[College kids are notorious for being poor. And why shouldn’t we be? We take out student loans to pay for private universities, can barely balance a part-time job with our full-time courseload, and the only “balance” we’re familiar with refers to the number of points left on our dining hall cards. Oh, did I mention many of us tend to splurge every extra penny on PBR’s at the campus bar?

If you disagree with everything I just said, you probably don’t need this column. But if you’re nodding along because you’re officially an adult and still don’t know how to manage your money, then you might want to pay attention every week, because I’m going to (try to) get you through this, and make you a successful saver and a wise spender.]

I’ve been writing a lot about how to manage your money in bank accounts and with credit and debit cards. That’s the tricky stuff. As poor students, we are good at finding bargains and at least trying to make our money go a long way. That said, it’s easy to fall into certain traps when what we think is a good “deal” comes our way…and we end up paying dearly. Here are some scams to avoid in order to really save some dough.

1. Gym Memberships.

Beware of whatever type of deal a gym is trying to pitch to finagle you into joining. Why? Because they are probably lying. Okay, I’m bitter about this one. I needed to join a new gym at home for a couple of months, so I signed up for free guest passes at all the gyms in my area so I could work out for free and not buy anything. Next thing I knew, a Bally’s rep was selling me a special offer: $25 a month for a membership that I could transfer anywhere. He told me that if I got back to school and didn’t want to make the trek to the nearest Bally’s, I could freeze my membership for $4 a month, and when i started using their clubs again, I could continue to pay the dirt cheap fee.

The reality? Only the first transfer would be free, so I’d be paying in the future for every new Bally’s I tried to switch to; the “freeze” thing didn’t exist, and I was forced to pay the monthly fee even though I wasn’t working out; I’m stuck in a year contract, and now I have an express hatred for Bally Total Fitness Clubs. Needless to say: gyms are definitely places to read the fine print. Read More »

Now, I consider myself to be pretty internet savvy. I know how to search for stuff I need, what sites are good and what sites suck, and all kinds of stuff I’m sure you probably don’t even want to think about. But even I fall for things sometimes, and though I tend to do research on stories that I don’t quite fall for, some stuff gets me. I don’t feel bad though; it gets pretty much everyone else, too.

Remember Aliza Shvarts? She reportedly repeatedly artificially inseminated herself, then took all kinds of abortifacient (read: abortion-inducing) drugs and herbs for an art project. Everyone was all kinds of upset over this one, and it was taken seriously since Yale reported it and everything. Alas, not so much; Aliza’s work was entirely fiction.

Then there’s the one guy who re-grew his finger with pixie dust. Everything grew back in about four weeks, reportedly, and things worked just fine. Of course, it helps that he only had a minor injury and certainly didn’t have his finger severed at the knuckle or anything.

On the flip side, there are stories that can’t possibly be true but are. Read More »

My childhood best friend and I had a Friday afternoon ritual: prank calls.

My favorite gag was calling up girls from our class and pretending to be the Spice Girls. We’d put on our awful English accents and pretend that our weekly victim had won the chance to have a sleepover with the Spice Girls. Cruel, I know.

Worse, though, is the fact that our gimmick worked. Week after week, gullible girl after gullible girl believed that we were the Spice Girls.

Then… circa 1997, there was an influx in the sales of a certain device: the caller id.

And the unfortunate prevalence of caller ids made our Friday afternoon delights implausible. After a few “I know it’s you, Sarah! The Spice Girls don’t have a 7-1-8 area code!”s, fun Fridays came to an end.

But today, the caller id has lost its power. Rather than an influx in caller id sales, there has been a current influx in caller id spoofing websites.

Caller id spoofing? It’s every prank caller’s godsend, and just about everybody else’s worst enemy.

These websites allow you to manipulate the name and number that appears on the caller id of the person you’re calling. Read More »

We all can’t get into Stanford. I know, I know. Life is rough. Luckily you can sneak in like Ms. Azia Kim, a girl who decided that rejection letter or no rejection letter she was going to hobnob with the smart kids. When she showed up for New Student Orientation in September, she told her new roommates that she was a star softball pitcher and was temporarily out of housing because of a mixup. Well the girls were in freshman mode, the state of mind that makes you a complete whore for new friends lest you lose the “cool status” that you’ve carefully crafted during your four long years in high school. They let her squat in their room….for fall and winter term.

Stanford kicked her out on Monday when she was caught sneaking through the window of “her dorm”. Fake students don’t have ID cards you know. What I want to know is why it took an elite school almost until the end of the school year to figure out they had a fake student? I mean, it’s not like it was UC Davis or something. Read More »