Hey guys welcome back to the channel and hello if you're new welcome I'm Suzanne
with Arvabelle. Since it is now back-to-school season I
wanted to make a video for those of you going to college about how you can save
money in college while the college system simultaneously tries to
squeeze every penny out of you. If you're interested in seeing more videos on
money personal finance investing those types of things remember to subscribe to
the channel. So number one is going to be to never buy new textbooks. Never buy
them. And that is the most cliche advice for saving money in college but it's
really one of the biggest most overlooked expenses college textbooks
can legitimately cost you anywhere between like $150 and $250
per book and that's like a pretty normal rate so
instead of doing that don't buy them from your school bookstore don't buy
them new rent your textbooks from Amazon. A lot of people don't know that the
prices on Amazon textbook rentals actually change slightly depending on
the season so if you can look up your syllabi ahead of time and rent your
textbooks either in the middle of the summer or at the end of a term I
legitimately never paid more than $25. I think one time I
got a textbook for $12 I rented like an art history textbook or
something for$12 and then as it got closer to the school season the
price went up on it but you do want to make sure when you are renting your
textbooks that the rental period goes through when you need it. So you
don't want to rent it too too early and have to return it like a month later
before school even starts. Now you may find that there is one exception to this
oh one lovely exception and that is if your professor has written a textbook or
helped write a textbook then most of the time you won't be able to find their
textbook on Amazon and that will be a textbook that you're required to buy and
that you'll actually use because they want to use it because they wrote it
it's understandable but you still do not need to buy it new unless it's the very
first semester that that book has been published. You can almost
always find it somewhere else so go to Facebook and Gen Z people I know that
Facebook is not cool anymore but almost every college has a free and for sale
Facebook group and on there people are always trying to get rid of all of these
annoying text books that they can't sell to anyone else at any other school
because it's specific to a certain professor or a certain department or
something like that. So just go there buy them off of people on Facebook. If you
don't see anyone posting anything for the books that you need, you make a post
and be like hey I need this book I'll buy it off it someone does anyone have
it? Go with the flow go buy it there do not buy it new and do not buy it from
the school bookstore. Number two is to reduce your housing
costs so obviously you can live with roommates to reduce your costs but also
what's often overlooked is that sometimes living off-campus is a lot
cheaper than living in the on-campus dorms and you may not be able to do this
if you're required to live in the dorms but if you're not required to live in
the dorms definitely look into it. If you're in an area where the apartments
are pretty competitive and you're in a situation where you know that you aren't
going to be there over a summer or you know that you're going to be like abroad
for a semester you may be able to negotiate with an apartment complex or
with a landlord to only do like a six month lease or a nine month lease
instead of the full 12 months. So that can save you money too if you've never
rented an apartment before or a house before go and check out our video on
the tips that you need to know before you rent your first apartment. That was
the first video, so sorry, but hopefully it's helpful anyways. The third way to
save money is to downgrade your phone plan. And for a lot of people I know that
asking to give up phone data is like asking them to give up their first born
child but if you can give up a little bit of data on your phone plan that can
help save you a little bit of money. For most of college I was on a phone plan
that had 500 megabytes of data. Not gigabytes. Megabytes. And I was totally
fine and the reason for that was because I was really never anywhere that didn't
have Wi-Fi. There's Wi-Fi all over campus obviously my house had Wi-Fi my friends
houses had Wi-Fi cafe and restaurants and grocery stores had
Wi-Fi so I was just I really didn't need much phone data but during the summers
and if I was going on a trip somewhere or I just like knew that I needed more
data for some reason I would upgrade for those months and then I would downgrade
again when I went back to school. Number four is you've got to learn how
to play the system. So if you can and if you want to, try to graduate early
because that can save you tens of thousands of dollars. I graduated in
3 years so that was an entire year of tuition that I did not have to pay.
