As a college student, your bank account balance typically hovers somewhere between ‘I can almost feed myself for three days’ and ‘broke AF’. Scraping by with no money is an art form. It comes quite naturally to students, simply because we’ve never known anything else but the money struggle. Here are 14 habits that prove you’ve got the no-money game on lock:
1. You can make a 10-pack of ramen and a bag of microwavable vegetables last for a week as meals. After experiencing that, fancy restaurants are never going to be your thing.
2. You aren’t ashamed to pay in change to get a Frosty from Wendy’s.
3. You’re the first to whip out a calculator when it comes to splitting checks (and you damn well double-check your friend’s math too).
4. There isn’t a local discount that you don’t know about. You’re known to roll-up to the movies on half-priced Tuesdays and still ask for a student discount on the tickets. You’re the person your friends ask about happy hours and 2-for-1 drink nights.
5. Your wallet contains more grocery store club cards than actual credit cards. Those savings may fill your gas tank for another week.
6. You treat expensive things as a personal investment. Your $200 shoes may be three years old, but you’d never know it by how well you take care of them. Also, why spend stupid amounts of money when you can show up everybody by rocking clothes from Goodwill or Saturday morning garage sales?
7. You aren’t afraid to walk an extra twenty minutes if it means you don’t have to pay $10 for an Uber.
8. You’ve turned down outings with friends by saying, “I am broke AF. You gotta find another wingman (or wingwoman).”
9. You already know which generic foods taste the same as, if not better than, the name-brand. Treat yo’ self means buying a whole box of cookies from the Dollar Store.
10. You can ration out anything. Got three cookies left? Split that ish in half and you’ll have a treat for six days of the week. Let’s not even talk about what you can do if you turn it into thirds.
11. At restaurants, you either choose the cheapest thing on the menu or the meal you can split in half and save for later. You don’t believe in throwing away perfectly good leftovers. Don’t even pretend like you drink anything other than water at restaurants. If you’ve got serious skill, you’ll sneak in some crystal light packets to add some flavor to your water.
12. You keep track of exactly who owes you money and how much they owe. You can probably name the day you loaned them money, the dollar amount up to the cent value, and their excuse for why they couldn’t pay at that point in time.
13. You love hearing all the crazy stories from your friends’ shenanigans, but you never feel bad because even though you’re still broke AF, you didn’t spend $67 on cocktails at the club. You’re almost rich compared to your friends at that point.
14. You know how to stretch your resources. Ain’t nobody got money to waste. Everything in your kitchen cabinets, can and will be used.
Originally published on University PrimeTime.
Featured Image via Pexels
