Money In My Pocket

Little Purchases

Recently I have had to make lots of little purchases, and they are beginning to add up. I did not even realize it until I looked in my wallet today and saw that I am really running low on cash. Whether it is going to the grocery store to get a couple of items or just buying a friend a birthday card, I seem to be inundated with the need for these seemingly inconsequential things. As I have mentioned before, I try to save my cash and make it last as long as I can, but for purchases at or under $10, I sometimes just use cash rather than pull out my credit or debit card for an amount that small. One of the biggest problems recently has been due to the fact that a used movie store has just opened close to campus. I can, for around $5 or $6, the same as it costs to rent a movie, buy it. Granted the movies are used, but it is still a good deal. I run into the same problem I always do, though. I have not had a chance to watch the ones I have purchased yet. As the semester moves on, maybe things will ease up and necessary purchases will fall away and I will be able to watch these movies and still have a little cash in my wallet.

Out of Touch

As embarrassing as it is, I managed to misplace my cell phone last week. I can deal with the embarrassment, but not the inconvenience. To throw another wrench into the equation, it just happened to be the morning before I left to go out of town for the weekend.

I had to trust on my fellow road-trippers with staying in close contact with me and ultimately my well being and ride home. I felt I moved back a couple decades by carrying a calling card and black book with numbers instead of a cell phone with a digital contact list. I thought maybe I could use phone booths, but those don’t exist anymore. I was able to borrow strangers’ phone when needed. Also, businesses’ and hotels’ have courtesy phones. I imagine in the previous generations, everybody kept plans even more concrete than I did this weekend

Before I left for the weekend, a friend proposed the idea of a “Go Phone.” I did not want to spend the money for this temporary phone, because I had a solution in mind already. Now that I have made it home safely, I need to solve this connection problem. My solution is to claim insurance on my lost phone. The deductable is equivalent to the “Go Phone” idea and is a permanent solution. I just have to find time to visit the network store and everything will be fixed.

Student Organization Budgets

As many of the student organizations I am in are planning events, we have to get creative with making do with what little money we have in our organization accounts. Sure our school will help out each organization a little, but that is never enough. For many organizations we have pay annual dues, but that still does not give us enough to work with. Each event or gathering requires some sort of refreshment is seems, and this costs money. The problem is that our school requires any student organization meeting held in their meeting facilities to be void of outside food; we have to arrange catering (even for just cookies and punch) with the school’s dining hall catering service. This leaves us with two options. We can get as little food and drink as we think we can get by with and hold our meeting in their facilities or we can have a gathering off campus. There are drawbacks to having these events off campus too because sometimes places want to charge you to use their space, or they want you to order off their menu if it is a restaurant, which can be just as expensive as having it on campus. Also, even if we get the location for free and do not have to purchase their food, we have to bring our own, which means either getting pre-prepared trays or foods from the local grocery store, or getting all of the supplies and making trays ourselves. This could save some money, but if it is held off campus, you risk lower attendance. Usually we just hold everything on campus, but sometimes we wish there were some better options for student organizations on a budget.

Crutched

I am not very good in my accounting and financial knowledge when it pertains to the national level. I continue to educate myself when I can. By intellectual conversations with my other collegiate students and a plethora of articles on the internet, I have learned a lot about the current situation.

The situation is bad. Major financial cornerstones of the US are going belly up left and right. Someone told me that the US government is currently offering more “crutch” money than our gross national product. On a related topic but scarier, this will continue to add to our national debt.

So how does this pertain to me as a student? Honestly, I don’t know. I heard if I had investments, I might want to cash those out. It would be nice to have cash instead of credit for future purchases if the economy is completely gone. WOW, what a scary thought.

The largest question that is starting to loom on mind is the J word: Job. I definitely want a comfortable and secure company of employment. By interviewing, researching different companies, and checking their future well being, I am starting to understand which field of engineering will be safe from the possible hardships of our weak economy. According to recent treads, my future field of work or sub-specialties will not bloom for another couple years. How do I prepare for that? It is becoming apparent that I have many tough questions to answer before I fully emerge from my safe haven of college.

Test Time

There is a time in the semester where professors must be getting together and planning to collectively annihilate students.  I think they purposefully plan all tests, papers, and major assignments to be due within the same span of one to two weeks. This happens several times each semester, but I just hit the first wave. Because of all the work to be done to prepare for the first volley of fire this semester, I have to spend all of my free time reading, studying, or writing papers. It does not help that tons of student organizations seem to be magnetically attracted to this week or two when planning monthly meetings. Because of all of this going on, I have had to ask for a very limited work schedule, which means taking a cut in pay for this period of time. Just when I would want to have some cash to treat myself to a nice dinner out with some friends or something else to celebrate finishing all of these assignments, I will not have the money because I did not work my normal schedule the previous two weeks. It just seems like a lose-lose situation.

