With coronavirus now affecting any and everyone’s lives most people nowadays have gotten an apartment to keep going on with their college endeavors. Here are some tips and tricks that you should probably take in mind to save money on your rent. What I’m primarily going to talk about in this article is how to save money with your utilities; especially if you are paying for your water and electricity as part of your apartment lease. When I agreed to the lease on my apartment I was assured that the price of utilities would never go more than a couple of dollars over the limit. So imagine my surprise when the first month came around and I was told that I owed $100 to the electric company!
1. Meal Prep
The first step to saving money electricity-wise is to meal prep. I cannot say this enough prep your meals in advance. You would be surprised how much electrical money college apartments charge you for just using your stove/cooking every day it’s outrageous. So let’s say you’re cooking a meal where you would need rice, just cook it all in bulk you don’t need to be wasting your time and wasting your electricity cooking small little portions of food every day. It adds up and at the end of the month you’ll see this bill that you can’t even imagine.
The next step to save money through your electricity is to invest in string lights. I literally don’t even turn on the light in my bedroom I only use these golden Christmas lights that I got at Walmart for honestly like 2 dollars. If that’s not enough remember you have a window and the sun, and that’s free, so open it up. Lights are a great alternative because one, they look super cute and two, you can get just as much light that you need to do your work so it’s a win-win on both sides.
My third step in saving money through utilities is to turn that air conditioning off. Better yet, unplug the air conditioning when you leave your apartment to go to your classes. Your apartment has no business charging you money for some air conditioning that you forgot to turn off when you are at school for 8 hours. That’s lost money and money that could be going elsewhere to you as a struggling college student.
4. Water
The last step and this should be obvious is don’t leave the tap running. Don’t accidentally leave it dripping, the water adds up, and let’s say you leave your faucet running or dripping overnight that’s money wasted that you’ll be paying for at the end of the month. The same thing goes for those of you who leave your sink running when you’re brushing your teeth all the water adds up.
If you follow all these steps you’ll be sure to bring down your entire cost of living and hopefully paying around what you agreed for rent. No surprises equal a better monetary future for you don’t make the same mistakes I did.