Same education, same number of classes, just a lot less money. I was able to
finish in three years because I did several things. So first see if there are
any basic classes that you can test out of and second see if you can take any of
those basics at community colleges or at online community colleges. A lot of
people don't know that online community colleges exist but they do and as long
as the credit counts you can take their classes and finish school early. There
are going to be fees for testing out and for taking community college courses but
it's probably a lot less than your regular tuition. However, at least if you
are in Texas, you can take full advantage of the classes that are offered to you
at your college so the last time that I checked it was still the same - if you are
a full time student, meaning that you are taking at least 12 hours, anything
between a 12 credit hour semester and an 18 credit hours semester is going to
cost you exactly the same. There's no - like tuition wise - there's no additional
cost for additional hours up to 18 hours. Be careful not to go over that though or
whatever limit your school or state has just because then you may have to pay
like out-of-state tuition or pay some like fine or I don't know - they'll find a
way to get you. But if you have time or if your goal is just to graduate early
you can definitely do that by taking more hours. It may be stressful but you
can do it. Number five is to maximize your part-time job. So this is kind of
more making money than saving money, but I thought that I would include it
anyways. If you can get a part-time job that's on track with the career
path that you want 100% do that over what I'm going
to suggest because that's gonna give you a higher return on investment but
if you can't find something that's related to your field or you don't
really know what your field is yet or you just have a super heavy workload
but you still do need to work to make some extra money
check for on-campus jobs. So colleges offer an absurd amount of desk jobs like
in the libraries or in different departments where you're basically just
monitoring the room and you answer questions if someone asks you. But I had
a lot of friends in college that did work in some of the libraries and they
just they basically got paid to like sit there and do their homework and just
answer questions or help someone look something up if someone
came up to the desk. Also check for research opportunities. If your college
does offer some sort of research program a lot of times how those are structured
is that there's a class portion so you receive class credit for your
in-class portion, and then they'll also have you work on the side and you get
paid for that as if it's a part-time job, and then you can
most times qualify for a bunch of grants and scholarships that you otherwise
would not have been eligible for if you weren't in the research program. So
that's something to look into you may be able to get credit and get paid.
Number six I just had to throw in here - always ask for student discounts. Bring your
student ID with you everywhere even when you're not in your college town. At every
business that you interact with just ask them if they give a student discount and
when you're traveling ask for student discounts there as well. There is no
shame in asking. If people know that you're a student they know that you
don't have money and they want to help you out. Number seven is to start
budgeting so you don't have to start out super intense with budgeting but it's a
good idea to start at least like tracking your expenses and knowing
kind of how your money is being distributed among the different things
that you do. What I would recommend for this is mint.com. So I'm not affiliated
with them in any way they're just a very good website that's been around for a
long time and it can help you kind of like break down how you're spending, how
you're saving. So how it works is you connect your credit cards your bank
accounts etc and it makes you a nice little pie chart and you know
I love my pie charts. Mint.com also has a budgeting tool on their website so if
you're gonna sign up for it to track your expenses you might as well use it
to track your budget. Number eight is kind of sad. And that is to start paying
off your student loans now. So I know that paying off student loans is like
the last thing that you want to think about while you're still in school,
but if there is any way that you can set aside even a tiny bit of money from
your job or from an extra side hustle and if you can start putting that
towards your loans it is going to really really help you out when you graduate.
Also if you still have years ahead of you left in college be very very mindful
about the loans that you are actually choosing to take out. If you qualify for
like a $30,000 loan but you really only need to take out like
$10,000 or $15,000 don't take out the full amount just because they are offering it
to you. You do not want to spend your postgraduate years paying off loan
interest on a loan amount that you didn't actually need. So have fun in
college. Go out with your friends. Go on spring break. Like live your life but
also don't be stupid with your money and don't let the college system
squeezed every single penny out of you. So remember to subscribe to the channel
if you haven't already, hit that like button, and follow us on Instagram. I will see you guys next time.
There was campus all over Wi-Fi.
Obviously I had Wi-Fi wait did I just say there is campus all over Wi-Fi