College years are among the best or worst years in our lived, depending how we see them. It is the time when we need to spend a lot of money but earn no or very little money in return. However, there are ways we can do to properly manage money during this situation:
- Track our spending: we could easily see that there are more days than money in our pocket. The easier way to track our spending is by taking a small book and put all our spending in it. We could put everything in it, from small splurged to those daily necessities.
- Create proper budget: budget should be considered as an outline of our financial situation and we could benefit so much from a reliable budget. Budget could also help us to manage our income. There are many sources of income including money from parents, scholarship and part time jobs. The basic rule in healthy finance situation is to make sure that we have more money than we spend.
- Start cutting expenses: this should be a very good time to know how our financial situation will be like in the future. We should also be able to distinguish our wants and needs. There are many things we have right now that we actually can’t afford. Of this is true then there’s something wrong with the way we manage our money. Our life in college should be thoroughly comfortable and we shouldn’t ruin it by making serious money mistakes. The key is to save a lot of money then we can splurge a little. We should still have plenty of money but we could occasionally enjoy ourselves. We may also need to wait get the syllabus before we buy books for our study. It is also a good idea to find more senior students who are willing to sell their used books for half the price or less. It should also be possible to evaluate our meal plans and look for ways to get enough nutritious and tasty food at lower prices. We should be able to use our Student ID to get discounts. There are discounts for restaurants, bus, airfare and others. With enough research we should be able to locate places that can give us more bang for the buck. We may also look for places to stay near the college, so we won’t need to have a car or get a bus. Many students don’t have cars, but they often can get around easily.. There could also be some college events that can help us get low cost items. Some social events could also provide us with free foods and we only need to attend them.
- Get part time job: we should have many opportunities to get work and get some additional incomes. We should contact local businesses and find out whether we could get part time jobs. This should also give us an opportunity to get our first job.