10 ways you ingeniously saved during university

In November, we asked you to share your most creative savings hacks from your UBC days. The responses we received—submitted by alumni across different decades and disciplines—demonstrated just how resourceful university students are (and need to be) when it comes to stretching a tight budget. We were reminded that financial hardship was a key challenge for many students and want to thank every alum who took the time to share a story or comment in response to this call-out. 

Some of you tapped into the power of community to cut costs, while others came up with inventive hacks that paid off in unexpected ways. There’s even a love story in the mix. Read on for 10 accounts that capture the cleverness, resilience, and communal spirit of UBC grads. 

Waste not, want not

My girlfriend (now my wife of 50 years) was one year behind me, so when I started my first year at UBC, she was finishing up high school back in Maple Ridge. Phone calls were expensive then between Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, so we’d communicate mid-week via Canada Post. She would receive letters from me that looked very crumpled—because I’d turned the envelopes inside out to re-use them! Reduce, re-use, recycle!

~ Michael Lord, BMus’76

When gravity comes in handy

My biggest challenge in 1951 was how to raise the huge annual UBC tuition fee of $138! I had a summer job in Prince Rupert as a CBC announcer for CFPR radio station. But that wouldn’t pay a fraction of the tuition, not to mention the cost of travel to Vancouver, plus room and board. So I had to find a second summer job. And I did—distributing Coca Cola to stores and offices across the steep, hilly terrain of Prince Rupert. The catch: the position required a car! Fortunately, I got an old one for $100, which I could pay off in weekly instalments. 

Then disaster struck. The car’s starter wouldn’t work, and a replacement, shipped from Toronto, would cost $50. I would’ve never been able to pay that and tuition! Luckily, Prince Rupert’s terrain provided the solution. I made sure my car was parked near the top of a hill before each delivery. I’d start the engine by putting the car out of gear and letting it slide downhill to a good speed, then shifting back into gear to start the motor! This strategy worked well with every delivery—I never had to buy a new starter! And at the end of summer, I sold the car for $200. Tuition paid.

~ John Antrobus, BA’54

Coining the best parking hack on campus 

Back in the 1990s the “B” parking lots (located sooo far away from the main part of campus) were only $0.25 paid with coins so this fit our carpool budget to a T. At some point we figured out that if you paid with nickels, the gate would open at $0.05, so every day our vehicle occupants would dutifully dig around in their pockets for a nickel. Alas, that parkade was way too far from the Anthropology/Sociology building once Sociology became my major (it was literally on the opposite side of campus) so that ended the best parking hack on campus.

~ Phelia Wong, BA’93

Splurging to save

Every time I went shopping, I would splurge and buy one fancy cooking ingredient. Sometimes that was brie cheese or passion fruit or balsamic glaze. The idea was that if I bought one expensive grocery item, I would enjoy the food I cooked with it more, so I would be far less tempted to order food from a restaurant, and in the end I would save money. And to be honest, I think it worked!

~ Gretchen Miller, BA’25

MAKING ENDS MEET

Restaurants typically discard the end pieces of their bread, so I befriended the sandwich-building teams of various joints, and every day I had free (and possibly illegal) access to more fresh bread than I could possibly eat in a day. This strategy was foundational for an elite athlete who had to devour mountains of transportable calories each day. Wasn’t nutritionally the best, but PB&J is way better than deep fried stuff or salty noodles!

~ Sue Drinnan, MSc’90

Spying on supermarkets 

Four of my friends and I rented a house and cooked together. The simple process of breaking bread as a “student family” made us think about meal planning, costs, and schedules.

We became familiar with the late-shift activities of two local supermarkets as a result of our nocturnal study habits, and the need to go for a walk and cool down before bed. Our recon suggested the supermarkets’ late crew opened the flood gates on expired (or soon-to-be expired) food items at 1:00 am precisely. 

If I told you the riches that we found exceeded our wildest dreams, I’d be understating the facts. Some folks might call this “dumpster diving,” but I call it a double win—we saved food from going to the landfill and were able to share our plunderings with other student “families.” 

~ Chris Bryant, DMD’91

Cost-cutting cookouts

I lived at St. John’s College for two years during my master’s degree when I first came to Canada.

We would organize group cooking sessions for 12-15 people in the common kitchen on Saturdays because there was no meal plan on that day of the week. I remember lugging a 29-inch suitcase on the bus and shopping for groceries en masse from supermarkets outside UBC. It worked out to be $5-7 per person per meal on average in our little cooking experiments.

