by Shaunna Popeko

Created on: May 05, 2008   Last Updated: September 10, 2009

Well your obviously reading this article because either #1 your tired of your crappy job where someone who you know your more qualified then keeps telling you what to do, #2 your tired of dealing as a servant for the public, constantly getting yelled at for something you didn't do, or cant fix, #3 your tired of missing your kids softball games at night because you have the wonderful gift of working the crappiest shift there is.

Any one of these reasons is more then enough to go to college, and better yet TO GO BACK! When I was eighteen, I went to a local University and because I lived at home and my parents made no money, I got grant money from the government to pay for school. I tried to go the independent scholarship route, but at that time unless you were a minority, gay, or handicapped there were none. There were a few times I took out student loans, but lets be honest with one another, I bought a car.

Two and a half years into school I dropped out due to whatever issues and started back into the workforce. That is how I know about the above jobs I listed. I've done them all trust me. It Finlay took me working at a convenient store pressing out eighty hours a week when I decided to go back to college. I am now thirty and I don't get much grant money because I make over two dollars an hour. The brutal honesty is that with a yearly income between eighteen, and twenty thousand, you will be lucky to get more then three hundred dollars for a state wide instructional grant.

There are your occasional grants that may pay half of your schooling, but then there is still half left. I've also noticed that now a days, more then a lot of people are going back and only trying for their associates degrees. Like the rest of you, thats what I am doing, and trust me, its very expensive. So here are a few things I did that helped me save money so that I didn't have to sign my life away to student loans AGAIN.

1. I planned ahead. I knew six months prior that I was going back and when I started. During that six months I picked up as much overtime as I could. My job finally got tired of that, so I went to a local temp service and worked a few temp jobs during those months to get extra money. Temping is a great source of income, the jobs usually pay more then jobs you find in the paper.

2. I cut out unnecessary bills. I had a cell phone and a home phone. Now I just have a cell phone. There are allot of companies with huge minute plans that you can save money with. I had every cable

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