Spread Out

So I have continued my spreadsheet about my monthly spending patterns and fully analyzed it. (The spreadsheet I began in the post from July 3rd.) The only downside is that it is budgeted for the summer months. I did learn a lot about where I spent my money, i.e. a little too much at fast food restaurants and not as much as I thought at gas stations. Carrying receipts until I got home was a little annoying but worth it in the end, because I compiled some very good data. The implementation of record keeping taught me more than I thought it would. I learned to actually keep a balanced checkbook, which is really helpful when purchasing items. It would be a shame if I overdraft now. I now know the financial importance of staying away from fast food and purchasing groceries instead. Tell me if you have learned anything from your book keeping.

What now? Keep on, keeping on. That’s right; I am going to continue with the book keeping. Primarily, because I cannot create a good budget with the summer data but also it was fun. The fall has different activities that I need to account for, i.e. the road trips I told you about earlier, school books, supplies, etc. I am extremely interested in the data I will receive from my fall budget.

Fundraising

I am absolutely horrible at fundraising! Many of the organizations I am in, though, have large service components, so we have to, at some point in time or another, participate in fundraisers. Sure, volunteering at the local nursing home or Boys and Girls club are fun, but these organizations have at least one annual fundraising effort they participate in, and my time to help for one of those organizations has come. Each member has to sell cards for pizza discounts so we can donate the profits to charity. Even though I am sure pizza discounts sound appealing to any college student, I still will probably mention it to a couple of my friends and end up just footing the cost of my cards and never using them because I will inevitably forget about it when I get pizza. Each year I struggle with selling tickets, asking for sponsorships, and soliciting student donations around campus. I even find it difficult to sit at a donations table in the student union building and ask people for their pocket change as they are walking by. I guess at this point I will just continue to have to foot the bill and make all these donations myself because of my inability or insecurity to get others to help. At least all the money is going to good causes I support!

Watch Time

With due time, batteries will run out of juice. About two weeks ago, this has happened to my current watch piece. A watch battery would cost several dollars, but I just have not ventured to the store yet. Primarily because my cell phone clock is sufficient. By not wearing my watch, I was not placing a stop-watch value to my time and daily activities. Therefore, I appreciated what I was doing and was able to focus more at the current task at hand. You really don’t think much about how you are always worried about your next commitment and can’t value your current commitment. Also, it caused me not to count down the never approaching escape of the world’s most boring professor and lecture. This way, I am focused on my professor even if he is boring. I challenge you, watch wearers, to not put your watch on today and see how much you gander at your bare wrist.

I’m not going to lie; I have missed my wrist-based sundial. I am also conscientious of being rude by pulling out my phone while with company; therefore I will return the two extra hands to my wrist. This way I can slip a quick glance at the current time without offending anyone.

 

Football Tickets

Football is pretty big at my school so students are always scrounging to get tickets to the games. I have seen fliers around campus for a single, big-game, ticket on sale for around 60% more that the actual cost or an entire season of home games for more than 25% over season package cost. I know that some people care a lot for football, but what student can pay that much? I guess some parents are giving their children money to buy the tickets because it is important to them that their child attends the games, but those sure are generous parents who would pay that kind of money just so their child could attend a recreational event. But for each student that is forking out huge sums of money to attend a game, there is another who is making a killing. From the profits of selling one ticket, a student scalper could make back enough to pay for the entire season package. By selling an entire season, he or she could cover the costs of all of his or her books for the semester, and could potentially have a bit of spending money left over. While I hate to see a student who will take advantage of another like that, I also understand the business of it. Students always need money, and this is an easy way to make it, though it could be seen as ethically unsound.

Pitching Tents

One of my friends was telling me about a small company he has created at his college. His school is very heavy in football and all the fans and alumni love to tailgate. So, his entrepreneurial company has made a lot of money with a rather simple company philosophy: To provide a full tailgate experience to tailgaters with no effort to them.

He has employees save tent spots, set up the various size tailgating tents, and break down the tents on game days. For an additional charge, he will offer TVs, coolers with ice, chairs, and tables. He has been faced with several business decisions, but his business education has helped him. For example, equipment storage, transportation of material, bookkeeping of exchanges, scheduling employees, etc. Need-less-to-say, his company has become quite profitable.

He has about five employees working for him. He did not tell me specific numbers, but each makes about a couple hundred dollars a day plus tips. He retains the remaining funds as profit. With 7 or 8 home games per semester, he can easily make tuition.