Don't Go Breaking My Bank: 8 Valentine Dates For College Kids

Thought I’d make another since the first one was so much fun! Cute, festive lil’ totodile wishes you happy holidays! 

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(via How to Survive Without A Meal Plan in College)

With the 2016 spring semester coming up soon, I have some tips on how you can save money on textbooks!

1. Find out if you really use the textbooks in class

The easiest way to do this is to ask students who have had your professor before, or if you don’t know anyone, look at ratemyprofessor.com to see what people say about using the textbook.

If you don’t need it, don’t buy it or rent it! If you start class and find out you do need it, you can always buy it later!

2. See if your university library has textbooks you can use for free

Most universities and colleges have textbooks available for use, but you usually have to stay in the library with them and have a time limit for using them

If you only need to the textbook for short periods of time, then this is the perfect solution! You can access the textbook without having to spend any money.

    If you really do need the textbook all the time, here’s what you do:

1. Find out what textbooks or workbooks you need for your classes!

How you find out what textbooks you need varies for each college and university. If you know how to find it, do so. 

The easiest way is to find out is to go to your college bookstore AFTER you have registered for classes, and ask them to print out a list of required materials for your courses. 

They will probably need your student ID or student ID number to access your schedule, so make sure you know it!

2. Write down the title, edition, and ISBN number of the textbook

The ISBN number is the best way to find the correct book online

See if there are any online access codes you need to buy with the textbook or need to buy separately

If it says you need the latest edition, e-mail your professor and ask if you can use previous editions, and if so, which ones (often there’s barely a difference between editions)

3. Use booksprice.com to find the cheapest price for the book you need!

Using this website saved me over $300 on textbooks this semester!

You enter the textbook ISBN, and it shows you the cheapest price from every site on the internet. 

It also says if the price is for buying it or renting it

I always recommend renting it unless the book is for a major-specific course and might be useful in the future

Here’s what the results page looks like when you look up a textbook: 

(because this is the newest edition, there are not any inexpensive ones available to buy)

                                               You’re done!                             (and you’ve saved a ton of money)

Hope this helped, send me any questions in my ask!

Love, Study-Buddhy

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(via 75 Items You May Be Able to Deduct from Your Taxes)

Not all Sales are Created Equally

Not all Sales are Created Equally

Although sales for the consumer usually mean savings, for retail shops and businesses they are simply tactics to boost purchases. For this reason, not all sales are created equal – for some you might not get an actual bargain or worse, end up paying more. To avoid this, here are some signs to look twice at a “sale”: BIG, BOLD, “Sale” Sign– This is pure bait. The signs are essentially there just…

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A house is an asset not an investment

This post originally appeared at Abnormal Returns. You can stay up-to-date with all of our posts via our daily e-mail newsletter.

A couple weeks ago Jason Zweig at WSJ wrote a personal and moving piece on selling the home where he was raised and where his mother had lived until recently. His experience is at-odds with the thinking of many Millennials who do not want to be weighed down by the cost and responsibility of owning a home. Zweig concludes his piece:

A home is more than an investment. It is the place that helps shape who we are. Your generation may well be thankful that you don’t have to bear the burdens of owning one — the mortgage, the maintenance, the pain of pulling up roots that run decades deep. My generation, and my mother’s, are thankful we had the blessings.

A home is often a blessing but it is not an investment. In a follow-up piece Zweig attempts to calculate the return on the aforementioned house and comes up with a disappointing number. He writes in a piece at MoneyBeat:

..I can make only a guess at their rate of return between 1961, when they bought, and this past week, when my mom sold. My very rough estimate is that it amounts to a rate of return of about 4% annually, roughly equivalent to the rate of inflation over the same period — in other words, a real return fractionally better than zero. Account for the money they might otherwise have incurred in rent, and the return would be slightly higher.

On the other hand, once you factor in repairs, routine maintenance and annual property taxes along the way, plus commissions and other costs on the final sale, the return after inflation would be negligible or even negative.

This result of moderate to negative real returns is in line with the Case-Shiller numbers on home price returns. Nir Kaissar at Bloomberg included the graph below to demonstrate that over time, except for a brief period during the housing bubble of the early 2000s, houses on a national basis have generated low positive real returns.

Source: Bloomberg

Despite the relatively poor performance of homes, Kaissar notes there is a persistent myth that homes are solid investments. For example the Case-Shiller indices don’t take into account the many other costs involved in home ownershiop. He like Zweig recognize there are non-financial reasons to own a home but there are much better ways to invest in real estate. Kaissair concludes:

There are numerous non-financial benefits, and some personal financial benefits (the mortgage interest deduction, for example) to buying a home. But if you want diversification, and if you want meaningful expected price appreciation from real estate, buy a REIT and rent your home. Homes are wonderful places to raise a family. They aren’t great investments.

One of the reasons why homes may be such a hot investment is that Americans continue to demand ever larger houses, and for now, home builders are willing to accommodate that demand. Rani Molla also at Bloomberg notes why builders are chasing the McMansion crowd but notes the eventual downside of focusing on an increasingly small demographic niche.

As noted above there are a number of reasons to own a home that have nothing to do with the dollars and cents of it all. It probably makes more sense to think about homes as assets and not investments. For instance, today it is easier than ever for those in retirement to get a reverse mortgage on their home to fund their ongoing needs for income. Scott Burns at AssetBuilder notes now the thinking has changed on reverse mortgages.

In my book I make this same distinction between asset and investment in regards to cash or more accurately cash equivalents like money market funds. I wrote:

Cash is an asset, but not an investment. On the face of it, this seems like a false distinction. In this formulation, an asset is anything of value. An investment, on the other hand, is something that is expected to produce real, after-tax returns over time. In this light, cash is something we should value, but we should not expect it to provide us with real returns over time, as should equities or bonds.

It is ironic that two assets that are so different like cash equivalents and a home would generate negative, real returns over time. But if you think a little bit more about it you can see these are two assets that have demands that have nothing to do with their prospective returns. Cash is held by highly risk-averse investors who are, by and large, price-insensitive. Since the outset of the financial crisis cash equivalents have had highly negative real returns but investors continue to hold significant balances.

The demand for homes is driven a whole host of factors that have nothing to do with prospective returns. There is nothing like a birth (or two) to prompt a couple to look for a larger home. Homes have in econspeak non-pecuniary benefits, or benefits that can’t be measured by money.

Zweig may very well be right that the latest generation will miss out on these benefits if they eschew home ownership. A better bet is that they come around to home ownership as they make a demographic transition. However they would be wise to think about their home as an asset and not an investment. Otherwise every call to the plumber or HVAC technician will feel like a loss and not a chance to keep your family warm and dry.

DIY – Dorm-It-Yourself

Going off to college is expensive and many don’t have a huge budget for those dorm room decorations but we’re here to help. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best…and cheapest…DIY projects to make your dorm room feel like home this year! TIP #1: Before you even consider going out to buy items, take a look around your home for items that you can reuse or re-purposes. Items like vases, mirrors,…

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