Saving Money On My Wife’s College Textbooks
As I mentioned in a post yesterday, this semester marks my wife’s last semester in college. She has been going part time for years and is finally wrapping things up in May. Oh I cannot wait! While she has been in college, we have always looked for the best deals for all of her textbooks, and even taking into consideration shipping charges from separate vendors, we think that buying all of her books used on Half.com has been the best way to save money on the textbooks. Case in point, our online shopping spree last night for this semester’s books.
We bought 6 books that have a retail value of $506.27. What did we pay? $252.41. Half price…just like the website says. We did compare to other sites like textbook sites and even the Amazon marketplace, but nowhere else was as cheap as Half.com. Plus, we did not have to pay taxes on these books!
In addition to saving about 50% on the books, we also got 3% back on our purchase for going through FatWallet.com, where you can get percentages back from just about any online retailer, and then we got an additional 1% back for using our Citibank Dividends credit card. Total back? $10.09 in additional savings.
It is a shame that people still walk into their college bookstore to buy their textbooks as they are so expensive there. I remember when I was in college we did not have the internet, so we really only had 1 choice: the bookstore. But nowadays it is so easy to comparison shop online that it doesn’t make sense to buy the books at the campus store. Also, if you buy used, you are helping the environment by recycling a book instead of it being thrown away. And then at the end of each semester, we sell the books we no longer want to keep for even more savings.
If you are a college student looking to save money on your books, I highly suggest checking out Half.com. But before you do that, make sure to set up an account at FatWallet.com so you get an additional cash back bonus on any purchase from the stores listed on their site.
“Don’t lose control of your finances and find yourself in debt. Use credit cards and payday loans as a last resort. Put money into a savings account where possible.”
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5 Comments so far
Man, I am still left wondering how in the hell textbook publishers get away with what they do. If I bought the same (content) book in the consumer sector it would be $50 at most. Yet, if it’s marketed to a college professor it suddenly becomes $150.
I agree phantomdata…honestly I think textbooks should be included in the tuition. Making students fork over $250-$500 per semester for books is ridiculous! They dont have any money to begin with so how does this help them. No wonder there is rampant CC debt in college! (well, along with the pizza and beer, of course)
[...] Cool Plug In Alert - Book Burro Saves You Money While Book Shopping Online. By david Buying textbooks is not fun, let me tell you. We spent $252 on my wife’s textbooks this semester, and that was cheaper than normal. But buying other books is fun and we do buy some books that we want to own. Most books we read we get from the library, both to save money and to help the environment by not putting more paper out there in the wild. Plus, most books we would have no interest in reading again. But sometimes, you just gotta buy a book. [...]
[...] talks about saving money on his wife’s college textbooks and why it just makes sense to comparison [...]
[...] Saving Money On My Wife’s College Textbooks at My Two Dollars [...]