Not Every College Student Needs To Be a ‘Broke College Student’

The number of times that I have been guilty of blaming my money problems on being a “broke college student” is countless. I am a full-time student, working a part-time job, and somehow manage to also work a paid internship on top of that. Why is it that I have two jobs and a nearly nonexistent savings account?

Well, I know why, and that is because I am an impulsive spender who can blow an entire paycheck in two weeks. I am the epitome of a “broke college student”. But that changes today after I watched the Ted Talk Series: “The Way We Work”.

This series is equipped with knowledge from leaders and thinkers that all college students could benefit from before entering the ‘real’ adult world. It also inspired me to make a change and better my spending and saving habits in hopes of setting myself up for a more financially sound future. By the end of this, you too should be ready to start saving!

In one particular episode, “3 psychological tricks to help you save money,” behavioral scientist Wendy De La Rosa shares some of her best tricks:

1) Harness the Power of Pre-commitment

De La Rosa uses the example of our present and future selves. Our present selves are perfectly fine with how things are currently while our future selves want to improve upon something in our lives such as saving for a car or wanting to lose 10 pounds.

According to De La Rosa, your savings behavior changes with the decision-making environment you are in and this is why you should harness this power and try to commit your future self to something that might be hard to do in the present. She advises, “Sign up for an app that lets you make savings decisions in advance. The trick is, you have to have that binding contract” ( De La Rosa, 2019 ).

2) Use Transition Moments to Your Advantage

Transitions in your life such as a turning another year older, or starting a new season, comes with this newfound motive to act. De La Rosa calls this the “fresh start effect” and advises that you set a goal for yourself during this time.

She suggests that the day before your next birthday to put in your calendar a time that you can sit down and identify what financial thing you most want to do. From there, it is all about commitment and making sure you see it through.

3) Get a Handle on Small Frequent Purchases

Okay, now this one is probably the hardest trick to follow. I know for me my three favorite things to do is eat out, go out for drinks with friends, and complain that I don’t have enough clothes.

Especially in the last few months with Covid-19 happening, I got way too used to ordering off of food delivery apps such as UberEats, GrubHub, and DoorDash way too frequently.

De La Rosa relates this problem to her own personal habit of using ride-sharing apps too often back when she lived in NYC. The way she fixed this problem was by changing the payment method on her app from a credit card to a debit card that was loaded with a limited amount of money monthly.

By creating this barrier it forced her to ration her travels and in the end saved her a lot of money. It is all about changing your environment to make it harder to spend on small frequent purchases.

Hopefully, if you are a college student who is facing the same money struggles as I am this will inspire you to make a change and commit to start saving your money. Because remember, not every college student needs to be a “broke college student”.

Photo by: PxFuel