My Experience as an Overseas Student
As people say, it is not easy to study abroad, especially for girls. However I still choose to study abroad, because I want to seize the opportunity to know the outside world by myself. Even though I have the family support, spiritual support as well as material support, I still realize I should save money as much as I can. Therefore I have my part-time job, which not only helps me adapt to the local life as soon as possible, but also provide some money to buy the goods I want. But particularly under the financial crisis, there are some methods to save money I conclude as an overseas student.
Thanks to my mother who taught me cooking, I can have meals at home, which saves me much money.
I am surprised at the price of the textbook in the United States. The price of the textbook in the United States is about three times higher than that of China. Universities of the United States rarely ask the students to buy books from the bookstore of the university. You can buy the second-hand books. When buying the second-hand books, you should pay more attention to the version of the books because the books update quickly in the United States.
When choosing the place to live in, you should not only check the price, more important, you should focus on the safety of the place you want to live in. You should make sure the zone is safe and there are few robbery and theft.
Supermarkets of the United States have different promotional activities almost every day, such as buy one get one free, this is also one of the effective way to save money. You should also take advantage of the coupon of the supermarket.
When buying the flight ticket, you fist call to the travel agent to ask if there are some discounts, sometimes you will get certain surprise. Therefore when you miss the home so much, you can save money to go home.
When I study in the home country, I like online shopping, which is a fashionable way for me, while in the United States, especially under the financial crisis, I buy more goods through online shopping, for example few days ago, I bought a pair of prescription glasses from www.glassesshop.com, with the coupon code I enjoyed 10% discount, the total price was $48, which was much cheaper than that of the retail optical shops.
This is my experience in the United States as an overseas student, which may be not conformed to your own situation; it is only for your reference.