At Grockit, we’re all about education and getting you ready to move on to the next stage in your life. But we’re not just teachers; we’re all former and/or current students, too, and we’ve got more than just test preparation tips to share with you!
There’s a good chance that you or your parents are making a significant investment in your college education from loans or savings. The stereotype of the “broke college student” exists for a reason: many college students really are living on a TIGHT budget. Learn from a few of the money mistakes I made in college so you can avoid them yourself!
1. Credit cards are not “free money,” and they can make your life miserable if you misuse them. They might look innocuous, all decorated with Van Gogh’s Starry Night or your school mascot or whatever, but the interest rates will kill you if you’re not careful; get one for emergencies if you must, but try to pay it off in full every month and don’t let yourself get into the habit of thinking that new boots or late-night pizza orders are “emergencies.”
2. There are weird little opportunities to make a little extra cash all over the place at most universities and colleges. Have a couple of hours to spare between classes one day a week? You might be able to spend them as a model for the art school or a mock patient for med students. Think outside the usual part-time job box to explore seasonal opportunities or small gigs that only crop up periodically.
3. Unless you become a celebrity or get a really plum job involving some kind of consumer goods, you will never again get as much free stuff offered to you as you do in college. So take the t-shirts, the boxes of sample toiletries, and the promotional water bottles; a penny saved is a penny earned, right?
4. Speaking of free things, if you’re smart about it you can get a whole lot of free food just by going to extracurricular activities like lectures and club meetings. It’s an opportunity to not only score some pizza (and it will almost always be pizza), but also to learn about something, whether it’s swing dancing or quantum physics, that you might never have discovered otherwise.
5. There are resources available to help you through the rough patches. It probably won’t kill you to eat nothing but ramen noodles for the last two weeks of the semester, after you’ve burned through all of your loan money, but it’s not exactly great for you, either. And more importantly, it’s probably not necessary. Many schools have emergency short-term loan programs in place to help students out of a tight spot, so if you need help, ask for it!
What kind of helpful knowledge have you picked up about your finances? Share it in the comments!
About Grockit: Grockit is a fun and engaging learning community that encourages students to learn from group study, game play, expert tutorials and solo study. Students that prepare with Grockit have proven to achieve higher scores on college admissions tests.
About the author: Andrea Alexander is a current graduate student in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She's been teaching test prep for about eight years and have picked up lots of helpful knowledge along the way. She specializes in the verbal aspects of test prep, since her education and career experience as an attorney, freelance writer, and editor have given her the background for that.
