Free Parking

Here at The Provident PhD we like to offer suggestions that are sometimes specific to student families. Graduate school has many unexpected expenses. For us one of them was the cost of parking at the school. Here at William & Mary, it’s currently $340/year. For most of my time here I went ahead and forked it over, but recently I discovered some free street parking near the school. There are relatively few spots, but since I’m typically at school by 8:00 AM each morning, there are still plenty of spots left.  No, it’s not as convenient has having a pass and the ability to come and go whenever, but I’ll happily sacrifice some convenience for the money. It’s another example of how we should never assume that a cost is inevitable. Even just a little creativity or homework can reveal great alternatives. I wish I had discovered this one earlier.

Certainly other possibilities include getting a ride each day from your family or riding your bike to school, as Jeff suggested here. Bike licenses are typically free, and some schools (including William & Mary’s business school) facilitate this by having lockers and showers available in the building.

A commuting approach somewhere in between the car and the bike is a scooter or moped. We have friends who do this and although they require a parking pass, the pass is half the cost of a car pass.

Mint

Justin commented awhile back about Mint.com. We took the challenge and have been using the website for several months now. We have found it very helpful in organizing our budget, tweaking it when necessary, and reducing the hassle of using a spreadsheet to keep track of finances. Also, because Mint allows us to view all of our financial accounts in one spot, It helps us pay better attention to our 401(k)s, pension plans, and other investments that we used to view only occasionally. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely a step up from where we were.

Airline Miles for Magazines

Several months ago I started getting ads in the mail from Delta and United Airlines inviting me to use my award miles to buy magazines. I took them up on the offer and have been enjoying subscriptions to The Economist, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal. It was a great deal for two reasons: first, I don’t fly often enough to accumulate enough miles to use them for air fare before the miles expire; and second, using rewards miles to fly is a pain in the neck anyway. So I got subscriptions that, even at the discounted student rate, would have cost me hundreds of dollars for essentially nothing.   I’m always skeptical of stuff from airlines, but this has proven to be a great deal, and there wasn’t even the catch of having to give them my credit card number and have to remember to cancel the subscription in a year. The website is magsformiles.com and includes a number of major airlines.