A PCS Summer?

Summer is winding down, now that move-in is only a few days away. The wonderful thing about summer is that you have time for a summer job, or internship...or even a summer adventure.

When you have your summer job or internship, you initially think of saving that money for the coming school year. The savings would definitely make college easier. But does summer savings really happen? Seeing your bank account fill up with money once a week, or every other week is a glorious thing that makes most people spend recklessly. Mike and I went to nice meals, and shopped a lot, since we had paid internships this summer. And now, just as school is starting up...we are poor college students again.

Bruce lived thriftily while having an internship in China, which is something we all should aspire towards. Having savings for those sticky times during the semester is a great thing!

Claire, on the other hand, spent her summer travelling, and minimized her costs by couch surfing, and depending on the kindness of others.

Who do you think had a PCS summer? Who is better off financially come this semester?!

Blame Canada

Doing laundry in the dorms is suuuuch a pain.  Or for that matter, any place where you have to insert a bunch of quarters before the laundry machine will operate.

Mika and I were doing laundry the night before we left for our backpacking trip.  We put in the coins into the dryer only to find that it wouldn't accept the last quarter, and neither would it return the 4 quarters that it already ate. 

Confused, we abandoned this machine and tried again with the machine above it, but the same thing happened.

This was not just making us frustrated, but it was also making us progressively poorer and poorer. We had already lost two dollars.  We needed some quarters... so we scoured the laundry room.



We found two in another dryer!!!

We tried putting one of those in one of the machines we'd tried before and the machine finally agreed to start.

Then, we realized why the machines kept stopping at the last 25 cents.

It was a Canadian 25 cents.


Poor college student blames Canada for confusing us and helping laundry machines eat our money. 

Unexpected Cash on Hand

Accompanying my excitement as I waited to start my internship in Shanghai was my resignation to the fact that I am not getting paid. Sure, they’re reimbursing the plane ticket (quite expensive), and providing housing (ridiculously expensive) but I could still use some cash on hand! As happy as I am to be money neutral for the summer, I decided to let my old vice, Poker, back in my life.

With $55 in my account the night before the flight, I did not meet the minimum requirement of $100 to withdraw cash from my account. Rather than slowly build back up to a playable bankroll, I decided to just shove it all in. Half an hour and one super-turbo tournament later, I was $172 richer!

Divide that by .5 hours and my hourly rate is:

$344/hour

If only cash always came so easily.