1) Don't Buy Textbooks

During my sophomore year at college I had a friend who sat in front of me in one of my political science classes. Before class he would borrow my book and read the section that we would have a quiz on once the professor showed up. My friend, a senior, let me know that he had not bought a textbook in 3 years and had 3.75 GPA.

The average cost of textbooks in a semester is anywhere from $300 - $500 dollars. So over the course of your education you can save about $2,800 to $4,000 dollars. The savings can add up, but it is unrealistic to go without purchasing textbooks.

However, you don’t have to buy every book brand new. Usually you can find used copies on websites like half.com. If you are even more adventurous you can buy the old edition of the book. These poor pieces of printed material are no longer relevant because their graphs are out of style, or the author had decided that he wanted to rewrite the introduction. This is usually a good idea for classes like economics. While the graphs may be updated to include more recent years, the basic principles of macro and micro haven't changed that much in the last fifty years.

2) Go Without A Cell Phone

For my first semester of school I did not have a cell phone, and I got one during Christmas break. This was a very hard time in my life because my friends could never get in touch with me. By not having a cell phone in those months I saved about $300 dollars, and if I had persisted and not had one at all during school I could have saved $3,360. That is a semesters worth of tuition!

Again, this is drastic, but if you are paying for your iPhone perhaps you should reconsider and go with a pay as you go phone with fewer features. If you can get your cell phone bill below $50 a month during school you can be accessible, and will be able to get by on less a month.

3) Only Eat For Free

This is a bit of an exaggeration, but there are plenty of student groups that offer free food at their weekly meetings. A lot of times university programs will give away food to raise awareness. These need to all be on your calendar. I'm not saying that joining 7 student groups to have free lunch 7 days a week is a commendable thing, or even something I recommend, but being aware of free food is a way to keep your day to day costs a little lower.

Also, it is hard when all of your friends are going out to lunch and dinner everyday, but there is no shame in heading home to eat, or brown bagging it. If you play your cards right you could even establish a weekly picnic with all your friends and that will lead to a great time and money saved.

4) Don't Own A Car

I did this. I do not recommend it for everyone. I lived walking distance from campus and my job was on campus. Not having a car probably saved my about $8000 during my time in school. Because I did not have a car I could also work a job that didn't pay as well because I didn't need as much money.

This did not always make me popular with my roommates, but I lived with 4 other guys, trips to Wal-Mart were frequent, and I was always able to catch a ride when I needed one.

The ability to do this will be determined by your personality type, the generosity of your friends, and the type of college town you live in. Mine was fairly small and for the most part I could walk anywhere I needed to go. Perhaps, to keep your gas costs down all you need is a bike, but don't be afraid to give up your car keys. It can be done.

5) Couchsurf
The boldest move you take to cut costs. Live on your friends’ couches.

One of my former roommates did this for a semester. He lived like a nomad and for some reason was allowed by my friends to live rent-free in their apartments.

Planning on this lifestyle is probably not realistic, but if you are able to try and live in a house or apartment with several roommates.

For two years I lived with five other guys and ended up paying about a fourth of what most of my friends paid for their whole apartments.

College is expensive, but there are ways to find savings. Even if some of the ones listed above are more humorous than realistic it is always good to find ways to save money while working towards that degree. Maybe living at home for two years and knocking out the basics at a community college is the way to go. The decisions you make while you go through school will be based on your own unique financial picture.

Some people have a college fund and will be able to live as they please and not worry about how to pay for their next semester, and others will out of necessity have to take out student loans to finish their degree. One isn’t better than the other, but in both situations it is always good to stop and take a look at what you are spending your money on and figure out if there are ways that you can make each dollar go further.

I was reading last month's newsletter and was glad to see Gap insurance spotlighted on the second page. This is a service that TDECU Insurance offers.

GAP protects the difference between you vehicle's value and the amount you owe. In the event your vehicle is totaled or stoled and non-recovered, GAP coverage will reduce your out-of-pocket expenses and even cover your insurance deductible up to $1,000.

I just recently pruchased a new car, which I am loving. In case you were wondering it is an '09 Nissan Versa, and it's already a champ in my book. When I financed the car, I made sure that I had GAP insurance in place because I knew that when I drove the car off the lot I was immediately going to owe more than the car was worth. I probably should have taken more time with my car purchase and found a used model so that I could avoid taking the largest depreciation hit on the vehicle, but I do believe there is some value in knowing the entire maintenance history of a vehicle. I know everything about mine from mile seventeen on. But, enough of my rationalizing.

The point is if I am in an accident I know that I am not going to be car-less and left with a bill for a couple thousand dollars. The piece of mind is well worth it, and I can drive our highways without having to worry as much about the texting driver behind me who just had their slushee spill all over them. If you're about to buy a car, or just recently got one I would recomend taking advantage of this service and visiting our Insurance Offices.

Recently the cost of stamps increased to .44 cents. That's almost as much as it costs to get a can of soda from the vending machine. If you still mail checks to pay your bills you could be saving some money.

Check out this calculator. It will show you based on how many bills you mail a month what your monetary and time savings will be by using online bill pay.

