I’ve avoided writing about Black Friday this year. In the community I follow, promoting the day after Thanksgiving for shopping has gotten completely out of hand. I wrote an article for PC World a few years ago, The Insider’s Guide to Black Friday Bargains, where the tips are still relevant for today’s shoppers. I’m not going to write a new article every year about how to find the best Black Friday deals.

As if Black Friday weren’t enough of a marketing scheme, a few years ago consumers were blessed to receive Cyber Monday, yet another day of hype encouraging people to buy more. I’m not always anti-consumerism, but I just find every year’s increased holiday sale hype, designed as a last-ditch, end-of-year effort to make up for poor sales since January 1, annoying. Doorbusters, bait-and-switch, and worst of all, and crazed Wal-Mart shoppers who are willing to kill others just to be first to grab some sale item that will be worth a tiny portion of its sale price in five months, make me embarrassed to be an American consumer.

The opposite approach is to put faith in Buy Nothing Day. The message of Buy Nothing Day is good, but like any temporary boycott, it just time-shifts spending; what you don’t spend on the day after Thanksgiving you’ll likely spend the next day. And if a sale expires, you’ll spend more.

The worst thing to come out of the holiday hype is “Small Business Saturday.” (Let’s just stop naming the days following Thanksgiving, also known as Turkey Thursday.) This is American Express’s effort to get consumers to patronize local stores in favor of national chains. On the surface, this isn’t a bad idea. Support business owners in the community by visiting smaller retail establishments who otherwise have a difficult time competing with large box stores like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot. Your neighborhood appliance or hardware store generally charge more money for the same products offered by national chains because small stores have little leverage to negotiate with wholesalers. Working with a small business based in the community you live, having a friendly face who can help answer your questions, and building a relationship with a business owner might be strong enough reasons to settle for a higher priced item.

This is coming from American Express. Many small business owners simply can’t afford to accept payments using American Express cards. It costs more money for a retailer to accept most American Express cards than most Visa or MasterCard credit cards. When you do use your American Express cards at a small business, you are not helping the store as much as you would if you were to pay with cash. American Express interchange fees can take an unhealthy bite out of a small business’s profits. Also, unlike Visa and MasterCard, who generally split merchant fees with banks that issue their cards, American Express cards are generally not issued by third parties, and the company keeps the entire interchange fee.

The “Small Business Saturday” campaign was not created for the good of the overall economy. American Express offers this message, “The 2nd annual Small Business Saturday® is a day dedicated to supporting small businesses on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year,” but the day supports American Express, which is not a small business. Through this campaign, American Express is offering small businesses that accept their cards to prominently display an advertisement that offers a $25 credit to any customer who uses an American Express card to purchase items totaling $25 or more at the location. There is little in this campaign other than self-interest and self-promotion on American Express’s part.

Is this bad? It’s hard to say. If you want to do your part to support local businesses that are in danger of closing partly due to the high prices credit card companies charge, shop there but pay cash. Forget about the 1% cash back or less you can earn, paid for by the small business owners. The $25 credit in the offer doesn’t support small businesses because this isn’t extra money that can be used to purchase more in a store. It’s a statement credit, designed to thank card holders for using American Express and requiring retailers that accept the cards to pay more to AmEx through fees.

American Express is, thanks to capitalism, allowed to promote almost anything it likes in order to increase profit. That’s how corporations compete, build value for shareholders, and help upper middle class households stay upper middle class and wealthy households increase their wealth. The company reports that small businesses saw an increase in sales due to last year’s Small Business Saturday campaign (but note that they didn’t see the same large increase in profits). Look past the marketing messages at who is most benefiting from this campaign.

When the sun goes supernova and engulfs the Earth, marketers will promote the event as the hottest party since the big bang.

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Meal plans at college are convenient. A student’s food costs are wrapped into each semester’s tuition bill, allowing them to focus on academics and college activities rather than finding the money for each meal. Many colleges offer similar meal plan choices, and the two most popular options are plans that offer either three meals a day or two meals a day. In addition to the ability to swipe a card to qualify for a meal, many dining plans offer points to be used for additional food expenses, whether in a dining hall, a campus fast food establishment, or a convenience store.

The prices for the meal plan vary from school to school. Meal plans are expensive, and most students don’t take full advantage of them. Here are some examples of how much a typical meal plan would cost per semester at some schools. At some schools, the two plans cost the same amount. The difference would be in the number of “points” one may receive for extra meals, and since these point systems differ from school to school, I don’t include them in the table.

Many schools require students living on campus to sign up for a meal plan. These prices not only pay for the food, but help defray the college’s costs of running dining halls on campus, and all students share these costs regardless of whether they use the dining halls.

Choosing a meal plan

Most colleges and universities offer a choice between a two-meal-per-day plan and a three-meal-per-day plan. There may be additional options offering fewer meals, and the plans also often different combinations of meal points or flex points. In general, if you must choose a meal plan, choose a plan that matches your habits. If you’ve never been a breakfast eater or if you’re a night person, the three-meal-per-day plan will likely be a waste of money for you, assuming it costs more than the other plans. You won’t magically begin eating breakfast just because you receive that meal as part of your semester bill.

Similarly, if you haven’t been much of a cook at home, you won’t become one at college. These two trends are likely to continue, but can be reversed with some discipline and effort. If there’s no impetus for change, though, expect to continue living and eating with the same patters.

Wasting money

The college knows that you probably won’t eat every meal provided on your plan. For plans with points, colleges some how get away with expiring the points at the end of the semester or year without rolling them over to the next semester or providing the student a refund. To take full advantage of the meal plan and the price you pay, students must eat every meal and use every point, and that’s not a realistic expectation.

Cooking to save money

Cooking is an alternative to eating every meal in the dining hall. Unfortunately, some dorms don’t have facilities for cooking. There may be rules against keeping appliances in dorm rooms, and you may not have access to a refrigerator and a microwave. If you do live in a dorm with a shared kitchen, whether living in a suite, where a number of roommates share a common area, or a dorm where there is a kitchen on each floor, you’ve probably paid more for your housing costs than if you were to live in a dorm on campus without these facilities.

If you can cook, do it. You might be able to choose a lower-volume meal plan. Some colleges offer meal plans that include fewer than two meals per day, though options may be limited, especially for first-year students. You can save money by buying a smaller meal plan and make up the difference by cooking additional meals.

Many college students waste money with meal plans primarily because they don’t think about it. If someone else is paying the tuition bills each semester, or if student loans are covering most of the costs, the act of paying for daily expenses is several steps removed from the act of incurring those expenses. This disconnection between eating and payment reduces the awareness of how much things really cost.

College students who care about their financial future must be aware of what they are spending and find ways to reduce costs, a particularly difficult task when there is no immediate feedback or consequences to the choices. Dining plans make it possible for colleges and universities to overcharge you, so look at all your options, make the best choices, and increase your awareness of the costs of dining on campus, off campus, and cooking.

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