The experiments later turned into a 25-person barbecue party in summer, then topped at 46 people in the 2023 Canada Day College Barbecue and another 40-person welcome barbecue during the 2023 September orientation. A lovely perk was that the two 40-person plus gatherings were subsidized by the College, capped at $10 per student. With some careful planning, we managed to spend exactly that amount in groceries per person—so the meals were free for all! We had so much food that everyone was basically in a food coma after.

I want to thank all the Johanneans who helped to make those events happen. We did it together! :)

~ Ronald Lam, MEd’24

P.S. I later got a cheap electric car and found a free EV charging station on campus. Thank goodness for no longer having to lug 30-kilogram suitcases packed with groceries onto the bus!

A textbook case of creativity

My wife (then girlfriend) and I were grad students in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology over 25 years ago. As grad students, I had a stipend and was paid monthly, and my wife had a scholarship, which paid quarterly. So at the end of every quarter, the money was tight. 

One time we ran out of money with two weeks to go—there was literally no money for food. I found out that UBC Bookstore had a textbook recycle program and would pay money for new or used textbooks. I also knew professors got free sample textbooks from publishers who wanted them to use the books in the courses they taught. 

To raise money, I went around the department and asked professors for those sample textbooks. My wife also helped. In the end, we collected a handful of textbooks in mint condition. The bookstore actually paid decent money for them. We got about 80 bucks and it fed us till we got paid at the end of the quarter. I think that was one of the most entrepreneurial things we ever did. 

~ Xin Mao, PhD’02

From nabbing freebies to making meal-plan deals 

I would grab napkins from food vendors daily at The SUB so I had cleaning towels, hand wipes, and yes… toilet paper. Eek, I know! I also collected condiment packets to open up and squirt into larger containers so I wouldn’t need to buy these items at grocery stores. 

Additionally, because I had purchased a meal plan during my first year living on campus (shout out to my Totem Park family!), I would calculate my daily food budget, and each week if I had extra, unused credits, I would sell that amount at a discounted rate to other UBC students in my residence building. Pro tip: know who the stoners are. They will always be great customers! Hint: you can find them in the “magical forest” behind Totem Park.

~ Riaz Makan, BA’12

When scoring free food leads to lasting love 

Looking back, I didn’t just attend UBC from 2005 to 2011—I optimized it. As a varsity track and cross country athlete perpetually hovering between “adequately fuelled” and “could eat a horse,” I developed what I can only describe as a sixth sense for free food on campus.

It started innocently enough. Volunteer for the “I’m Going to UBC” program? Sure, I’ll show enthusiastic high schoolers around campus, take them to a volleyball or basketball game, and—wait, there’s pizza afterward? Sign me up for every session.

But that was amateur hour compared to what came next.

I created a mental map of campus event hotspots. Faculty receptions in the Nest? Check. Graduate student seminars promising “light refreshments”? This always meant sandwiches, so I was there. Department lectures that ran through dinner? You bet they’d have food to keep people in their seats. I learned to read between the lines of event posters: “Reception to follow” was code for “free sustenance.”

My system was elegant in its simplicity:

• Check bulletin boards in Osborne, the Old Gym, and especially the Medical Sciences buildings (my future wife was in med school—this was strategic relationship building and meal planning)
• Casually mention to admin staff that I’d “love to learn more about cardiac rehabilitation research”
• Show up exactly 15 minutes after the event started (early enough for food, late enough to miss most of the formal program)
• Master the art of looking like I absolutely belonged there while loading up a plate

The real breakthrough came when I realized different faculties had different catering quality levels. Education faculty events? Surprisingly fancy cheese plates. Medicine? They went all out (probably because they had actual budgets). Engineering? Pizza—every time, but reliable pizza.

My girlfriend—now wife of 17 years—initially thought I was incredibly well-networked and intellectually curious. “Wow, you attend so many lectures!” Eventually, she caught on when I dragged her to a “fascinating symposium on cardiac rehabilitation”—a topic I knew nothing about—because I’d heard there’d be samosas.

We got married at the UBC Medical Student Alumni Centre in 2008. The irony wasn’t lost on us: the place where I’d crashed countless events as a starving student became the site of the one event where I actually paid for the food.

Between the catered event circuit, beer gardens with their gloriously affordable pitchers, and my meal plan stretched to its absolute mathematical limit, I probably saved thousands of dollars over six years. But more than that, I accidentally networked across faculties, learned about fields I’d never have encountered otherwise, and met my future wife.

The best savings hack isn’t really about the money—it’s about saying yes to everything, showing up hungry, and being open to where free sandwiches might lead you.

~ Matthew Harriman, BHK’07, MPT’11