United States is the land of opportunities. People from all parts of the country come to the US to live the American Dream. US can be expensive when you compare to the other nations and use the currency conversion math. One such case are students, who come here to the best universities of the world. As you land here, one of the things in the mind of these students is saving money. Not everyone is financially capable which is where this blog will teach you how to live frugal but get richer at the same time. Please keep in mind, living frugal is not being poor. Some of the world's richest people don’t live lavish lives and try to save money living cheap and spend where it really matters. Remember, a dollar saved is a dollar earned.
As you get to the US, one of the first surprises students usually get is that the luggage carts are not for free. In a lot of countries, on the airports you will get luggage carts for free, so an advice – save those dollars. Quickly doing the math every time in your mind can be quite a difficult experience when you try to compare how cheaper things could be in your country. Do your research before coming on how you plan to travel to your destination. Taxis are comfortable but they are expensive plus the 10-15% tips on top can easily start giving you some chills. Buses are a cheaper option or if you have university student associations that can a number times help you with pickup if you are coming first time to this country. The point is to make sure you research your options – look at Google Maps and see what could be your options with the buses/trains or app based taxis (Uber/Lyft).
Now you reach your destination and I bet you are hungry. Eating out can be easy but expensive. Map out your grocery store and make a trip. Some key things to keep in mind if its your first-time doing groceries is to make sure to get a Grocery Savings card. A number of grocery stores have these usually to track your spending and give you the items a little cheaper in return. These are free so I recommend to sign up for one since some stores also can give you points to avail on gas or other items. When you are in the store, a common mistake people do is usually pick up brand names of items. Skip the brand, in the US most grocery stores have their local brands which are way cheaper and very good quality than the names you hear on the television or the internet. These local grocery branded things are good as your commercial brands. You cannot imagine how much money you save every month skipping the commercial brands.
Another thing on your checklist should be opening a bank account. If you are an international student currently are on a student visa or another type of visa – the biggest banks is your best bet. This should be part of your research as well, try to find out which are the nearest ATMs or banks to the place where you plan to live. It will provide easier access to cash for emergency purpose. One of these big banks might have a branch – Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, PNC, Wells Fargo etc. Make sure to ask for student account. Normal customer accounts can be expensive and require you to maintain a daily or monthly minimum balance or some direct deposits. There might be a university relationship with one of the banks and that could allow you to maintain a $0 account without paying any maintenance fees.
In the US, you have two types of accounts – checking and savings. Checking essentially is meant for daily transaction while Savings as it literally means is to keep your extra money that you don’t need on a daily basis. As you create an account, sign up for both a checking and savings. The savings account usually will earn you some interest (0.01% or even lesser at times) but the checking does not earn you any interest usually. If you are not on a visa and are a citizen or a permanent resident, go for an online bank rather than the big banks (more interest on your money) example Ally Bank, Marcus by Goldman Sachs etc. It is also a better account security strategy since you will use your Checking account number to move money and hence keep the only minimum dollars required in Checking and move the rest to Savings. Get a debit card as well and start using them instead of cash since some debit cards have offers and can give you some discounts.
Credit cards are definitely better because most of them come with cash back but you cannot get a credit card without a Social Security Number (SSN). SSN is like a unique identity number that can be requested once you start working or if you are born in the US. This number allows the financial organizations in the US and the government to track your financials, taxes and identity. The earliest you can get a SSN, the better it is for your future. In the US, your credit worthiness, your ability to get loans, open a credit card, even utilities sometimes require a SSN. Once you have a SSN and have a job, first thing is to get a credit card. You need to start building your credit as soon as you can. The way the credit system works in the US is the earlier you start, the less you borrow, earlier you make the payments, the better is your credit score. While selecting a credit card, usually smaller credit card companies would give you a first-time credit card easily rather than going for a big bank, so try the small credit card companies. While selecting credit cards make intelligent decisions as to where would you be spending the most money, common examples are grocery store and eating out. Based on that, make the decision to get the credit card where you get the most cash back. There are a number of websites that you can look at to compare the various different cash back categories and which companies offer the most money. Another thing to keep in mind is the introductory offer that you may receive on the credit card, for example if you spend $1000 then you may get $200 back. That is some extra cash back for you, so pick the best offer.
If you are looking into loans, I highly recommend looking at Federal loans first before you look at private loans. There is a small caveat, federal loans aren’t cheap as well. Surprisingly education is very expensive in the US and also the loans. You can buy a car or even a house at much cheaper rates than the rate on student loans. But there is strong chance you get a better deal on a federal loan based on terms, interest, repayments. As I write this article, the federal student loan rates are anywhere from 3.73% to 6.28% depending on Graduate or Undergraduate. Definitely look at private lenders as well, there are a number of online lenders which could get you a better rate example sofi.com, ascent, earnest, discover loans.
As a student, you will try find more ways to save money. There are just so many options but I will try to cover some of the ones I like. Remember receipts? You are going to do grocery shopping, eat out, shop online etc, save the receipts as a number of platforms will give you points for uploading your receipts to earn money. Some of the platforms are Fetch Rewards, Ibotta, Receipt Hog, Receipt Pal, Coinout etc. Amazingly it pays to use a search engine, Bing Rewards from Microsoft provides you an option to earn rewards for your daily online searches which you can redeem for gift cards. If you are buying stuff online, there are platforms like Rakuten that will give you extra cash back for your online purchases, you can potentially save good money if it’s a large purchase.
I recommend starting with these mechanisms and be on the lookout for more tips, tricks and ways to save money.
(Disclosure: I am a user of the applications mentioned in this article. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it from any of the companies mentioned above. Please review the Disclaimer section prior to any investments.)