A Penny Saved

Let this serve as a warning to all you college bound people this year. If you do nothing else with your college career, do not do these things.

1. This one is the most important. Avoid credit card debt like the plague. The less of it you have, the more fun stuff you can do when you get a real job that pays real money. General rule of thumb here: If you can’t pay it off at the end of the month, don’t use it.
2. Avoid student loans as much as possible. I’m quite certain that unless you scored a perfect score on your ACT’s and wrote one heck of a entrance essay, you will have to have some student loans. While student loan money is probably the least expensive money you will ever borrow, it takes forever to pay off. I left school with nearly $50,000 in student loan debt. Some of this was from taking extra each semester for “books”(and beer). Stupid.
3. Never ever buy your books the day before class at the bookstore. Well, not at the bookstore anyways. There are several websites that specialize in used textbooks. My favorite, however, is Amazon.com. As long as the book isn’t a new printing, you can score discounts as deep as 50% and sometimes more.
4. If you do buy books from the bookstore, don’t sell them back to the book buyback guy. Occasionally, you’ll have to buy books at the bookstore. It’s inevitable. But just as you buy your books at a site like Amazon, you can sell them there just as easily. It doesn’t take much effort to sign up as a seller and you’ll get at least twice what the buyback guy will give you.
5. Get an internship. In the field you’re studying. It will help you out with that first real job. Experience is key. You can have all the degrees you want, but if you have experience, it can literally mean thousands more in your pocket.

These are but a few of the mistakes that I made in college. The key financial ones anyways. Some of the others I’d rather just keep private.

Enjoy college while it lasts. It truly is a lot of fun and you’ll leave with some of the best memories of your life, you don’t need to leave with lots and lots of debt though.

Technorati Tags: college, debt, student loans, textbooks, degree, internship, credit cards