Oh yes, I’m going there. I’m giving away an iPod shuffle. Why? Because I have a brand-new, never-been-used one in my possession, and I’d like to get it to someone who will use it. Or someone who wants to sell it. Frankly, I don’t care either way. I have it, you probably want it, so here’s what you have to do to enter the contest:

On August 1st, I will make a post announcing my “Know Where the Money Goes” challenge, though nary a word will be included in the post about a prize. But those of you reading this will be “in the know,” because you’ll be well aware that participants in the challenge will be entered to win the iPod Shuffle!

That’s all there is to it! Take part in the challenge, and you’re entered to win. What’s the challenge, you ask? More details will come on August 1st, but the basic premise is that you post a comment on the August 1st entry, pledging to track each and every purchase you make for the month of August. All comment pledges will be entered to win, and at the end of the month, one person will be picked at random from the commenters, and contacted for proof that they tracked their August expenses.

So, if you’re the person picked at random, and you email me back with an Excel spreadsheet, or a scan of a spiral notebook, or a picture of entries in a Moleskin – you win! And I send you a cute green iPod Shuffle!

Frequently Anticipated Questions

But Stephanie, couldn’t someone cheat? Like, they take the pledge, and then you email them, and they quickly make up a spreadsheet with fake info?
Sure, someone could do that. But making up fake purchases would take about as much time and effort as tracking real info. Here’s the thing: if you actually take the challenge and track your expenses, you get a little prize whether you win or not. You get a good habit and a month of data about your spending habits! So while I anticipate a few bad apples who only pretend to take the pledge, I hope that most people will see that they can get the most personal benefit by actually taking the challenge.

Oh man, this is great, but I’ll never remember to check back here after August 1st to take the pledge!
Subscribe to the Poorer Than You RSS feed! Or subscribe by email and get PTY articles, including the August 1st challenge announcement, sent to your email!

How long after the challenge is posted will we have to enter?
One week. After August 7th, it would be hard to go back and write down purchases from the 1st, so you have until August 7th to comment on the challenge post and take the pledge.

Can I get an extra entry into the contest by blogging about this?
Yes, but there are some caveats. I ask that you blog about the challenge, but not the contest, if that makes any sense. That is, tell your readers about the pledge, but don’t mention the iPod thing. So blog about the challenge, or take the pledge yourself in a blog post, and then email me the URL of your post, and it will get you another entry!

Why so hush-hush about the fact that you’re giving out a prize?
Because I want people to really take the challenge. Because I want to cut down on people who come by the site just to enter the giveaway and then run off, never to be seen again. Because I want to reward regular readers and subscribers by letting you guys know about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And because I’m weird.

Disclaimer: The iPod I’m giving away was obtained through Wowio’s now-discontinued free iPod Shuffle deal last year, so it has a small engraving on the back that says “www.wowio.com”

Do you use a credit card, debit card, or grocery rebate card? Good! Now go sign up for Upromise.

Upromise is free and easy to set up. You enter in your card numbers for debit cards, credit cards, and grocery club cards (don’t worry, nothing will be charged), and then when you buy things from Upromise sponsors, you get a small rebate deposited in your Upromise account. Really, there’s no reason not to be signed up for it! Retailers include McDonalds, Bed Bath & Beyond, GNC, Mobil and Exxon, and many more.

I’ve talked about Upromise before, because it’s a no-brainer. You just set it up and then there’s nothing else to do! But I’m writing about it again because any time you make an eligible purchase from a Upromise partner, you’re entered to win $10,000 as part of their $100,000 College Dream Sweepstakes! If you’re a new Upromise user, you also get one entry for signing up. (The Sweepstakes ends September 30th)

You don’t have to be heading to college, or have a child heading to college, or even like children to be a Upromise member. But if you do have a friend or relative whose education you care about, you can easily set up Upromise to contribute to multiple people. For example, my mother has a portion of her Upromise earning directed toward me, and a portion directed toward my 4-year-old niece (her granddaughter).

And you don’t have to put your earning in a 529 plan or toward student loans, as the site suggests. Hidden in the Upromise FAQ are the instructions for getting your earning sent to you as a check.

Mmm… free money. Excuse me, I have to go dream about how nice it would be to win the $10,000 sweepstakes!

Every few days, my boyfriend’s housemates come home to a strange sight. Nearly all of them know me from before I started dating The Boy, but even the one that’s been my friend since elementary school can be thrown off by my antics now and then. Because every once in a while, they find me on their porch, playing music to a plant.

The music part is because of an episode of Mythbusters, where they proved the plausibility of plants growing better due to music or talking. On the show, the plants that got the heavy metal music grew the best. But I don’t have much heavy metal, so I just play the plant some Steve Miller Band because, hey, I know I grew up better because of SMB!

The plant is my new frugal baby. The Boy and I went to the store to get some fresh basil for a recipe, and noticed that the supermarket was selling potted basil plants for the same price as fresh cut basil! So we bought the little plant, and nearly killed it. My thumb is not as green as my mother’s, and we put off getting a pot for it and planting it properly for a few weeks.

