4: Don't pay for college books ($300+/year)
I don't like formal education; the price is absurd, most of the classes are bullshit, and they don't do anything to prepare you for life. One of the worst parts about college is where they force you to buy their books. As if it isn't bad enough that they charge $1000+ per class, they also screw their customers out of a couple hundred per book. In addition, the books have questions and/or writing prompts in them that the professors use to grade you, so it's not like you can take the class without the book. This looks like extortion but enough whining, how can you save money here?
If you are attending college, there are two ways I've come up with to avoid paying for shitty books. One way is to look for the books online. Most books are available online for way less than their printed counterparts, and you don't have to worry about reselling the shitty book when you're done with the class. Some books have also been scanned and uploaded by very nice people for free, but these are harder to find.
Another idea is to copy the questions/writing prompts from someone else. Since those are the only important parts of the books, you can easily write down the questions from another copy. If you can't find anyone willing to give you the questions, you can offer to do someone's homework in exchange for the questions (just copy and paste the answers, the professors don't care!).
You can easily save a couple hundred dollars, which can pay for several field visits. This will be an important to unwind from your time wasted in shitty classes.
3: Ride a motorcycle (savings vary, $1000+/year)
The largest expense most people have (after rent) is the money spent on a car. Between fuel, maintenance, and insurance, driving is a very expensive activity to partake in. If you're not able to move closer to the places that you go to often (work, grocery store, etc.), consider using a motorcycle instead of a car. If you choose a not-so-fancy model, the insurance premiums will be equal or less than a car's. You'll get better gas-mileage, and due to the bike's size you can do most repairs yourself.If you want to go even further, get rid of the motorcycle and ride a bicycle. Then you'll eliminate the insurance and fuel cost, while also minimizing the maintenance cost. As a bonus, you'll get daily exercise that you can't get otherwise.
As far as transporting your airsoft stuff, that can be done with a gun bag or a backpack. If you need more storage, you can always attach saddlebags to your motorcycle.
The savings you can get are dependent on where you are and how far you're willing to go. You might be able to fund all of your airsoft activities if save enough from this.
2: Cutting your own hair ($100+/year)
This idea has to be the most unusual of the set, but it's also the easiest. If you have a simple hairstyle like me (i.e. none), you can easily cut your own hair. This can be done with any grooming kit that can be used to cut hair in addition to beards. The linked kit does the job, and pays for itself after one use! You'll also need an extra mirror to reflect off of your bathroom's mirror. The only disadvantage is that once you start cutting, there's no turning back.This idea will save about $100 or more per year, depending on how often you pay someone else to do this trivial task. That would be enough to pay for two field visits during the year.
1: Drop your shitty phone bill ($250+/year)
I put this idea as number one, because gives the largest return for the time you spend on it. The big tele-comm companies have a habit of ripping off their customers. If you use a phone from the big companies(verizon, at&t, etc.) for your email/SMS/etc. you're spending way too much money (and time!) with a phone. If you're also paying for dependents' phones, it gets worse. Fortunately there are great alternatives to paying hundreds per year for a phone.
If you insist on using a smart phone, it's possible to reduce your phone bill to as little as $5/month per device. Two alternative services that I like are Ting and Republic Wireless. The price per device is extremely low, and the price scales depending on the features and the amount of service you use. There's also no multi-year contracts to deal with or high-interest loans for a 'free' phone.
If you don't want to be glued to a phone or if you don't use a phone that often, you can save even more with internet based phones. A couple good alternatives for this are skype and google voice. You can get the price of calls down to 3¢/min.You can also send text messages for free through your email address.
This is another idea that can fully fund your airsoft activities, and it will only take an hour or two of work. At the very least you can save a couple hundred per year.
If you were to do all four of these things, you can easily fund all of your airsofting. Saving money for new guns and weekly field visits would be trivial, and saving the money for one of these wouldn't be so far-fetched. Why wouldn't you try these ideas?
