While our parents and professors lose sleep over the loss of their retirement funds and life savings that they’ve been watching slowly fade away everyday, most college students aren’t really feeling the effects of this financial crisis. Since most of us don’t have money in the stock market except for maybe a small share here and there (my mommy got me Disney stock to keep my childhood alive!) we don’t really understand how bad the economy is.

But with that in mind, we can still cut back on a few extras and do some things to try to get a little bit of beer money. While erasing those 2 a.m. Taco Bell visits is probably the best for your bank account (and your love handles and/or beer belly) there are other things you can do…like emailing people you don’t know and begging for money!

NYU student Max Stephenson had the right idea when he sent out an email to his friends, relatives, and acquaintances asking for donations for college.

In a heartfelt email begging for tuition money, Stephenson raised over $5,000 in TWO WEEKS!! That’s a better salary than I can even dream of! You must be thinking this kid has to have some rich relatives or something, but that’s surprisingly not it.

He only asked for donations of two dollars and fifty cents. That’s right--$2.50 aka pocket change for most. By sending this email to only 300 people and asking them to forward it, over 2,000 responded and sent money.

Although that $5,000 won’t pay the ridiculous cost of NYU, it’s a start and it's just short of a year's tuition for in-state students at JMU (those lucky bitches).