College. The time that we all seem to love and hate at the same time. The time of sleepless nights, coffee filled days and all the crying in between. I’m here to tell you that there is a silver lining in all of this.
Discounts. College student discounts.
For some, this is the only reason to bear through college for four years and I can’t blame them. Now some discounts are in-stores and online, while others are through certain websites and apps but either way they’re worth it.
The first to bring up is an app called UNiDAYS (and yes that is how it’s spelled). This app gives you dozens upon dozens of discounts right at your fingertips. It’s available for both Apple and Android phones and doesn’t cost a thing to download. The amount of the discount varies from brand to brand, but some of the discounts found are only available through the app. UNiDAYS has discounts for pretty much everything, from food like Costco and even GrubHub to technology like Apple and HP.
Next is the obvious one. Amazon Prime. This one is talked about a lot by students. Some swear by it (I’m one of them), others live without it. A student discount for Amazon Prime is half off the full price. So, when you sign up, your first six months are free and after that it’ll charge you $59 for the year or about $6.49 a month. I originally got it because it allows you full access to the Amazon Prime library and it’s definitely worth it in my book. You get all the benefits of a Prime account while paying half the price. This includes 2-day shipping, Prime video (movies and tv), unlimited photo storage, Prime reading, special discounts and much more. (Disclaimer: you do have to have a school email ending in .edu in order to sign up.)
Now if Amazon isn’t really your thing, maybe Hulu is. One deal I wish I’d known about sooner is the Hulu/Spotify deal. Pretty much to sum this one up, you get Spotify premium, Hulu (ads included) and Showtime, all for a little less than $4.99 a month. I was paying nearly $9 for a Hulu subscription alone so this deal was a lifesaver. If you’re someone like me who watches Hulu because you can’t watch most of you shows at a normal time and you love listening to unlimited music, then this is definitely the deal for you. I’ve gotten so much use out of it and it’s ten times cheaper than getting subscriptions for Hulu, Spotify and Showtime alone. Trust me on this one, it’s worth it.
Another discount to look into if you’re more into Apple products is Apple music. This subscription is $5 a month for students and it limits you to 48 months or the equivalent of 4 years (these don’t need to be consecutive years). You get all the perks of regular Apple Music for half the price.
If you work off of Adobe products, you’ll be happy to know (if you don’t already), that Adobe has student discounts and a package specifically for student and their needs. You can get Creative Cloud for up to 60% off at $19.99 a month. This package includes all Adobe creative apps. There is a package just for photographers that ranges from $9.99 to $19.99 (no discount applied to these packages) depending on what you might need.
Now, for the weirder ones. Most insurance companies will give discounts to student drivers. It’s usually not a lot considering how much some pay for car insurance, but hey a discount is a discount. For most of the large insurance providers (i.e. Farmers, Allstate, State Farm, etc.) the discounts range from 15% to 25% and nearly all of them are based on good grades. So, the better the grades, the better the discounts. This is also the same with some credit cards. Discover card, for sure, does cash back for good grades. Newspapers and publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have discounts for students, including $1 a week deals for unlimited print and digital access.
There are so many discounts out there for college students to take advantage of, we just have to hunt a little bit to find them. Take advantage of all the ones you can and exploit them, because once we’re done and graduated, all the good discounts are gone. So, go out there and buy some stuff.