Student Credit Card and Credit Education Blog

You know all those relatives who you see like 3 times each year? The ones that don’t have any clue what to get you for Christmas. They probably just handed you a card with a bunch of cash in it, right? Well, do yourself a favor. Take half, pretend you never got it in the first place, and just put it in your ING Direct Savings Account. You’ll thank yourself later.

It was great blogging for you all. I hope you all enjoyed my savings tips, and hopefully I have helped some of you actually save. Good luck to all with your future savings!

-Brad

This post kind of builds off of Kuri’s post. I think she’s got a point. Eating out is expensive when you go to a sit-down restaurant. When you go with a fast food place because it’s cheap, you end up eating food that is less than healthy. Learning how to cook a few simple things can greatly benefit your wallet and your gut.

Not so good at cooking? For all of you who enjoy video games, there is a new one out for the Nintendo DS called Personal Trainer: Cooking. It basically walks you through cooking a decent meal. I don’t have it yet, but it’s on my Christmas list. Don’t like video games? There are plenty of things you can buy at the store that require little more than boiling or throwing it in the oven. A lot of these could probably even last more than one meal. Eating in is a great way to stretch your money.

What if you don’t have a stove/oven? I have this problem while I am in my college dorm. The only cooking apparatus they allow is a microwave. There are some decent things you can get for the microwave, but be careful. A lot of them are relatively expensive. I suggest looking for foods that can be cooked in the oven or microwave (like pizza rolls). Buying in bulk helps cut costs even more (get the 90 pack instead of the 40 or 15).

That’s all I have for now.

-Brad

Hello everyone,

Now that I’ve finished up with finals, I have some time on my hands to divulge some more (hopefully) useful information to you. Today I’ve got an idea about how to save on buying gifts at Christmas.

If you are like me, you have a lot of family and not a lot of money. This is obviously very problematic. In order to conserve the small amount of money I will have left after that tuition payment coming up, I’ve come up with an idea to help myself and the rest of my family save money over the holidays. Instead of buying each one of my family members a gift, and instead of getting a gift from each one of my family members, we are each going to buy one gift for only one person. It’s sort of like a secret Santa kind of deal. Here’s how it works:

First, a price range is established. This is where everyone benefits. Instead of spending $100 on 10 people, you can just spend $50 on one person. This saves you $50 and allows everyone to get nicer gifts. (Would you rather have a bunch of little useless things, or one thing that you really like/need?). After the price range is established, each person writes some ideas for gifts that they would like in that price range on a piece of paper with their name on it. Then everyone picks names out of a hat. With several different ideas on the paper to choose from, you can still put some of your own thought into the gift, and it’s still a surprise for the person getting it.

Again, this idea saves you money overall even though you are buying a more expensive gift. It also saves time trying to think of something for everyone and then going out and trying to find all those items.

A spin on this idea would be to buy several things that add up to the price range if you think that the person would enjoy getting multiple gifts instead of just one. For instance, if the price range is $50, you could get the person a DVD and a couple CD’s instead of just one video game.

To show that you still care about the people who you are not getting gifts for, you can do as some of the other bloggers have suggested and just write meaningful cards or spend time with them. This keeps costs low and still allows you to show that you care.

I know it may be too late for some of you to do this for this year, but maybe you could suggest it for next year. I hope this helps.

Until next time,

Brad

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. I wish I had some good advice as to how you can save money when the holidays come around, but I’m coming up short. The only thing I can say is don’t be tempted to buy things you don’t need just because they are on sale. And if you missed some of the big sales over the weekend, don’t worry because there will be more when Christmas time approaches (and afterward for all the stuff they didn’t sell).

Any way, the whole idea of this post was to give you an easy way to save. So here it is: Pretend that you smoke. Smokers can’t go a day without their pack of cigarettes. No matter what, they find a way to get them. If you do the same with your money, you can save a lot. Everyday stuff 3 dollars into a jar or container, and forget about it. This is your pack of cigarettes. You do this religiously, because you can’t go a day without it. The money thereafter is “spent.” You can’t get it back, and you don’t use it when you need to go to the movies. Every once in a while, deposit this growing wad into your savings account. This will help to lessen the temptation of spending it. Or you could do it like some smokers, and “buy” a whole carton once per paycheck. Put about $25 or so in your jar every paycheck.

Another easy way to do this is to set up an ING Direct Savings Account and have the money deducted from your bank account and put into your savings account automatically. This could be weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. That way, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to do it or physically taking your money to the bank. It’s all done for you.

If you follow this plan, you should end up with about $1,000 in your account by this time next year. Wouldn’t that be nice?

If you already do smoke, one way to save is to stop smoking. It will save you about $1,000 per year (and probably several years of your life).

That’s all for now.

-Brad

Challenge yourself to save $500, you could win $500!

Saving money is hard; we are all much better spenders than savers but saving money is really important. Not only does it give you a safety net but but many students don’t realize that banks pay you for having money in a savings account. Yup, they pay you interest on your money every month. Why you may ask? Because they are borrowing that money from you to use for making loans like student loans to other people. The interest people pay back to banks on loans in part goes towards paying interest to you on your savings account. You can take your money out at any time and the US Government guarantees that up to $250,000.

Sounds awesome huh? That’s why we’ve put together this challenge to help encourage you to start saving. We are asking that you open a free ING Direct Savings account. Its free, flexible and has high interest rates to grow your savings its great for students.

How to Enter:

What Can I Win?

On December 31st we’ll randomly select two people who entered the challenge to award $500 deposits each. You must open an ING Direct Savings Account to win. Tricking us will result in bad karma plus we will only deposit the money into an ING account. ING gives students great tools to help grow their savings.

Who Can Enter?

Anybody can enter! All you have to do is open a new ING Direct Savings Account.

Top 4 Excuses for Not Taking the Challenge:

1. I don’t feel comfortable giving out my personal information online.

2. I don’t know who ING Direct is.

3. I can’t save up $500.

4. I already have a savings account.

Who is ING Direct and Can I Trust Them?

ING DIRECT, headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware exists to help you Save Your Money. I personally have an account with them I opened for this challenge and I use it! ING does business online, over the phone and by mail. Read more about ING here.

More Questions?

If you have more questions about this challenge, ING Direct Savings or StudentPlatinum, direct them to info@studentplatinum.com.

Are you a ScholarshipPoints member? If so use the code INGMEBLOG for 10 cool points.