You’ve doubtlessly seen, heard, and read the stories of people coming out of college with student loans in excess of $50,000, $100,000 and more often much more. If you want to avoid the same fate, you’ll have to take action up front to keep your debt situation from getting out of control from the very beginning.
Work your way though school
Balancing work and school is admittedly difficult, but graduating with six figures in student loan debt will be even tougher, and will go on a lot longer than will take you to complete a college degree program. Moral of the story: take your bitter pill now, and work to offset at least some of your school related expenses.
This doesn’t mean maintaining a full-time job while you’re in school. You can work part-time, maybe primarily on weekends during the school year, and then do full-time during the summer months. In a part-time job if you earn several thousand dollars per year, that can either reduce your need for student loans for basic college expenses, or it can provide cash for living expenses. The more you can earn, the less you need to borrow.
Start at a community college
Plan to spend the first two years of your college tenure at a local community college. The savings on this one step can be greater than any other action you take. For example, let’s say it will cost $25,000 per year to attend college at an in-state four-year school. If instead, you spend the first two years at a local community college at $7,500 per year, you will reduce the total cost of your education from $100,000 down to $65,000.
That will translate into a reduction in student loan debt of $35,000. While you may not like this while it is happening, you’ll love yourself for the sacrifice after you graduate.
Two other benefits to attending a community college are that you’ll most likely live at home - saving a small fortune on room and board at school and as a result, it will ll be far easier for you to hold a job to help pay for some of the expenses. This is why attending a community college is probably the single best strategy for minimizing student loan debt.
Attend state schools - in your own state
The cost of attending a four-year state school is substantially less than what it will cost to attend a private university. The biggest savings happens when you attend a state school in your own state, so that you can take advantage of the resident discount.
The cost of attending a public university in your own state will generally be only about half the cost of attending an out-of-state public school. This should always be a consideration if student loans are expected to be a major part of your education funding.
Commute to school
A large percentage of the cost of attending college is for expenses for room and board while living away at school. By attending a school close to home, you can eliminate these expenses and take another big chunk out of your student loan debt.
Since room and board costs typically make up somewhere between 30% and 50% of the annual expense of attending college, eliminating them can reduce your ultimate student loan burden by tens of thousands of dollars.
If you want to graduate and enter the adult world with a minimum of student loan debt, you do have options. Will they compromise the quality of your education? Perhaps but they will leave you in a better position financially when you graduate, and you still have a degree to show for your efforts.
Have you used any of these strategies as a way to cut down the cost of attending college, and reducing your student loan obligations?
