Trying to save cash and get by while you are going to college can be a pretty rough experience, but if you can get a handle on your self-discipline and make sure you stick to the rules you set down for yourself, you can make it through. Learning how to save cash is not the hardest part of this; sticking to the plan you made for yourself is.
Try to save as much as you can on your school supplies. Books in particular can be expensive, so make sure you will actually need to buy the book the course tells you to before you go out and purchase it.
Talk to the teacher of the class; you may not even need to buy it. If you can get by without the book and use the internet to do research with, then that is what you need to do. If you do have to buy the book, by all means, get it used from another student or at an online used bookstore. Even with shipping, the used store online should be cheaper than getting it new.
As far as other school supplies goes, learn one thing: a pen is a pen. You can buy a whole pack of pens for about $2, but a single, more stylish pen will cost you more toward $5 or even more than that. If all you are going to be doing with it is scribbling down notes in class, get the $2 pack. It's not like you're going to be signing the next Constitution, right?
Another thing that you can learn how to do if you live in a space that has a full kitchen is to cook. The fast food, canned foods at the grocery store, and frozen dinners are notoriously unhealthy for you and you can likely buy enough fresh ingredients to feed you for the whole month with all the cash you spend on these other items.
Forget the coffee shop except for when you feel like treating yourself. You should not be treating yourself to a $4 smoothie every single day after class; if you are, then it is no longer a treat. It is a bad, expensive habit. That is about the price of a pack of cigarettes, so do the math on how much money you are spending there every month. Cut it out and you will have a lot more money for groceries every month.
