Thrift-Minded: Back to School Savings

Let’s face it, we’re in college and we’re broke, whether we want to be or not. It doesn’t matter if we have three thousand dollars in the bank, three hundred dollars, or three dollars—we are broke college women. However, if we look around us, we can find ways to be thrifty: thrifty with things we already have, thrifty by borrowing things and thrifty by shopping around. With that being said, one of the hardest parts of college for most collegiettes is losing a source of income, aside from the dining hall wages with four-hour shifts once a week. When you only work summers, it makes it hard to spread out your wages from three months over the other nine months of the year.
 
A few ways to be thrift-minded, especially in the first few months of the semester, or throughout the year, is to shop around for school supplies, something we give no thought to until we are checking out and we see the number on the cash register climb higher and higher. There are alternatives to the campus bookstore prices. I’m not knocking the Ithaca College bookstore and all of its Bomber glory, but if we are already paying an arm and a leg to attend IC, why pay another arm for a few folders and some loose-leaf paper? Consider more creative alternatives.
 
For instance, you can take the TCAT (Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit) bus to the dollar store, to Wal-Mart, Wegman’s, or Staples. Each of which offer a wide selection of school supplies at varying prices. For those of us that are looking to keep more money in our pockets, the dollar store can be a safe bet. Although the quality may not always be the greatest, the basic pens, pencils, colored pencils, markers, lined paper, and notebooks that they offer can go the distance. Wal-Mart is also reasonably priced and Wegmans also offers great school supplies within a reasonable price, and unless you only buy the Five-Star notebooks and folders, you can get great deals within a decent price range. If you’re feeling daring, you can give Staples a gander. Although, I have found that Staples runs a little pricey, especially when it comes to printer ink. If you do have a printer, I would recommend Wal-Mart, that’s where I’ve had the most luck with finding ink that is the cheapest for my printer.
 
For those of you that are too anxious to take the TCAT out into Ithaca, you can check out the Take It or Leave It that’s located right on campus. Take It or Leave It is a program that was started by the Ithaca College Environment Society (ICES) to reduce the amount of waste left behind after students left IC at the end of the spring semester. TIOLI bins are left in the lounge of each dorm, so that students can leave things as they leave IC, while others can grab things before they head out for summer. Aside from random dorm goods, you can also discard leftover food goods into the bins, which is then donated to local food banks. TIOLI is located conveniently in the basement of Clarke Hall, located in the lower quads just south of the tennis courts, and wedged between Lyon and Bogart. Some of the things that TIOLI has to offer include (but not always): clothes hangers, desk lamps, trash cans, kitchen supplies, bedding, clothing, plastic organizers, shower caddies, shelving units and cork/white boards.
For more information, you can check out Take It or Leave It at their website, http://www.ithaca.edu/remp/events/tioli/. And for information on bus routes, you can check out the TCAT’s website, http://www.tcatbus.com/.
 
Until then, Bombettes, stay thrifty and keep on keepin’ on.