Welcome!

Hello world, and welcome to the new Froogal Stoodent blog! The purpose of this blog (in case you couldn't tell from the title!) is to provide tips and advice on saving money. This is aimed directly at college students and graduate students, though the advice could be useful to anyone.

I will largely draw ideas from my own experience and expertise, but input is encouraged! This site will work best as a forum for people to discuss ways of saving money and living frugally. Learning how to live below your means is certainly an ongoing process, but it's up to you to make the commitment to do so. As with most things in life, the results you get will reflect the effort you put in.

So if you want to learn how to lead a frugal lifestyle that will yield benefits for many years after you graduate, you've come to the right place! After all, who doesn't want to save money?!

As difficult as it can be sometimes to sit at home while your friends go to concerts, parties, and dates to the movie theater or posh restaurants, consider how those same friends will feel when they graduate with $30,000 or $60,000 or $100,000 of debt--or even more! If that thought isn't enough motivation to seek alternative ways to have fun, go on dates, and eat well, I don't know what is!

Before we get into the heavy stuff, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Zach, I'm 25 years old, and I'm pretty easygoing. I'm a graduate student in Cognitive Psychology at a university in Ohio, but I'm originally from central Pennsylvania. My father has worked in a warehouse for about 30 years, and my mother retired from her work helping people navigate their medical insurance benefits (a minefield, to be sure!) when I was born in 1989. She has not worked since.

So, it probably goes without saying that I've never been particularly well-off. Because of this, I'm fortunate enough to have been taught the value of living below your means, so my meager pay as a grad student is actually more than enough to meet my needs--but only because I do without some things that a lot of people take for granted.

Since so many people talk about having money issues, I figured a blog such as this one would be a good way to share my knowledge and provide a forum for other people to do the same. While a grad student like myself can't increase his income, he CAN decrease his expenses--and that goes for just about everyone who doesn't make more money than he knows what to do with!

My own tips and ideas will be coming along in future posts. But for now, here's a link to a site that I found: http://www.hackcollege.com/blog/2013/10/07/20-money-saving-tips-for-frugal-students.html  It's got some good ideas that you may have thought of, or you may not have. In any case, there's always more to learn. So, let the savings begin!