Saving in College Is Not Easy

“We all know that saving is important and it’s something we should be doing. And yet, overall, we’re doing less and less of it.” Wendy De La Rosa. 

As a current college student myself, saving money can be a struggle. Wanting to keep up with your friends, going out for drinks, buying new clothes to wear out, or even getting that morning coffee from your local coffee shop before class every. Everything costs money, some more than others. I can say I have been at fault for this too. Wanting to keep up with my friends who go out every night and as well as buying new clothes all the time. I don’t know how they do it. For a lot of people saving money is hard, but for a college student, it feels nearly impossible, when actually, it's not. In Wendy De La Rosa's video “3 psychological tricks to help you save money,” she talks about how saving money doesn’t depend on how smart of a person you are because it's all about the environment you're in.

For example, De La Rosa did a study where they took random people and made two groups. One where they showed the first group their income monthly. In the second group they showed the group's income every week and what she found was the people who saw their income every week were able to save and budget better through the month, than the other group who couldn’t save or budge at all. Not changing the amount of money these people were making, they just changed the environment in which these people understood their income. 

After watching this video you should be able to come out with at least three things you plan to use. For me being a college student, the three things I plan to use within the semester would have to be to think about my future self. Setting yourself up in the present times will only help your future self. For example, you know you're going to be getting paid this upcoming Friday, but you worked more hours than you normally do, so you're not sure how much money you're going to have in this week's paycheck. Before receiving the paycheck, ask yourself how much of it you want to set aside to save and how much of it you're going to allow yourself to spend on other things, such as going out with your friends. This is a great way to benefit your future self because you will hold yourself to saving the portion of money you choose to set aside. The second thing I plan to use would have to be trying to use a saving app as the video suggested. It will help make good saving decisions, so you can keep track of what you're doing with your money. As a college student, this will help with buying textbooks and groceries, and whatever else there is to spend money on. Lastly, my third and final thing I plan to try this semester would be to manage small frequent purchases. De La Rosa talks about in her video how “the most frequent purchase that people regret is eating out.” Even if you pick up a coffee here and a sandwich there, even though they’re small purchases they eventually add up. 

Being a college student trying to save money can be difficult, I struggle with it myself all the time. Money can be a tough thing to hold onto once you have it. Wendy De La Rosa does an amazing job advising on how to help fix that problem. Knowing how to save and balance your money is an important life skill to learn and the sooner learned the better your future self will feel. 

Photo By: Emily Hernandez