Here are some Halloween costume ideas for lazy people who haven’t come up with their own yet:
A classic zombie:
Photo by Bahman.
A Starbucks zombie:
Photo by Laughing Squid
Click to continue reading…
Yesterday, Lifehacker wrote about how to save a bunch of money on dinning out. As college beings on a budget, we can always use a lot of fun for a little, so here it is:
Right now [restaurant.com] is selling $25 gift certificates for $10, which isn’t a bad start, but from now until Halloween, entering TREATS at the checkout applies a second 80% discount to the sales price. The result is a supremely cheap $25 gift card for just $2. Want to aim higher? The same discount applies to more expensive gift cards as well, so you can snag a $50 gift card for $4, $100 for $8, and so on.
A funny bit from Saturday Night Live with some real world application:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/don-drapers-guide/
Energy bars are great for munching on between classes, but they usually run upwards of $1 each. That can be a serious blow to any student’s budget so here are some recipes to make your own:
Materials:
Procedure:
Spread margarine in a 9 inch by 9 inch glass pan using a piece of kitchen paper and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Mix cereal, walnuts, dates, cherries in a bowl.
Mix peanut butter, agave nectar, and corn syrup in a saucepan and bring to boil. Stir constantly afterwards for about 1 minute.
Put peanut butter mixture over cereal mixture in bowl, and stir. Put in baking pan. Bake 10 minutes.
Once done, let the mixture cool, cut into squares, and either eat or store in a zip-lock bag at room temperature for later enjoyment.
[Nutrition Facts: serving size: one bar | 180 Calories | 4 gr. Protein | 8 gr. fat | 22 gr. Carbohydrate]
Materials:
Procedure:
Spread margarine in a 9 inch by 9 inch glass pan using a piece of kitchen paper and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Click to continue reading…
I hate budgets. As easy as it is to shop online nowadays, one of the toughest things to do is to stay on budget. It seems however that at times budgets are a necessary tool to help us from spending too much money. Here are some ways you can budget that I have had success with:
That’s right, bust out that pencil, paper, and calculator. Write down everything you can remember that you spend money on and try to estimate how much you really need each month. A more effective way to do this is to calculate how much you estimate you are going to spend each year on each category and divide by 12. This is better because it takes into account holidays, birthdays, and other events that do not necessarily occur every month. Think about it for a bit and try to think of everything. Looking at recent credit card statements may help you tremendously so start there if you are having some problems. You can always come back and rebudget if you miss something.
Excel (or if you’re poor: OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet) is one of my favorite tools. I use it for just about everything — from tallying how much running I do each day to organizing my recipes. It is also a great tool to use for budgeting. I just organize all my expenses and list things as categories, amount spent, location/store, etc. It is a great way to organize what you are spending money on especially if you have multiple credit cards or use a lot of cash (just remember to keep receipts or you will forget what you have been spending money on). Once you have organized you expenses take advantage of the nice graphing functions so you can visually see how much money you are spending on each category.
Just a few days ago Intuit released their online Quicken version for free. Click to continue reading…