by Jennifer Tebo

Created on: May 01, 2008

How to survive on a college student's budget.

With monotonous tests and exams, infinite term papers and challenging final semester projects that students deal with throughout their college years, a college student's life can be relatively stressful. Why add more stress and money misery to the list?

The cost of an average college student's education is expensive. The average student's tuition at a four-year public university ends up being about $11,000. At a private four-year college tuition is about $35,000. That is not including room and board, books and other expenditures.

Students don't fret, because there are ways to budget your money, and to leave yourself with some extra cash.

Budgeting involves the student to put a pen to paper or use your computer to enter the details in order to figure out how much money a student has, and how much money a student spends. The best way to do this is for the student to chart their expenditures for two or three months.

Write down everything that a student pays for from college tuition, food, room and board, bills, textbooks, etc Make a list of how much a student spends on each category every month or how much everything costs a student each month. Now compare the costs to the student's income.

If the student's costs don't exceed their income then they are fine, but if they do exceed the student's income they may want to start cutting back on the less important wants in their life.

The best way to cut back on things in a student's life is; do students really need this every month or do they want it? Most of the time students don't need a lot of things they spend their money on. These wants may have to be cut out of a student's life if they are overspending on their budget.

An example of this may be, when a new CD which a student has been waiting for has just came out or that pair of designer jeans just went on sale at the student's favorite store and they have to have them. The student knows they really don't need these things, because they have plenty of CD's and they can always burn it from a friend with more money. The jeans are not necessary, because they have about ten pairs of jeans already.

Think of the things that are most important and make sure to keep those items number one on a student's list of items to be paid every month. Then go down the list and see if they can do without the least important items.

Most of the time a student can always shop around at different stores for cheaper products, such as food, hygiene

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>