I love this. There are so many things we can do and you hit so many of them.

A couple of months ago, I started air drying my laundry. Dryers really use excessive amounts of energy (and money). And I actually prefer my laundry this way now.

Also, playing off what Susan said above, if you are a book lover but want to cut back on costs, try bookmooch.com, which allows you to trade books with people all over the world (or just the country, if you want to limit postage fees).

Alli, I love BookMooch! Another writer clued me in that you can even Mooch magazines from them, which is really helpful for me as I'm researching writing markets.

Great tips, Alex.

In LA - $10 IS the cheap price for the movies. Occasionally you can find a $3 theater somewhere, but even those have probably raised their prices.

A couple of commentors mentioned BookMooch. There's also a neat site called BookCrossing that I used to use years ago.

I'm also a fan of searching for stuff on CraigsList before I hit the stores.

you can get cheap movie tickets just like when you were in college. Some companies have corporate discount programs, coupons are available via the Entertainment Book, or you can sign up for the Borders rewards card (for free) and have access to their perks, which include discounted movie tickets.

In Los Angeles, I'm paying $6.50 for shows before 6pm 7 days/week @ The Grove.

Zak, I agree with you, but I often end up spending more that way! Whenever I get a CVS coupon for $4 off a $20 purchase, I end up buying stuff I don't need just to get up to $20. I'm sure that's part of their plan! :)

I especially agree with the part about avoiding OD fees. Banks wait for their customers to make a mistake so they can stick it to them.

Here's a survey about them

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DVrhVS6glKhTBG_2b7fNvYYw_3d_3d

www.odnsf.com

don't lose your university ID. Lots of student discounts in lots of places, and they're not calling to check that you're enrolled. . . not that I would do something like that. . . well, I would, but I lost the damned thing :(

I'm sorry to be the naysayer, but really, I'm terribly sick of blogs like this. Their posts all follow a common, and rigid, format, consisting namely of some order of the following items:

n [noun] [verb phrase OR superlative] [quantifier] [noun]

where 'n' is an integer. Examples include:

10 Strongest Mammals!
25 Fattest Celebrities
37 Ideas for Spending Less Money
6 Sex Positions You’ve Never Heard Of

These blog posts (for instance, this blog post) are highly subjective, and presuppose the reader is some sort of pathetic, underdeveloped clod. Let's look at some example blog posts:

"Avoid careless fees"

Ahh, an excellent tip. To spend less money, don't accumulate fees that you can avoid! This is a difficult concept. Essentially, you are to avoid incurring fees that you don't necessarily have to incur. Genius.

"Go out for matinee (sic) movies"

Go to the cheaper movies instead of buying the pricier tickets. Simply astonishing.

"Buy less food"

Food costs money. Less food costs less money. Definitely can't think of that on my own!

Believe it or not, many people can actually derive, totally on their own, the fact that selecting cheaper alternatives or buying less of something saves you money. This could be due to endogenous predicate logic on their part, or perhaps due to the fact that the statements contain "cheaper" or "less." Indeed, relatively few of these ‘tips’ (tips almost seems too generous a word) are actually useful.

All posts of this class are constructed by persons hugely overestimating their intelligence and education. Normally, in the real world, attributes like this would be discouraged upon being laughed at. However, there is a fundamental disjunction in how these things work: in the real world, it’s a brute force method. You attempt to spread the word, and statistics indicates that it’s likely that at least some of the people you ultimately talk to will be foolish enough to take what you’re saying as extensively brilliant. But most won't. Most will laugh. And it requires a lot of work.

On the blogosphere, the sewer of all human endeavors, you transmute your useless ideas into a digital form, and the idiots come to you!
Observe here the faceless multitudes lavishing praise on a particular blog post anyone could have written, not just a neurosurgeon or, dare I say it, a “solutions architect.”