In addition online bill pay is safer because there is no risk of having a check get lost in the mail! Simply click the Bill Pay link on the left side of your screen when you log into TDECU's All The Time Banking and enroll.

Members of TDECU are able to go to any Credit Union Service Center and conduct transactions just like you would in one of our own branches! These are other Credit Unions that have created a network to allow greater convenience to their members.

At a Service Center you are able to make:

• Deposits
• Withdrawls
• Loan Payments
• Make Transfers Between Accounts

all on your TDECU accounts! To access this great benefit all you need is your account number, a valid government-issued photo ID, and our name.

Just look for this logo at another credit union near you, use this search on our website to find the nearest one.

I've always had a hard time saving, and always told myself that I would start when I got my next paycheck. The plan that i had was to put away a certain percentage before I even touched the money, but I always found myself unwilling to see such a large sum of money go away.

Yesterday, I was reading some of what Ramit Sethi has to say over at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. While I was there I stumbled upon this article. The premise of the article is to start saving you should begin by taxing yourself on all the purchases you make. For instance if I spent $100 on groceries and and I was taxing myself %10 then I should put $10 into my savings account. This way I am saving as I spend, and it will effect my spending habits because everything will cost more than the sticker price. This should lead to lower overall spending, and increased savings.

I am actually excited about saving this way, and have already made a deposit into my savings account. The real trick will be the follow through.  Hopefully, I will be able to!

 What are some of the ways that you all save?

One of our Studio 55+ members sent us this collection of cake recipes. Now I don't have to look too far for a great cake recipe. I have been known to bake a cake on occasion. I made this one.

That is a honey chocolate cake with almond winged bees. So I know a thing or two about baking and this list makes me want to get out my new mixer.

Anyway, There are over 200 cake recipes on this remarkable site.

So let's get to baking so we can have an excuse to invite some friends over. Enjoy!

If you haven't noticed by now blogging is going to be with us for a long time. Many major print newspapers are facing bankruptcy and it looks like the internet has taken their place as the place for news and commentary. Headline news is easy to get, but what about commentary? Some of us go to as many as twenty different sites a day to catch up on what people are saying about the world around us. That is a lot of bookmarks to keep up with and a simple way to avoid that is to use an RSS reader.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. Most blogs have an RSS link and when you click on it you are taken to page that has everything that was on the real webpage except it doesn't have any formatting. The cool thing is that the RSS page updates every time a post is made automatically and there are many services that you can put the addresses into and they will show you all the RSS feeds you want in one place.

I like to use Google Reader. It is easy to set up and use, like so many of Google's other products. Many browsers will even give you the option of subscribing to the RSS right into Google Reader. You can find out more about Google reader here. Some email programs even allow you to import the content into your inbox.

I have about twenty blogs setup in my reader and every morning I wake up to about sixty new posts. Some are as short as a line and others are the length of regular news features. This easily keeps me up to date with the various things I am interested in and the world around me.

I highly recomend setting up an RSS reader and then taking advantage of all that the internet has to offer. You will spend less time going to websites only to find there is no new content and be able maybe find out a few things you didn't know.

We are eight days into the new year and I'm sure many of us have already forgotten about or haven't done anything to start on our new years resolutions. Every year we try and become better people by declaring the vaguest things about our lives. I will be healthier in '09! I am not going waste any money in '09! I'm going to learn French in '09! etc.

These are all great things to want to do and are things that should be pursued. I think one of the things that keeps up from being able to follow through with our resolutions is that we decide to do things that will take the whole year, but we never take the second step to break the goal down into something more manageable.

Say if you wanted to be healthier this year. Why not start by bringing your lunch to work instead of going out to eat. The odds are that you will exercise more portion control and be able to choose foods that aren't as artery clogging as what the drive-thru is offering. This doesn't seem like much but it is a serious start towards lowering calorie intake. Then in February why not start walking in the evenings. Don't try for the marathon first, get used to do things and slowly build up to what your end goal is.

Also, Reward yourself! If you don't want to waste money and you start budgeting. Why not make an envelope and put ten dollars in it a week, and then once a month you will have about forty dollars that you can spend on whatever you want. This way you can have some fun while you work towards becoming a saver and not a waster.

Reading, and even writing, about these things is fairly easy and the follow through is the hard part, but it usually is worth the sense of accomplishment. Don't forget about the joy of being able to have a NEW new years resolution for 2010. So one  last bit of advice would be to find a friend to do this with, or even start a blog or journal to track your progress. This way you can avoid the crushing loneliness of feeling like you're the only trying to do better and maybe you can make a friendship stronger or make new friends at the same time. Anyway, here is to a new year! Let's knock out some resolutions!

Lifehacker teaches, well, life hacks (i.e. tips for making your life better).

Without this indispensible website, I wouldn't know that a wad of aluminum foil is a great grill cleaner, how to wrap headphone cords neatly, or that a free Excel plug-in can give you recommendations on the best ways to present data (nerd alert!)!

And yesterday they made a timely post called "Why Choose a Credit Union Over a Bank."

Well worth the read.