But finally we got a pot, used some soil that was sitting in his shed, and now the basil plant is big, bushy, and smells delicious. The only thing is… we have yet to cut off any of the leaves and use them for a recipe! There’s a lesson in this, I’m sure – if you’re going to plant your own herbs, start with the ones you use the most!

I have a feeling this might get out of control – last night The Boy looked at me and said we should get a mint plant - so that we can chew on the leaves! I don’t mind getting Little Basil a friend or two, but in order for this to actually be a money-saving thing, we have to make sure that they’re the herbs we find ourselves actually using.

Many other bloggers have picked up the trowel, as well: PaidTwice is experimenting with tomatoes and my fellow Rochesterians at Spilling Buckets are growing buckets of plants!

Point of interest: I’m not a diehard believer that playing Steve Miller Band for my basil plant will do anything for it - it’s just an excuse to be wacky!

Photo credit: Sea Turtle

The blagonet can be a dizzying jungle of information – how are you ever to find your way to great blogs about money written by college students and twenty-somethings?

Have no fear! Now the College Money Network is here! This mighty band of heroes is made up of the following debt-fighters and wealth builders:

Broke-Ass Student [RSS]
… where my idea of splurging is feeding my cat Fancy Feast

Broke Grad Student [RSS]
Adventures in paying back $20,000 in student loans

Green Panda Treehouse [RSS]

MFA or Bust [RSS]
Fine Arts ≠ Money

Poorer Than You [RSS]
Talking about money, without being boring.

This Writer’s Wallet [RSS]
the story of an Chicago 20-something as she tries to make, save and spend money

And, well, me too, of course. Together, we… well, we write about money and college! What did you except? Saving the city from supervillains like Dr. Horrible? Please, we leave that to the professionals.

But you can expect some group writing projects, maybe some giveaways, and most importantly, some sweet money talk from all the participants. Links to the other blogs in the network are now in the sidebar, so check them out from time to time!

(Why yes, I do have Dr. Horrible on the brain today – you know how much I love free internet television and Joss Whedon! Plus, this world is a mess and I just… need to rule it.)

I timidly handed my keys over to the repair shop manager the other day as memories of past repair bills danced through my head. I’ve spent over $1,000 this past year on necessary repairs, and I wasn’t looking to up that bill any higher. But it was making an awful scraping noise, so I took it in and prepared myself for the toppling bill.

The bill ended up being $63.20. Actually, I only paid $43.20 because I had a coupon for a free oil change.

But that’s not the only way I’ve been saving money on car stuff this summer. I’ve been going the big, crazy, scary distance that some people go to cut their gas bill in half (or more!):

Carpooling

My boyfriend and I have been carpooling whenever possible, since we’re both working on our college campus this summer. And it’s been working out splendidly - except for that one day that I totally forgot to pick him up.

It will probably take until the end of the summer until I have some solid numbers - I’ll try and compare both the amount I saved and the amount the boyfriend saved, but I’m guessing it’s going to be significant.

Driving to and from work daily, by myself, should cost about $150 a month, not counting any recreational driving whatsoever. Over the past month, I’ve spent $110 on gas, including weekend and fun-type stuff. So, booyah.

The Bus

I looked into taking the bus to work, but it just doesn’t look like a good idea. I live in one suburb and work is in another - I’d have to take one bus into the city, and then another back out to the other suburb. The bus ride would be about an hour and a half, whereas my driving commute from home is 30-35 minutes. And the bus would be $3 per day.

Oh, not to mention I’d have to drive a mile and a half to the park-and-ride spot to catch the bus. The savings would be about $40 per month over what I’m paying for gas with carpooling, but I’d lose about 3 hours a day to bus time, and I’d have to get up around 5:30-6am to get to a 9am job.

“Excuses!” you say. “That’s another $40 a month you could have!” Well, ok, maybe. I’m not a big fan of saying “my time is worth $xx.xx per hour, so this money-saving activity isn’t worth doing.” But I am a fan of saying “Sleeping in until 7am instead of 5:30 is worth $40 a month to me.” That’s just a personal choice. I like sleep.

Has anyone else changed their transportation habits in the face of rising gas prices? Or is it just me?

56% of college seniors have four or more credit cards.

Let that sink in for a moment.

At first, this statistic baffled and confused me. With two credit cards, I feel like an oddity amongst the people I know. I’m a college senior, but I can only think of a handful of my friend that even have one credit card, let alone four!

But then it hit me - I have a biased point of view. My school does not allow credit card companies to set up tables on campus. There’s no one here hawking out free T-shirts, Frisbees or candy bars in exchange for all of your personal information.

This is purely anecdotal, but from what I’ve seen, not allowing credit card companies on campus severely cuts down on the number of credit cards that students have. It also cuts down on the number of students that get into debilitating credit card debt while in school.

