Student discounts

We all probably get the student admission to the movies (maybe even after we're done being students!), but there are many other discounts available for students. Some interesting ones:

• Kiki alerted me to 15% discounts students can get on cell phone service! The following link provides information on how to get discounts from the major cell phone providers.
  http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2006/12/employee-or-student-discounts-for-cingular-verizon-sprint-nextel-and-more.html
• Ecogeoman and I have both had success buying plane tickets, especially for international flights, on Studentuniverse.com. He recently saved several hundred dollars on a flight to Far Off Land. STAtravel is a similar service.
• The International Student Identity Card (ISIC) can get you discounts at all sorts of places. I put my city into the discount finder and it returned deals for a whole bunch of cool stuff. It's primarily for discounts on travel related things like hostels and extra baggage, but has other deals too. It does, however, cost $22 for a year.
• Check around for local attractions that give student discounts. For instance, symphony orchestras often sell tickets to students at reduced prices.
• Conferences almost always have a student registration fee. But if you ask, sometimes they will let you volunteer to get your registration (partly) waived.
• There are other crazy discounts that aren't advertised and you'll never know about if you don't ask. For example, I have a friend who got super cheap rent because his landlord wanted to help out a student.

Chime in in the comments if you have any other tips! And as always, if you'd like to write a post or have an idea you'd like posted on your behalf, let me know.

Gas Prices

I know we are all feeling these. However, I came across this graphic from the NY Times that puts the issue in striking contrast. As we've discussed before on budgeting, entertainment usually garners 5% of a person's income whereas housing can fluctuate between 15 and 30%

For my part on gas prices, I have been lucky. My car gets very good mileage, I keep my car maintained, and I am able to walk to work most days. I also do not mind slowing down on highways and enjoying the trip. I have an upcoming conference where I have decided to drive; we'll see how my gas budget fares.

How are you dealing with gas prices?

How’s this for crap?

Students in my program are “guaranteed” funding for “five years”. Basically, the department will give students a stipend and tuition waiver for TAing. (Most students will drop TAing like a stone if they can get a fellowship or their advisor has grant money to give them an RA (either for hourly work on the advisor’s projects or for work on the student’s thesis research)). However, this doesn’t necessarily include summers. For the most part, students who have needed summer funding have gotten it, but there’s always some drama in April while it gets sorted out.

This year, the summer schedule changed. They added a second session and it really jacked up the TAships. I don’t know if there were fewer TAs needed or if there were more students wanting to TA than usual, but the result was that there were more students than TA positions. Some people didn’t get TAships. Some of those were international students who aren’t allowed to work outside the university. That’s crappy.

Neither EGM nor I have had to worry about this much because we’ve had other funding. This year, though, EGM is on the department’s dime. There was all this confusion about summer pay – how much it would be and when they would get it. EGM finally found out about 6-8 weeks ago that there would be no paycheck in June. The July and August ones will be bigger than usual, so it’s not so bad. But rent is still due each and every month whether they decide to pay us that often or not. He saved what he could to prepare, but seriously, how many people could come up with a month’s worth of expenses on 6 weeks’ notice even if they were paid well?

Sigh…We’ll manage, hopefully without EGM incurring too much debt. It’s sad to dip into that savings I’ve been working so hard to accumulate for something so not fun. Still, I guess this is the kind of thing you save for and I should be glad I can help him out instead of either of us building new credit card debt. It’s just so crappy that our pay is lousy and unreliable.



I’m sorry if this post seems insensitive to readers in humanities departments who get a raw deal compared to science students. FWIW, my university is starting to rectify this by getting a grad student union.