From the monthly archives:

March 2008

Letter from a Broke College Student

by Broke Grad Student on March 10, 2008

The parents of a Northwestern student who just headed back from holiday received this letter:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Univer$ity life i$ $o wonderful! Cla$$e$ this $e$$ion are intere$ting, my cla$$mate$ are the be$t!

But after $pending all my ca$h on Chri$tma$ pre$ent$, I am in a little need for $ome $pending money for book$ and $uch. But don’t want to $end the wrong $ignal$ home.

Love
Your $on

After deliberating awhile, Mom and Dad drafted this response:

Dear Son,

NOt much to NOtice here on the NOrth side of town since you left for NOrthwestern. NObody doing NOthing NOble.

Enjoyed having you home for Thanksgiving in NOvember and Christmas. NOthing is the same since you left.

Loved your NOte; write aNOther one when you have time.

Have to go NOw.

Mom & Dad

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Interview at Debt Consolidation Care

by Broke Grad Student on March 9, 2008

Recently, I completed an interview for Debt Consolidation Care. DebtCC is a community-oriented website to help people get out of their debt problems. They assist with debt consolidation, credit card debt, debt settlement, collection agencies, and payday loans. With over 100,000 registered users, the DebtCC forums contain a wealth of great information and provide a great place to discuss debt related issues. Best of all, it’s completely free to register.

Check out my interview at Debt Consolidation Care.

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Why You Should Never Buy Another Textbook

by Broke Grad Student on March 7, 2008

I previously mentioned that buying new textbooks is a waste of money when I evaluated whether I could have avoided student debt. While textbooks are a staple of the college life, that doesn’t mean students should go broke buying the equivalent of school supplies. I made the mistake of buying new textbooks my first year of college, and it probably cost me over a hundred extra dollars. Add that up over four years, and that’s huge chunk of change.

Fortunately, I learned quickly from my freshman mistake and never made the same mistake again. Why should you pay full price for a book that you’ll probably never read again? If you plan on reselling the book, there’s always the chance that a new edition will come out or the professor will switch to a different book. However, you can save money on your textbooks and still have the opportunity to resell them after you’re done by following a few simple tips.

  • Buy used textbooks if they’re available. Unless the book is a brand new edition, you should be able to find a used copy of almost every textbook in reasonable condition. While campus bookstores are usually the most convenient place to find these, you can usually save some more money by buying used textbooks online at a site like Amazon.
  • Share a textbook with someone else in the same class. While this won’t work for every class, it should work out fine for some classes. By splitting the cost of the book with someone else, you get a 50% discount on the book.
  • Borrow a textbook from a friend who has already taken the class. Some people like to hang on to certain textbooks for posterity’s sake. A lot of times they’ll be willing to lend a textbook to you for a semester. Just remember to return it back in a similar condition if you still want to be their friend.
  • Go to the library and use their copies of textbooks. As a child of the Digital Age, I must admit that I’ve only made a handful of trips to the library throughout college. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are literally hundreds of thousands of books that you have access to for free. As an added bonus, it’ll force you to go the library and study.
  • Talk to people who have taken the class and find out if all of the textbooks are used in the class. Sometimes professors will list a bunch of textbooks, but only some of them are mandatory. By talking to people who have already taken the class, you can avoid wasting money on the ones that aren’t going to be used.
  • Sell the textbook after you’re done with it. Assuming you bought a used textbook and didn’t completely annihilate it, you should be able to resell it to someone else for around the same price you originally paid for it. I’ve gotten the most money back by selling textbooks to friends/acquaintances or selling them online. In general, you get horrible deals when you sell textbooks back to campus bookstores, so avoid doing that if possible.

That’s it! By following these simple tips, you can literally save hundreds of dollars over the course of your college career.

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Could I Have Avoided Student Debt?

by Broke Grad Student on March 6, 2008

As you can tell from the title of my blog, I have quite a bit of student debt. I recently read an article on how to avoid student debt by Squawkfox, and it made me wonder if I could have avoided student debt had I followed her advice throughout school. I’ve decided to evaluate my past decisions based on her guidelines to determine whether or not I could have made it out of college debt free.

1. Go to an affordable school (or one close to home)

This is generally an issue of public vs. private universities and/or in-state vs. out-of-state tuition. The latter is more expensive in both cases. However, if you go to a private university, in-state or out-of-state doesn’t matter, because everyone is charged the same (more) expensive tuition compared to a public university.

For undergrad, I went to a private university, and for grad school, I attended a public university in my state of residence. The cost of tuition for one year at the private university was enough to cover four years of in-state tuition at the public university I attended. From a financial perspective, I would have a lot less debt had I gone to an in-state college for undergrad as well. However, I still feel like what I experienced by going to the private university was worth the extra cost.

2. Get a scholarship

I was fortunate enough to get a few scholarships throughout my undergrad years. While they would have covered most of the costs at an in-state public school, they barely made a dent at the private university I attended. The scholarships went straight into tuition and fees, so I never actually saw a penny of them. They did save me and my parents around twenty thousand dollars over the course of my undergraduate years though.

