Saving yourself some dosh. (Saving tips)

Member Name: kimm

Product:	Saving tips
Date:	24/09/01 (76 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Saves money.

Disadvantages: Slight inconveniences.

When I was a first year at uni, at our first lecture we were handed a reading list. Not knowing quite what to do with it, we took the advice from our lecturer to buy all the essential books (I caught on years later, that there were only try to sell their own books).

Anyway, being young and gullible I spent a fortune on these books only to find that I didn't read them anyway! It was just as easy to go to the library and take out the copies they held there if it so possessed me to actually read. So many students are conned into buying the books, that the ones in the library are always available and you can reserve them anyway.

I also found that walking saved a lot of money. Yes, it took longer to get anywhere but it was better than wasting 2 quid travelling 1 mile on a bus. It was also cheaper to share a taxi if a group of my friends wanted to go to town aswell.

In my first year, I was in halls and we were expected to eat in the dining hall. We only had a cupboard for a kitchen which contained a 2 ring stove for boiling water. Funny, but we had a kettle too....of course we're going to attempt to make 3 course meals! It's amazing what you can make on a stove - pasta, rice, scrambled eggs etc. It's cheaper too if people chip in to share the cost of a meal. We didn't have a fridge so stuff didn't last very long hanging outside our windows!

When you go shopping, you should go late in the day as things start being reduced. Sunday is also a good day to shop. I wouldn't advise buying vegetables form markets as you can't pick it yourself and more often than not they give you the rubbish from behind the decent stuff on display.

A good way of earning some spare cash is to proof read essays for foreign students. My friend put up an advert and she made £10 per essay rising to about 25 for a dissertation. It seems that foreign students don't mind paying for this service as they are
very conscious about having their work word perfect. I did it once and it only took me about 30 mins and there was only a few errors to correct. Not bad money. Another great way of earning money is to be a university guide. You take a few people round the uni for about 20 mins and get paid about £10. Always arrive late, so the bulk of visitors have gone or you'll end up with about 30 people rather than 3 or 4.

My uni also had an agency which paid quite well for jobs like envelope stuffing, so it's always worth signing up.

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