You might be inclined to ask that I explain why these things piss me off, sans the sarcasm. The reason is quite simple: Mr. Fisher is not innovating. He’s not saying anything new. What he’s doing is rehashing data, and then dressing it up to make it look amazing to dullards. The truth is, it’s not hard to think of ways to do x such that x does not require as much money, especially when you go into such absurd and largely inapplicable specifics as Fisher does (like buying cheap toothpaste, because I buy toothpaste so very often. Honestly, how much could that possibly save me? A dollar a month?). He’s just taken this opportunity to simultaneously satisfy his liberal guilt and his ego while being able to insert a few snide remarks about smoking and laude the importance of working out, which I’m sure he does religiously. In fact, it seems little more than a vehicle to say “I use Linux. I’m smart. I work out. I’m so very, very green and progressive.”

I’m resentful because people like him make it harder for people like me, who are still in college and preparing strategies for their careers, to be taken seriously. After all, this stuff is just as vacuous as the high school cheerleader cliché. The 25-35 year old set seems composed of humans at the level of a philosophical zombie or a great number of Chinese rooms. In other words, they stare blankly and repeat things they've heard. Not unlike tape recorders with eyes.

Please, Alex, if you’re going to say something, why not try and make it something new and valuable? Next time you sit down to post, think “could a Markov chain using a self-help magazine write this better than me?” If yes, think of something else. But I'm sure nothing will change.

Let the red-herring arguments and ad hominem attacks being!

To illicit such a strong reaction, I can only conclude I'm doing something right.

Thanks for your criticism Nick.

:-)

Nick,

Your pontificating is quite remarkable, though you are trying way too hard.

Let's first address your nice little "let the red-herring arguments and ad hominem attacks being (sic)". See, I can use (sic) too, just like you tried to do when being a condescending ass over the line “Go out for matinee (sic) movies”. The difference is, Alex did not add an e-acute, while you got an entire word wrong. I suggest you stop trying so hard, because your self-righteous tone really doesn't work when you're not really that good to being with (did you see what I did there? I used being, not begin. I am very clever). But i digress. Later on, you claim "simultaneously satisfy his liberal guilt and his ego". Ad hom much? Or it's ok, because you are out to save us all from the blogosphere? I suspect you actually know nothing of Alex, his readers, or much of anything else. You were trolling on this sewer of human endeavors and spent I presume quite a bit of time writing your response (unless idiocy comes easy?). Based on your contempt for us "dullards", one can only conclude, you really have no bit of authority or prominence in "the real world", and thus felt like you had to put down the author and readers.

I think though that you miss the point entirely, which is not surprising. Are some tips rather obvious? Sure. We all know turning off lights is a good thing. But some tips are designed to spur other ideas, which might not be obvious to all. It is also designed to teach a different thought process.

Does the cost of toothpaste really make a difference? No, probably not. By the way, regarding your toothpaste retort, you should have actually been smart about it and tried to give a proof, though I suspect you are actually not clever enough (i.e. the average serving size is 1mL. A 6.4 oz tube has 189 servings, at a cost of $4.50. Given brushing 3 times a day, in a household of 4 people, that amounts to a tube of toothpaste lasting 15 days. Truthfully though, I doubt many people use 1mL, so let's estimate it at about 10 days (this is a Fermi problem, so we use order of magnitudes. If you have a problem with it, take it up with Enrico Fermi, or something). In a given month, a savings of a couple dollars per tube can amount to $6-$7 savings. Over the course of a year, it approaches $100 savings (again, order of magnitude). If you begin to use this thought process on other goods, and just evaluating the active ingredient, you begin to see how these savings can compound.

(A bit of note, I googled around for the serving size of toothpaste, which actually was hard to find. I have no idea of 1mL is correct, but again, order of magnitudes here. Someone claimed 1mL was pea sized, so, I'm going with it).

I really don't feel like addressing any of your other points, since they are equally as lame. Based on your Markov chain comment, my guess is you probably just had a math class and learned about Markov chains, and you want to show us all how smart you are. You are going to throw a fancy freshman year scary math term at us, and we won't know how to respond. By the way, it's clear that was your intention, based on your overall tone, and level of contempt. Your comments on Markov chains are nothing more than a Frobenius endomorphism to your other nonsensical comments (see, I can do it too).