Save Money with Hydroponics!

I have started a hobby that, at the very least, is very fun, and it can in fact save you money. I have started growing my own vegetables in a hydroponic garden. There are some VERY complicated hydroponic systems out there, then there is the system I use, which is called a deep water culture. Basically, my plants sit in little pots full of hydroton (basically soil for hydroponic systems, it's actually clay pebbles) over water in a rubbermaid tub. Once my plants start producing, I should save TONS of money on vegetables. Peppers and tomatoes can be expensive, as can fresh herbs, so this can save you serious money in the long run.

The system I built cost me about $40-$50 to get going. However, that cost is higher because I did not price shop (please price shop) and I had to buy a separate light, instead of installing an incandescent plant light into a lamp I already owned (which I highly suggest)

The following video gives a good breakdown about how to start building a hydroponic garden

A few things that are different with my system:

• His is a larger system, I used a smaller tub, and did not have a problem with the sides bowing out (too much)
• I keep mine indoors, so I also use a plant light during the night time (this way, I get about 18 hours of "sun" on my plants per day")
• I bought my stuff at Meijer and a hydroponics store.
• I cut my top with a utility knife (a.k.a. box cutter, a.k.a. exacto knife), once you get a hole going, it is quite simple to cut the plastic with a sharp blade. (Word of warning, be careful with a sharp blade, always)
• I did not cut "slits", I simply cut holes so that I could rest the pots in the plastic
• It's not a "neti" pot, it's a "net" pot (Click here to see what a "neti" pot is)
• I eyeballed where to cut the holes. His is much more precise, mine required much less effort...you can decide how you would like to do yours

If you can find a shallow tub that allows you to build a system, I would recommend it. There is not reason to keep 12 gallons of liquid in a tub when you don't need it.

The most amazing tip about planting seeds in hydroponic gardens!

If you want/can buy plants to transplant, go for it; I could not, since I started my garden in the winter in Michigan. I bought seeds, however, and I figured out you can plant directly into your hydroton. I simply dropped 2-3 seeds (for larger plant seeds like tomatoes, peppers, and basil) or sprinkled seeds (for smaller seeds like oregano and thyme) onto the hydroton in the basket.

1. Fill basket half full with hydroton
2. Sprinkle (small seeds) or place 2-3 large seeds on the hydroton
3. Cover to about 3/4 of the way up the basket with hydroton
4. Once seeds have sprouted and are tall enough, offer more support for the stalk with hydroton filled to the top of the basket

If you cannot find a store which sells these items, I have put together a little aStore on amazon which has all the items you will need with the exception of the giant tub. Furthermore, if you want different seeds, you can either search amazon, or simply find them at a grocery store (some grocery stores will still carry them)

If any of that is unclear (and it is very likely that some of it is) or if you would like some clarification, just leave a comment and I will reply with more details.

Here are some pictures of my hydroponic garden:

The Air stone:

The pots barely touch the water:
Tomato plants:
The pepper plant:

I'm still alive

Hey everyone. I am not dead, just very busy. I still don't have time to post. My internet has been on the fritz lately, so a repair guy is coming out tomorrow hopefully. I have 2 exams tomorrow, and a huge paper due friday, plus a job offer that expires Friday.

This is pretty indicative of the past month...oh yeah, I also have to figure out housing for next year; I'm busy. So, I'm not dead, I have not given up on this blog, I'm just very busy right now.

Wine Kit Update: I am still awaiting one product to put into the kits, then I can begin selling them. Exciting!

Save some money, make your own

Note: The information provided in this blog purely educational, and in no way is its advice recommended or expected to be followed.

The cost of booze got you down? If you're over 21 (and ONLY if you're over 21) you could make your own. It is perfectly legal for Americans to make up to 100 gallons of FERMENTED beverages each year without being taxed. That being said, some states do still have laws that make it unlawful to manufacture ANY alcoholic beverage. It is YOUR responsibility to understand your own laws in your state, county, city, township, neighborhood, campus, and ANY other law, rule, regulation, etc. that applies to you.

Ok, so it is possible to make your own wine very easily in your dorm room (make sure it is legal, remember). I am planning on putting together a kit for making wine in a small space (assuming it is legal, do you get my recurring theme?) that I will sell on my store.

