Top Stores for College Students and People on A Budget in the US:
Dollar Tree:
Dollar Tree is my go to place for cheap food. Not Dollar General or Dollar Family, the true “everything for one dollar store!” The one by my university has all the basics, like bread, peanut butter, jelly, macaroni and cheese, pounds of sugar and flour, bags of dried beans, tortillas, frozen vegetables, egg noodles, broth, almond milk, and half gallons of Arizona Tea!
However, they do have a broad range of other useful goods such as shampoo, conditioner, notebooks, books, holiday decor, cheap hardware tools, sets of paint rollers and holders for home renovating, first aid supplies, gardening ware during the summer and spring, mugs, cheap kitchen ware, gift wrap supplies, office supplies, perfume, and art supplies.
Target:
Target is one of those stores that you have to know where the deals are at. My Target puts any holiday decor that gets put on clearance in the back corner of the store where they typically sell other seasonal goods. They also tend to put clearance sections on end caps in the home goods section, but I usually go for the end of season clearance since they get discounted to around 60% of the price. The front of the store by the entrance is where they keep the cheap 1-5$ seasonal goods, but the best Targets to go to for this section of the store, are the ones by colleges, since they usually try to keep cheap dorm goods in this section year-round.
I recently got two full sized pillows for $5 (as a pair, so $2.50 each) in home goods on 50% clearance and mini tombstones for my desk that were $1 each in the seasonal section at the front of the store. I’m always hawking over the clearance section for cloths by A New Day and Wild Fable, since they are simple and affordable brands that I love the style of. I managed to get a couple of black crop tops by Wild Fable on clearance for about $1.20-$4 each.
Publix:
Publix is THE PLACE for couponing. They have a list of buy one get ones (BOGOs) every week, and they keep the weekly ad with this information by the entrance. Any BOGO that doesn’t require a coupon, can have one store coupon (Publix or one of its competitors) and one manufacturer coupon per deal (i.e. $1 off of every one item can be used on the BOGO items as well, as long as you have two of the coupons, but $1 off of two items will count as a coupon on each of the two items) and you can put a 5$ or 10$ off of 50$ purchase or the like on-top of all of that, as long as you reach the requirements on the coupon, and its either that specific store’s competitor or one of their own deals.
Kohl’s:
I love checking out the clearance sections in Kohl’s! The last time I was there I bought a soft black dress, a black short sleeved shirt, a pair of pants, and a soft pair of gray and black yoga pants that I love sleeping and wearing around the house in, for just about $13 bucks, that the amazing cashier manage to bring down to (originally about $16) by letting me know about a 20% discount that’s online. There’s also a clearance section in the makeup/ self care section, where I got a pack of face masks for $1.40, and nose strips for about $2, and an EOS lip-balm for $1.99.
Thrift Stores:
They can be a hit or miss in both merchandise quality and pricing. I mainly go to thrift stores for heavy furniture, such as desks and book cases. Sometimes you can get a nice desk for $25 and sometimes it’ll cost you $100. The end of school season at the beginning of summer is a good time to go shopping for furniture, because some people will be graduating and moving on to a new place, and you don’t have that moving in to the dorms crowd quite yet.