An advisor at one major university says that more students drop out due to problems with credit card debt than academic disqualification. Dr. Robert Manning, a professor at my school and author of the book Credit Card Nation, says that between 7 and 10 percent of college students will drop out of school because of credit problems.

But at my school, this is pretty unheard of. When I dropped out due to a combination of credit card debt, student loans, and unhappiness in my major, people were shocked. Many people had never heard of someone leaving RIT because of money problem. In fact, it was so odd, the school magazine wrote a cover story about me dropping out!

So why do other schools allow credit card tables on campus? Simple answer: money. The credit card companies pay the school to be there - sometimes big bucks for big schools.

College students who accept cards from on-campus marketers are likely to be more indebted than those who obtain cards through other means, yet they are also likely to believe that the card issuers are more reputable because they have been screened by the college.

- http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=458&MId=20

I can tell you why that is - students who seek out credit cards off-campus (usually by applying online) know what we’re doing. We seek out a credit card with a better idea of what it is, why we need it, and how to use it responsibly. A student who applies for a credit card in exchange for a piece of swag is much less likely to know and understand that they are signing up for a monthly loan with a high interest rate.

There are two sides of the coin here:

On one side, I strongly urge universities to join my school in banning credit card companies from campus. Your students will be better for it, and your retention rates will increase. 

On the other side, students need to educate and prepare themselves. I’ve never been an advocate of “credit cards are evil” - I liken them to guns, actually. Many people can responsibly own and use them, but it’s possible for them to do a lot of damage in the hands of someone irresponsible or uneducated about their use.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot - learn about responsible credit card use, and get your free Frisbee elsewhere.

How to Survive Your Freshman Year is a part of the Hundreds of Heads Survival Guides series - the back cover claims that “This book proves that all of us are smarter than one of us.” Oh really?

I was sent a review copy of the book, and for a week or so, I endured the ridicule of my friends while I read it. “Stephanie, aren’t you a few too years late in reading this?” Yes, yes I am - as a college senior now, this information is a bit post dated.

But I wish I’d had it before my freshman year.

This book is just plain excellent. It’s a collection of tidbits - advice from college sophomores, juniors, seniors, graduates, and even a few dropouts, for good measure. Due to the format, a lot of the pieces of advice contradict each other - for example, there’s one page with people arguing for and against bringing an iPod to college. I like the conflicting advice - it gives the reader multiple views and allows them to decide for themselves.

If you’re heading off to college this fall, or sometime soon after that, I highly suggest you grab a copy of the book and read it. The best part is that they put out a new edition every year, so it stays current. So if you’re not headed to college yet, wait a bit and grab the new edition the year you go off to school.

For good measure, I’d like to add some tidbits from my own college experience. These pieces of nostalgia and advice came pouring out while I was reading the book:

I loved living in my co-ed dorm freshman year. A lot of the advice in the book says to try and get a dorm with only other freshman - nothing like that really existed at my school (that I knew of), but I was definitely in one of the more mixed dorms, because I was in the honors dorm. Even though I wasn’t an honors student, I felt really at home there. We had a running joke that the honors kids were there to make the rest of us smarter, and we were there to make the honors kids dumber!

Two things that were indispensable my freshman year: a can opener and a doorstop. I was one the only freshman on my floor to bring a can opener, so I was in hot demand for a while. And the doorstop was necessary because our dorm doors would not stay open without one.

Speaking of the doorstop, here’s a big DON’T for you: DON’T be that guy that never has his door open. There’s one on every floor, and you don’t want to be him. Keep your room reasonably clean, and prop the door open as much as possible.

There are lots of professor rating sites, and they are well worth checking when signing up for the classes. But the site the worked best for me was the one that was for my school only - more people use it, and that’s really what counts. Find out if one exists for you school, and if it doesn’t, find someone who’s willing and able to start one.

A lot of the advice in the relationship chapter says to not get into a serious relationship your freshman year. I couldn’t agree with this more heartily (based on my own mistakes) and I really wish someone had said this to me before college!

Did you survive college? Are you surviving it now? Please share your tidbits of knowledge in the comments!

It’s my favorite time of the month again! Regular readers will know that’s not sarcasm, but rather indicative of my sick love for numbers and data. Time to see how it all added up, with this month’s net worth update:

Change: -$69 or -0.20 %

Down! But I’m not really stressing about it. Two factors in this month’s decrease:
1) I didn’t start my summer job until the 10th of the month, so I only got one paycheck for June.
2) I’m still figuring out how to read the government’s horrendous student loan website. I think I’ve finally got it, but that means an increase in the student loan amount, due to a more accurate number for the interest that’s accumulated.

I’m still depreciating my car by $50 a month, to get it closer to the current value.

I have high hopes for next month. I don’t want to jinx it by saying something, so keep this on the downlow: Next month just might see the end of my credit card debt!

For a look at my assets and liabilities, check out my NetworthIQ for June. For an explanation of the categories I use, check out the bottom of my entry about February’s net worth balance.