I have not priced everything, but I expect the kit to sell for $13-$15. It includes:

• 5" Funnel
• 5' 3/8" Vinyl Tubing
• 1 packet wine making yeast
• 2 packets of sanitizing solution
• Hose clamp
• 2 Balloon airlocks (made in house, very clever design)

It will require the purchaser to buy their own ingredients. These ingredients are:

• 1 gallon water
• 3 cans grape juice concentrate
• sugar

It comes out to like $7 the first batch you make, plus say $15, so $22 for the first batch. After that however, subsequent batches would be much cheaper. I could sell refill supplies on my site too (yeast, sanitizing solution, and balloon airlocks) which would need to be refilled.

What do you all think? Is it worth it to make your own wine (for those of legal age) which comes to about 18% abv. It is VERY strong, and can get a sufficient group inebriated (as long as they are all of legal age)

I'd love to hear comments.

Note: I do not condone, nor does this potential product condone any underage drinking, it is the readers responsibility to understand any laws, rules, regulations, etc. that apply to him or her.

College Preparation #6: Save Your $$$...and the trees

One of my biggest expenses in college my freshman year was books. I spent close to $1200 on them that first year. You DO NOT need to do that! Just do what I do now, buy international, or not at all.

There are international editions of books available that are much cheaper, and lighter than the American counterpart. They are in high quality color prints, and are softback. They say they cannot be sold in the US, which is not true. I buy mine on e-Bay usually, but they are all over the internet. However, MAKE SURE you get the high quality ones, you can get super cheap copies from China and India, but these are basically xerox copied black and white pages, and suck. The best part about buying these books, is you can usually re-sell them to other students for about the same price you paid for them (sometimes more) so you have nearly a 100% average recovery.

Another thing to look for is to make sure they say EVERYTHING in the book is the same, not just the passages, etc. because some books do not have the same example problems, and if you don't have the correct problems to work, in some classes, you will not do the correct homework. Be careful about it.

If you can't find an international edition, are afraid to buy them, or your book does not come in an international edition, try buying from other students. There is an entire website here at Michigan State dedicated to putting students in contact with other students for ads, books, and professor ratings (as well as other stuff) and I love it. There are other sites that let you get in touch with other students as well. If you must buy your books from the book store, do it, and then at the end of the semester, sell them to other students and get more than the book store will give you. They'll do it because they will pay less than the book store will charge them.

Be careful of professors who try to make money off their students. I had a professor ******* ******* who taught my Managerial Marketing class. He was an interesting guy, who was so ridiculously full of himself. Anyway, this isn't a critique of him as a professor; he owns a publishing company in Chicago (I checked it out, it is listed as one of his residences) and he "writes" a "new" book each semester, then requires it, and charges students $125. So he's making like 300 x $125 = $37,500 each semester (is my math correct?) Which makes me TERRIBLY mad. I wish I had known beforehand so I could save some money. My chapter ten also ended on a random word. It ends

"The nation's nonprofit sector generates amazing revenues every year and controls a"

Note: The name of this particular professor was blocked out to avoid any legal issues.

Quick Money Tip: Make Your Money Work for You

So even if you're broke, I still suggest making your money earn you some money. There are a few options out there. You can keep it in a savings account and earn about .000000000001% interest (come on, you know it's a lame interest rate) or another option is to get a checking account that earns interest. I think one of the best ideas is to open a money market account. The best one by the way, with absolutely no minimum is Paypal. I am earning 2.38% as of the writing of this blog. Not great, but better than my savings account.

I was earning 5+% but since the fed lowered rates, that number dropped. The great thing about paypal is it takes about 3-4 days to get your money into it, same amount of time to get it out, and there is no minimum (you need at least $1 to earn interest though) I put in extra money when I have it, and pull it out when I need it. You can even keep all your money in there, and use a paypal debit card (although I don't recommend this; I have no experience with this card, so I can't speak as to it's quality)

There are other options, but just remember, even if you don't have thousands of dollars, you can still earn better returns on your money. I would love to say more, but I'm very busy getting ready to go to England in 5 days.

College Preparation #2 : Don't drink away your college fund

Disclaimer: I do not condone underage drinking. In the United States it is illegal for any person under the age of 21 to possess or consume alcohol.

Ok, so one of the biggest non-school related expenses in college is alcohol. It's a fact of life, parents, you need to accept it, students, you need to understand it. Many many freshmen get to school and go NUTS. They can finally drink freely, and they do it. I'm not going to say not to drink the first week or two, don't skip classes because of it, but for the first month, most freshmen are drunk most of the weekend. I won't say not to, because you won't listen to me; it's kind of a right of passage I guess. Anyway, your first few weeks, you'll be at parties where you won't spend much on booze.

