"Being Not-Rich at UM" Guide
A UofM student created a guide for students at UofM that don't have a lot of money on how to find deals, get good jobs on campus, etc.. You can find her guide here - LINK.
I certainly wasn't poor, but I wasn't rich either. I often meet fellow UofM graduates and as we talk they rattle off a dozen or so of their favorite Ann Arbor establishments and I always feel a bit ridiculous as I never have been on the inside of most or even all of the places that they go on and on about.
I simply couldn't afford to eat out a lot.
About 20 years ago when I was living in West Quad they didn't serve dinners on Sunday evenings. So my roommate and I would grab loose change and walk up State Street to a place that I think was called "State Street Liquor," because they had a special on Sundays where you could buy an entire extra large cheese pizza for like $5. We would pour the free crushed red pepper seeds all over it in the store and then take it back to the dorm room. I thought it was pretty good and it was a lot of food...half the pizza could stuff me and for just $2.50.
Does anyone have any other tips for those currently at UofM that don't have a lot of money?
for the use of the term "haberdashery."
Nice.
Is it possible that the U's push to bring in out of state tuition from Long Island at all costs made a lot of the actual Michiganders feel "not-rich" in comparison? Not trying to knock on privileged students from out of state or anything, just wondering if it was the disparity more than actual finances that made so many people feel poorly off financially.
As in "in-stater" from a middle-class suburb of Detroit I was blown away by the Long Island kids and how much money they had. The concept of having a brand new BMW, ordering out from restaurants, wearing fancy clothes, etc....as an undergrad really made me feel poor in comparison. To me it seemed they came from a completely different world.
this is mostly the case with the international students. Obviously not all of them, but most of them seemed to come from well-off families. Lots of BMWs, Mercedes and Mustangs, not to mention a lot of international students had the nicest phones, computers, etc. Imagine if you have the means to send your child to a college in the US, you have the means for luxuries as well.
Large pepperoni and a soda for $4.88 at Bell's.
There are tons of jobs on college campuses requiring low effort and with little supervision. Find one.
Back in the day I had a computer lab gig where I basically got paid to do homework and stream stuff online. On a bad shift I'd spend 20 minutes dealing with paper jams but otherwise it was basically being at the library. With a negligible opportunity cost I'd have an extra $40-80 a week in my pocket and that was in the days of $5.15 minimum wage.
I used to go to the Panera by Hill for dumpster diving. They would bag the good food separately and at the top, so you didn't have to dig through garbage. Take a loaf of bread, some muffins or bagels, be set for at least a week.
I don't think I understood I was poor in college, but now I make so much money as a teacher that I can't even remember what it was like to not eat at fancy restaurants.
so ate the dorm food, and went Krogering when I lived off campus. Big splurge for meals was Taco Hell, Pizza Bobs, other affordable $5-10 grub, which there was plenty of. Who gives a shit if you eat at the fancy places during college. Those that care, you wouldn't want to hang with anyways. My daughter graduates next week - went there under better means, but her favorites are still B Dubs and Einstein bagels.
Step 1:
Join a co-op house (either as a "house member", or a "boarder" = full kitchen and pantry access).
Step 2:
Profit.
I ate mac and cheese and air popped popcorn a lot. A big night out was going to chi chis at briarwood where you get all you can eat nachos in the bar if you just bought a coke for a $1.00
I do thank god every day that my Dad made the sacrifices to send me to UM. It was a gamechanger for me and my family.
Must be different rules at different Bennigan's. I worked at one in Flint, and there was no such modified menu. They also made it crystal clear that they'd fire anybody that they caught "garbage mouthing" (eating leftover food that was about to be thrown out). And they did. Lousy place to work.
They fired me for being an incompetent waiter, and they were absolutely right to do so. (I sucked.) When they told me they were letting me go, I replied, "Thank you - what took you so long?"
I did the same thing once to take the edge off what otherwise might have been a nearly fatal hangover. After the pizza, it was a merely inconvenient hangover in the sense that I think I tossed twice on the way to a lecture the next day. Maybe once after it, come to think of it. Memories of that particular evening are sketchy obviously.
is excellent drunk pizza.
Free all you can eat wings at Heidleburg was another gold mine.
Me: what?! 5 min?! No, please cook it longer!
Oh man I loved OE (especially their chicken teriyaki).
Bells Pizza was not so good but their calzones were top shelf. 917 packard here...
on thursdays after class id use to buy 2 40ozs and a bells calzone. that was one way to save money instead of going out for drinks....
April 19th, 2018 at 12:28 PM ^
there too!
Most of my classes were in the Frieze building, so I would have walked off whatever calories I could have afforded. Which weren't many.
Jean
Nothing special about it, just cool to run into someone who lived in the same little building I did.
Just for context, this guide was created after the Central Student Government created a Campus Affordability Guide that was unanimously deemed as out-of-touch.
This original guide included tips such as cutting down on housekeeping services, laundry delivery service, and limiting impluse purchases.
And then CSG wonders why students don't take them seriously...
Tip: Thursdays 7-9pm, Ross opens a tab for MBAs at Skeeps. Funny thing is, the bartenders don't actually check if you're an MBA. Cheers
CSG is mostly made up of people who run in that crowd, pretend they do, or cater to people that do.
On the Ross note (as a Ross grad), if you can't talk business very well things can get messy, so be warned.
April 19th, 2018 at 12:19 AM ^
The CSG, is an unbelievable accurate example of the lack of understanding/intention of what a "democratic body" is actually supposed to do.
The "out of touch" description is just scratching the surface.
CSG serves primarily as a resume-padder, and it nears the ridiculous song-and-dance that today's med-school applicants have to go through (though at least in the case of medicine, there's at least SOME semblance of true public benefit).
Does anybody have the specific numbers on the massive ratio shift of in-state Students versus out-of-state (which is purely monetarily driven) over the past few years?
Last I heard, something like 56% of the undergrad student body is from Michigan.
April 19th, 2018 at 12:07 PM ^
I was a student 1993-1998.
At that time undergrad 1st year enrollment was required to be 75% Michigan residents.
It is now about 50/50 but has flucatuated in recent years. In 2015, the school was majority out of state for a period.
April 18th, 2018 at 11:07 PM ^
Wow. That is amusingly out of touch. Didn't realize the CSG was made entirely of kids from Long Island and New Jersey