You can find scholarships for almost anything - academics, sports, music, etc. Ask friends and family if they know of any scholarships that you might be eligible to apply for. For example, my mom’s employer had a scholarship fund solely for children of their employees. Since the group I was competing against for the scholarship was so small, I got the scholarship every year that I applied.

3. Live at home

This definitely would have saved me some big bucks if it had been feasible to do, but it wasn’t. I also feel that living at home takes away a lot of the experience of going to college. For most people, it’s their first time away from home, which is only possible if you actually leave your home. From a financial point of view though, living at home is the way to go.

4. Buy used textbooks

I learned my lesson with textbooks after my first year of college. Do everything possible to avoid buying new textbooks that you’ll probably never use again the rest of your life - buy used, borrow, share, go to the library, etc. I recommend buying online or from other students, because you can get a better price than you’d get at most bookstores. The same goes for selling your textbooks after you’re done with them.

Another thing I learned to do was talk to people who had taken the course before and ask them if all of the recommended books were necessary for the course. Sometimes professors list recommended readings that they never get around to covering in class.

5. Do co-operative education

My undergraduate school did offer a co-op program, but there were a couple of reasons I chose not to participate in it. It would have taken me longer to graduate had I participated in the program, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go into the field that I was majoring in at the time. If you already know what you’re interested in, then I think a co-op is a great opportunity to get real world experience, school credit, and a nice paycheck.

I finally figured out what I wanted to do in grad school, and I’ve participated in a couple of internships (a college student’s best friend). They’ve been great opportunities to learn about a particular career, and they even paid pretty well.

6. Get a part-time job

I’ve held a part-time job throughout most of my college years, but I was lazy and took some time off during grad school. Not surprisingly, most of my student debt is from that period of time when I could have been working to reduce my student debt.

In my opinion, the ideal part-time job for a college student is some place on-campus. You’d be surprised at the variety of jobs you can find on a college campus - web design, archivist, cafeteria worker, etc. The benefit of working for your school is that your boss will probably be more flexible and understanding with your work schedule compared to a boss at a place like a restaurant or a retail store. This will make it easier for you to balance school and work.

Conclusion

After evaluating my past decisions based on Squawkfox’s tips for avoiding student debt, I think that it would have been possible for me to completely avoid student debt, but not without some major trade offs. To graduate debt free, it would have meant living at home and attending an in-state public university. These are two things that make sense financially but contain hidden “costs” that should be taken into account. For example, if I had stayed in-state, I would have missed out on living in a new city, experiencing a different culture, not having parents around, and meeting a wider variety of people from all over the world. These are some of the intangibles that are hard to convert into dollar amounts.

In conclusion, could I have avoided student debt? Yes. I definitely think I could have graduated debt free. Do I regret the path I chose? Absolutely not.

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Carnivals-A-Go-Go

by Broke Grad Student on March 5, 2008

In case you missed it, things have been pretty busy at Broke Grad Student for the past month. During this time, I’ve hosted not one, not two, but THREE carnivals! Be sure to check them out for some great reading if you haven’t already. It’s definitely a great way to pass the time at work, in class, or wherever you’re at.

Now that I’m done with my carnival hosting marathon, I’m starting to participate in them from the other side again. My article on why internships are a college student’s best friend was included in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance - The Homeless Edition hosted by The Baglady. Check it out!

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Festival of Frugality #115

by Broke Grad Student on March 4, 2008

Welcome to the 115th edition of the Festival of Frugality! If there’s one thing that college teaches us, it’s how to pinch every penny. When I hear the word frugality, there’s only one picture that pops into my mind.

ramenwall.jpg
Photo by notashamed

The first five articles are my favorite submissions from this week. The rest of the submissions are listed in chronological order, from earliest to latest.

Top Ramen

Ramen-Rama

That concludes this week’s Festival of Frugality. Next week’s festival will be hosted by Green Panda Treehouse.

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February 2008 In Review

by Broke Grad Student on March 1, 2008

It’s hard to believe that this blog is four months old already. It feels like just yesterday when I sat down and wrote about why I am doing this. The month of February has been the most active month to date, which is great. Of course, hosting both the Carnival of Debt Reduction and Carnival of Personal Finance might have had a little to do with it. Without further ado, here are the stats for the past month.

Payback Fund: $2003.58

This has been quite an improvement since December 2007. Of course, this is mainly due to the fact that I have a full time job now. If you’re wondering why I’m keeping the name Broke Grad Student, it’s because I haven’t graduated yet. There’s a little thing called a thesis that I have to finish up before they’ll give me that $20,000 piece of paper.

1,690 Unique Visitors

A slight increase in visitors this month, which is pretty impressive considering that I’ve only been posting 2-3 times a week. I definitely owe this to getting to host two great carnivals this month.

65 Subscribers

Woo hoo! Once again, the carnivals are to be thanked for this one. Be on the lookout for some new material in March though, because I’ll have more time to spend writing rather than organizing carnivals.

Top 8 Referrers

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