Save Money When Buying Textbooks

Before every semester starts, I and many other college students need to buy textbooks for their new classes.  There are many options for how to obtain your textbooks and these vary some by school.  Below are some methods to help you save money and/or time finding your textbooks along with what I have found to work best for me.


1.  See if your school has a program through which you can rent your textbooks.  One of my friends pays a small fee along with her tuition in order to be able to borrow every textbook she needs for each semester.  They are guaranteed to have the necessary textbooks and she can write in them as much as she wants as long as the books are still intact and legible when she returns them.  She even has  found that sometimes past users of the books have highlighted the most important parts.

2.  Check out the textbooks your on campus bookstore has.  At my school as a freshman you can sign up for a program to receive all of the books you need for the upcoming semester.  No matter how many times you swap classes, when you go to pick up your box, they will have the books you need.  You can also select whether you have a preference for new or used books.  After your freshman year, you can still buy books from the store and have them gathered together for you, but you must pick out the specific books that you are buying.  At any time in the first few weeks you can return some of your books if you have dropped the class for which they were needed.  In my case buying books from the campus bookstore is a time and stress saver, but is far from the most frugal choice.

My lunch plans are boring.

I basically eat from the same set of options each week.  Sometimes I'll have a salad.  I'll have sandwiches with meat and cheese and sometimes tomato or mustard several days of the week.  And of course sides of whatever fruit/chips/other snack-y items I have that week.  And that's pretty boring.  I don't care, but it's not really worth talking about.

What I do enjoy talking about are the special things I do each week.  For example, last weekend a friend and I made pizzas!  We bought pre-made crusts for simplicity and topped them with spaghetti sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and some leftover tomato slices I had.  And of course we added garlic and basil to both pizzas and a small about of crushed red pepper flakes to a small test section.  Yum!  Simple cooking fun with a friend!

And then sometimes I come up with new ideas to make my life simpler/easier.  Usually I buy fruits and vegetables on the weekend and then prepare them when I want them.  So for my first sandwich of the week, I might wash and slice a tomato and store the remaining slices for the rest of the week.

But I don't always have enough time to both prep and eat lunch, so I would just skip on the tomato on Monday...and again on Tuesday...and so on.  So it might be Thursday before I start enjoying some (or most) of the food that I had bought the previous Saturday.  And sometimes food goes bad. :(

So this week I did something different.  I prepared everything on Sunday night.  This mostly involved washing and chopping.  I chopped up my peach, nectarine, and mango and put them in single serving containers.  It was so easy to just grab one of these to eat in between classes!  I also prepared my cucumber and tomato for a cucumber, tomato, and feta salad.  And I chopped the bad ends of the beans so that when I wanted to cook them later in the week it would require less of a time commitment.  And they were so good!

But this method does have a major drawback: sometimes produce isn't quite ripe enough when one buys it.  And even though my mango wasn't quite ripe, I decided to prepare it.  That was not the best decision.  Some of it was good.  But most of it was crunchy.  Yuck.  So, I might have to amend my plans for this weekend.  But the general idea still turned out to be a good one for me.

What ideas have you tried to make your cooking simpler/easier?  How did they work out?

Food plans for the week of 8/26/13

Once again, here are my lunch plans for the coming week.  I did not eat very many frozen meals last week due to attending many welcome events for different clubs offering free pizza and/or other food.  Thus, I still would like to have some more containers and freezer space before I make anything to serious.  Last week I did make some squash (with basil and garlic, yum!), so I will eat the remaining portions of it sometime this week.  Once again, breakfasts will be fairly simple.



Every day: Options of dried apricots, cranberries, veggie chips, applesauce, peaches, etc.


M:
lunch: salad using leftover tomato, cucumber, and greens from last week

Food plans for the week of 8/19/13

I moved back to college!  And now that I am living in a dorm again, I'm dealing with the challenges of cooking and eating in a dorm.  I thought it could be helpful to see how I prepare for making food for the coming week.  (And it is helpful for me to consolidate my plans in one place.)  This week I will just show what I'm doing for lunch, as it will require more work than breakfast or dinner this week.  (I brought a lot of frozen meals from home, so I will be eating those for dinner some this week.  I need the container and freezer space before I can make more food.  Other than that I will eat out with friends for dinner. For breakfast I will probably have fruit of some kind (applesauce or peaches, probably) and a bagel or some toast.  Oh, or I could have some oatmeal or dry cereal.)  Also, I'm more flexible about when I eat what than the schedule might imply, but by scheduling my meals, I can make sure I get enough food (but not too much) from the grocery store this weekend.



Every day: Options of dried apricots, cranberries, veggie chips, etc.

Monday:
-Tasks: Slice tomato and keep 2-3 slices.  Dice the rest.  Store in container(s).
-Eat: Sandwich - lunch meat and cheese, sliced tomato, and mustard

Walk your schedule

You know, I don't know if this is a commonly used phrase or not.  My friends and I use it.  So just in case you aren't familiar with it, "walking your schedule" consists of leaving your dorm/apartment/house and walking to each of your classrooms in order before the first day of class.

Why would I do this?  I know where the buildings are.  Yeah, but my question is: do you know where the classrooms are?  Do you know where the stairs in the building are?  Do you know the door to the building that is closest to your previous class?

Enough of the questions.  Below are four reason why I suggest walking your schedule.


1.  You need to know where the classroom is.  You will be having class there, and I'm hoping you will be attending.  :)  Look at a campus map or online to find the building if you need to.  If the semester starts in the middle of a week, I've often found that the buildings are unlocked starting on Monday.  The professors do need to be able to prepare for the first day.  And if you can't get inside, at least you will know where the building is and how long it takes to get to and from there.