. So if you're here in an activity, go because you'll make friends, meet new people, get to know your professors a little bit better, and get free food. So it's overall a win.
To save money, donate at the koogery. Yeah, that's it.
Grocery budget, look at your pantry, make a list, go to the store and buy what's on the list. Allot money to certain things and then stick to that allotment. Provo and kind of where BYU is, is a busy place. There's like two malls right to the north and right to the south, stores all around and it can be pretty easy to just kind of be like, oh on Friday we're gonna go do this and spend this money here on Saturday, I need to go buy this and things like that. So making a budget and sticking with it. On-campus resources like provide a lot of like cheaper activities. There's like a starving student card that you can buy so that way you can still get out and have a good college experience but like allot money to certain things and if that means allotting it to like a spending fund to have fun, that's great but make the plan and stick with it. That's what's helped me the most.
If you want to save money, you should stop spending it eating out, because that is one of the ways that A, you get unhealthy food, but B, it costs you a lot more money to buy things that you could make at your own home.
I think the biggest thing that I'm working on right now to save money is to cook meals at home. It's really easy to, if someone texts you, hey like let's go get dinner, hey let's grab lunch, anything like that, it's really easy to just spend a lot of money that way. And if you're in between classes or anything to like get chick-fil-a or different things on campus, but I think making an effort to bring food to campus if I know I'm going to be there for a while, or meal prep on Sundays, just making sure that you're prepared throughout the week, it's going to save you so much money because instead of a $10 meal at Costa Vida, you're going to have a $4 meal from Trader Joe's. And it's healthier and it's actually fun to learn how to cook.
So I wasn't able to get FAFSA or like general BYU scholarships while I was here because BYU scholarships are pretty competitive but one thing that was really nice is once I got into my program there was a lot more money there available for me and for scholarships so I did statistics so once I got into the stats major I applied to scholarships and I got some so that was really nice and I would definitely recommend because usually the majors or colleges have a little bit more money to give around especially if not everyone is applying or whatever so definitely do that.
For any incoming freshman, there is a super key to getting scholarships for your sophomore year. The way BYU does academic scholarships is they look at your GPA at the start of every winter semester, so around January. So that means if you're starting as a freshman in the fall, they're only going to look at that first semester you have to determine your scholarship eligibility for your sophomore year. So what you need to do is your very first semester, just take 12 easy credits that you know that you'll be able to get a straight A in. You take those four classes, you get an A, and since you have a 4.0 your sophomore year you should be able to snag a full tuition scholarship in at least one year BYU has paid for.
My biggest advice for saving money is if you don't have impulse control, do not, and I mean do not open a credit card. It is horrible and will suck the life out of you.
All right, super easy way to save money. Make your own lunch. Don't go out to eat or buy food. I see so many students waste so much money just eating out every day and if you just get groceries at the beginning of the week and plan and make your lunch either at night before the day of school or just in the morning, you're gonna save so much money.
I think the best way to save money is to have the goal of not having any debt by the time you graduate with your bachelors degree. Because then you end up saving all the interest on what otherwise would be student loans for a number of years. I think that really makes a big difference and it's possible. You can graduate with your bachelors degree without being in debt if you're willing to work hard during the summers and then save that money and go to school. A lot of people have done it.
A great way to save money is if you're married to apply for Pell Grants. These are amazing because they aren't loans and if you qualify you get all of your tuition paid for. Obviously having your tuition paid for is a great way to save money since you're not paying for tuition. So even if you're not sure if you will qualify, at least apply and I know that even you can get partial Pell Grants as well to help you pay for your tuition.
All right, quick tip on saving money. Don't eat out multiple times a week. Try to get it to like one, you'll save so much money.
Save money on public transportation by using your student ID card. Students can ride for free the city bus, the front runner, and the tracks. Money on textbooks by one, waiting until you actually meet the professor and have orientation to see how pertinent the book is, and also you can get a lot of the textbooks on Amazon Prime or Amazon in general, and they also have a lot of great deals for college students.
The best way to save money is to go to Winko because they have really really good produce, but it's super super cheap. You can get celery for like 25 cents whole bag, as well as if you have an America First account and you have premium checking you get coupons and it's super nice.
There's free food everywhere. On campus, people are always hosting activities, hosting clubs, having seminars. You can often find something every night to just eat for free, and so don't feel like you always need to buy every single meal. Go look for things to do. You'll also meet a lot of fun people that way. You'll find some really interesting things, and so overall, if you're looking to save money, wanting to find some good food, meet some people, just go find things on campus to do.
Books can be expensive, but if you look for your books early at places like half-price books or on thrift books online, you can get them for a lot cheaper. And they may be used, but that's okay because they'll be cheaper and they may even have some highlights. They can already give you some helpful points in the book. And yeah, it's just a lot cheaper than buying brand new textbooks.
My technique is to buy a Rock Pass. Like for me, I want to go to, like, I will be at every home BYU football game this year as they're in the Big 12, and I want to go to pretty much, if I can, all the soccer games and volleyball games. It's literally been three weeks into the semester, and I've already, I've saved money from that compared to if I were to buy every, if I were to get an individual ticket to each game, I would have already paid more than what I did for a Rock Pass for the whole season. So if you're big into sports, just buy the Rock Pass. It's totally worth it, and BYU has some good teams this year in pretty much every sport for this fall semester of 2023.
One of the best ways I found to save money was to find where the free food was on campus because then you could use that as a meal and then you didn't have to save spend money that way but there is always free food out there so take advantage of the free food.
Go to Wendy's, get the Wendy's 4 for $4. It's cheap, $4, and you eat good. So yeah, Wendy's 4 for $4, it's the move, saves money, and you can spend that money that you didn't spend on food elsewhere, like on textbooks and stuff. So go to Wendy's, get the 4 for $4.