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12 ways to save money in college

college is expensive

I was thinking of a major expensive in a persons life and realized college is a major one for students and parents. The yearly cost for a public school is $5,132 and for private $20,000. That is a lot of money after 4 years, so I thought I would help you out with some tricks in reducing that expense significantly.

1- Apply to be a resident assistant. This requires minimal work, you get to meet tons of new people and learn some management skills. Some schools provide stipends and others just give discounted rooms. Regardless it is a good deal, here are the savings from when I was an RA for 2 years:

Housing for 2 years

= $700 month (rent at UC Berkeley including utilities) * 9 months * 2 years = $12,600

Food

= 2-3 meals a day = $7/day * 7 days week * 30/days month * 9 months = $12,230

total 2 year savings= $25,830

2- Ask any of your friends to swipe for you in the cafeteria once a week.

3- Work in the library. Comes with many perks: You can do homework while working, free copies/printing, no late fees & free class books.

4- I don’t recommend this one but have heard friends doing it. 1) Buy a book from the store, go make copies at Kinkos and return the book

5- Buy a book with a bunch of friends and share the book on homework and tests.

6- Get a job at a restaurant/shop for free food. If you are reall lazy, utilize any friend’s costco card for bulk savings
7- Re-Use clothing or wait until you go home to do laundry or use a string outside to dry off clothes

8- Take all your empty beer and alcohol bottles to Safeway for extra dough. For some real desperate money go to the fraternity houses and partner with them to recycle their cans.

9- Apply for every scholarship possible, fastweb.com and your schools career center are a great place for information

10- Apply for FAFSA, regardless of how much your parents make, do it!

11- If you live in a city that has carshare it is a great way to save money on maintaining a car while at school.

12- If you can get a subsidized loan at 0% interest and not have to use it all; put it in a money market account or something safe at 3-5% and pay it back whenever the due date arrives.

and if you are curious, yes I did make money by attending school:) It was a very profitable business

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9 Responses to “12 ways to save money in college”

  • Shivani
    October 15th, 2005
    2:48 pm

    damn…could have used these suggestions a year or two ago…oh well, i’m out in about 2.5 months :) woohoo!!

  • Mike
    October 15th, 2005
    3:20 pm

    Great tips…I had no idea of all of the benefits of being an RA! I just remember seeing our RA’s room and thinking it was a lot bigger than my closet size doom room I had to share. LOL.

    Along those lines, another great way to save money is to live near campus and ride a bike or walk to class. Especially with the high price of gas and campus parking stickers it can save a lot of money.

  • Caitlin
    October 15th, 2005
    7:04 pm

    Hey Noah… regarding #11 another company is zipcar (it’s big in Boston where there are many colleges and unis)

    great ideas!

  • Noah Kagan
    October 17th, 2005
    2:15 am

    Has anybody ever used zipcar or car share? Another thing is with cars in college is the amount of tickets you receive. It is almost a guarantee, at least in Berkeley I know I paid 2-3 traffic cops salaries:)

    Thanks Caitlin and Mike for the comments. I love reading other people’s opinions/thoughts.

  • DeAnna Spencer
    November 17th, 2005
    6:19 pm

    Another tip is to get a job at the university bookstore. You’ll get a paycheck and an employee discount, therefore you save money on books. This is coming from a career student, I might add.

  • MyMoneyBlog » Blog Archive » Carnival of Personal Finance #18
    August 5th, 2006
    12:34 am

    [...] 12 ways to save money in college - Noah of Okdork gives us some creative ways to save money while at university. [...]

  • Pragmatic Finance - Putting my Financial House in Order
    August 25th, 2006
    5:23 am

    [...] Noah Kagan discusses 12 ways to save money in college at Okdork. He shows a great explanation of the benefits of being a resident assistant, both in terms of housing and food discounts. Hmm, maybe I should have done this… Some other great points that I have done are working at a restaurant for free food and taking out subsidized loans and placing them in an online savings or money market account. [...]

  • Wil Ford
    April 15th, 2007
    8:51 am

    I am junior who is getting a job to pay for college. After i save i am going to canada (vancouver community and a few other local colleges got homestay accomidations for 700 a month including food) the tuition for this college varied but the rent included foood

  • Ryan
    October 15th, 2008
    12:06 pm

    Some good ideas, i like the site. I found a small site that also has some great ideas. http://www.freewebs.com/moneyincollege try that one out and see how it is

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