IF you decide to have someone buy alcohol for you, you will spend lots of money very quickly. Don't believe for a second that you will "buy a bottle of captain and make it last a month" You'll drink it in two days, or one night if other people are with you (drinking alone=alcoholic) If you are not careful, you'll be eating ramen for the rest of college. I had a couple of friends who the first week each got a bottle of Grey Goose Vodka...$30 each (good price) and after that they were drinking Popov Vodka...about $10 each. Grey Goose was for a 1/5th, popov for a handle; you do the math.

Drinking good stuff for a special occasion is ok; we celebrated many a birthday with a bottle of champagne and good liquor. You just cannot keep up the good stuff. You also can't keep up buying alcohol every weekend. I knew two kids who spent about $40 a weekend on alcohol alone; they had to explain to their parents why they were spending so much money.


Moral of the story; too much alcohol will make you go broke, but so will buying only the good stuff. Get good stuff every once in a while (everyone deserves to indulge) but learn to drink the sub-par quality alcohol. If you drink very rarely, you can get away with buying better stuff. The point is you need to keep your costs down; I have literally seen people drink away all their spending money.

Another hidden expense is the food you buy when you're drunk. Find the best pizza places with low costs. Also, find some Chinese, and make a little plan before you drink. I feel pizza and Chinese are the best foods while drunk. Go in with some other people and buy something in bulk; a large pizza, lots of Chinese, and split the costs, this will save you some money as well.

Just remember, with some careful budgeting and planning, you can have fun and save money.

Saving Money in College 1: You don't need to eat so much food!!!

I'm a big guy. I weigh around 350 pounds, but I used to weigh above 400 pounds; I have actually lost weight in college, which spits in the face of the "freshman 15". One of the reasons I lost this weight is that I chose to walk everywhere for classes, another is I realized I don't need to eat so much...at least I don't need to buy so much food. I had friends who purchased boatloads of food; mac 'n' cheese, popcorn, chips, pizza, etc. They were also broke all year. I did this too at first, but eventually I realized I could live life without all the food.

I stopped buying popcorn, chips, pizza, easy mac, burgers, I would buy a few snack foods, and then sneak food out of the cafeteria. I made a small investment in some disposable Tupperware and used them to sneak fries, chips, burgers, anything I thought would be good leftover out of the cafeteria. I kept track of my finances before that, and I was spending $150-$200 on food each month. By doing this, I saved around $100-$150 per month. I still spent some money, but I saved tons of money. Imagine making $100. That's basically what I did, was increase my spending power by $100.

I had friends who refused to do this, even after I told them about how effective this was. There's nothing wrong with that; they did have more flexibility in the food they ate, but they also spent much more money than I did.

At Michigan State they don't feed you on Sunday's for dinner (they will this upcoming year, but last year they did not) so we had to figure out dinners on our own. I either took some foods that would be good heated up in the microwave (burgers, hot dogs, etc.) and saved them for Sunday evening. Sandwiches were particularly good, as I could make them on Sunday at lunch, wrap them up, and eat it for dinner. I saved about $10-$15 each Sunday night by not buying dinner and having delivered.

Just remember, if there's something you really want to buy, then buy it, eat it, and enjoy it. If you don't truly want something, you don't need to buy it. Every time you don't buy something, you save money. Every time you save money, you increase your spending power by that amount. That is the exact same as earning money, it's that simple (or, in other words: A penny saved is a penny earned)

Welcome to Dorm Room Business!!!

I have just started this blog because I know there are thousands, if not millions of people out there who are sitting in their dorm rooms because they don't have any spare cash to do anything fun. Well I'm here to say it doesn't have to be that way.

I figure, while you're sitting in your room, why not be making money instead of just watching TV or watching another stupid video on YouTube again. If you take that time and make it even slightly more productive, then you're likely to make a few bucks.

I plan on trying different money making experiments in my dorm, and I encourage you to do the same in your own residence hall. If you are trying any new experiments, please e-mail me and I will post the details on the blog so everyone can see how it works. If we can just get a little creative, I think everyone can be making some good cash in their dorm rooms.


The next step to making money, is saving money. I'll be posting any neat little tricks I come up with to save money on anything, from supplies, to booze.

I hope you'll come back to visit again, and read about some of these experiments. Who knows, maybe you'll get a couple ideas and wind up a wealthy college student (you could be one of the 58 of them)