As a college student, it is pretty common for me to have approximately $5.73 in my bank account, especially towards the end of the semester. When looking at my funds and trying to figure out why I have no money, I realized that it's not just that I get paid minimum wage and have to work weird hours because I am also a full-time student, also books are kinda pricey (especially for those science majors out there), and my expenses are just so much more than my income! But these aren't the main reasons why I sometimes eat ice cubes for dinner with a side of steam and boiling water. The main reasons why college kids have $0 include (but are not limited to):
1. We literally cannot stop buying coffee
All of us probably have a Keurig or some type of coffee maker in our dorm room/house if you live off campus that makes decent tasting coffee at a reasonable price, but this "coffee" is NOT good enough. Why would we go for the cheaper option when we could spend between $2-$4 on a cup of coffee EVERYDAY (sometimes this is doubled if you're a two-cup a day person) on either Dunks or Starbs!! BUT when the Patriots win, Dunkin (in Rhode Island) gives you an 87 cent medium coffee, so anyone can rationalize spending only 87 cents on a cup of joe, even if you loathe the Patriots!
2. The dining hall is free, but calzones exist
Every college in America (probably) has a dining hall, and most times dining plans are included in your room and board when you live on campus, so it makes sense to go to them frequently in order to save money. But ehhhhhh, this is wrong. Instead of going to the dining hall with your friends, you probably know every restaurant in the area that sells calzones and have tried all of them and now know your favorite. If you go to URI and say that Kingston Pizza has the best Calzones, I don't think you deserve to ever have another 'zone EVER AGAIN. But with that being said, why would you go to the dining hall when you can stuff your face with cheese and meat and bread whenever you're super stressed, and a calzone only costs like $8, so that shouldn't add up tooooo much!
3. Nickel night can add up
Every bar near every college campus EVER has some sort of discount night where there is either no cover, or drinks are stupid cheap, and this is FANTASTIC!!! This seems like a great idea all the time, meaning that you probably spend a BUTTLOAD of money because drinks are so cheap so you can probably have like 12 and still be saving money! College logic is great, and so are cheap drinks, but you should probably stop going to Nickel Nights and think about other things to do with your money, like buying more calzones. (Just kidding, getting a pitcher of Dirty Shirley's for $4 is fantastic, who am I kidding.)
4. Amazon has free 2-day shipping
I don't care who you are, but you love Amazon. You can get anything from almond milk to shampoo to $6 phone cases to movies to make-up to shoes to LITERALLY ANYTHING YOU CAN EVER WANT shipped directly to your house with free two-day shipping. "Oh, that collector's edition record player is $70, but it will be here in two days and shipping is free? WELL I MUST OWN IT!" - is actually logic and makes complete sense and Amazon should just take money directly from my paycheck every week, even if I decide by some miracle, that I don't "need" anything. Amazon also had that commercial where the family ordered their dog a fake lion's mane and that not only made me cry, but also made me want to get a fake lion's mane for my dog.....from Amazon.
5. We (somehow) break literally everything
Just think about how many phone screens you have cracked while you've been away at school, and I don't think I need to explain myself any further. Most of the time we are so poor from buying coffee and going out to Nickel Nights that we can't afford to fix our phone screens, so we're left with getting shards of glass stuck in our fingers every time we try to type a simple text message. Along with phone screens, though, we break other things, such as doors/tables/chairs/furniture in general that belongs in our kinda crappy off-campus house, that we're stuck having to either replace, or pay the landlord money to replace. I'm pretty sure college students have broken the internet before, and don't even get me started on printers.
6. "I'm only going to buy obe cheap bottle of wine for the week!"
Okay, first, YEAH RIGHT. If you're going to the liquor store for one cheap bottle of wine, you're destined to come out with a plethora of things that probably includes, a bottle of cheap vodka, some form of alcohol in a can ( four-loko, anything ending in "rita," etc.), a six pack of beer, and MAYBE that cheap bottle (let's be real, it's probably a box of Franzia at this point). Your $8 trip to the liquor store just cost you $30 and your friends definitely aren't going to Venmo you back what they owe you.
7. Your friends never Venmo you back
The idea of Venmo is great, you pay for something and your friend(s) pay(s) you back what they owe you using an app, except no one actually does. If you actually repay your friends when you say you are going to on Venmo, they probably do not deserve you and you're a great specimen who deserves nothing but love and happiness.
Basically, there are a lot of reasons why college kids are broke, but it's not entirely our fault. So, if you are fiscally responsible and want to help us manage our money, while allowing us to still order calzones, drink coffee not made at home every day, and be a little shit when it comes to not paying our friends back, then by all means please help us!!!
