How to finance your higher education? Alternative to student loans.

Due to higher cost of college education, lots of people every year don’t even think about going to college after finishing their high school. Some of them do go to community college and some goes to technical school to get career training. Although I don’t discourage you to go to community college or technical school, my focus will be to educate you how to finance your higher education in college or university. Technical school or community colleges are great way to start after high school. In an university tuition are very high, even if you go to any school in small town. I would say average tuition is more than 3.5k per semester. You should apply on the fafsa website as soon as you determine to go to university. Apply for everything including grant, scholarship, work study and subsidized loan. As soon as you get your SAR- student aid report. Review all the information. By this time you probably have made up your mind to go to any specific school of your choice. Calculate how much money you will need for tuition, books. Put $200-$300 aside in your calculation in case you need to buy something during semester for your class project. Think if the money from grant and scholarship will cover everything including tuition, books. What about living? Look at your work study fund and see if its enough to cover living and food. Work study is much better than working off campus. From my personal experience it’s a great way to gain experience, make living. In work study you always work on campus and those people you will work with always understand a student compare to any hotel or fast food chain store. Your living cost and food should not be more than 1k every month. Try to get a student roommate. Don’t stay with anybody who is not student unless he is your close relative and you get a better deal. Try to get some online job or mentoring kids job. There are 2 benefits. You work some quality job and chances are you will make more money in less time. Doing online blog, taking surveys – are great ways to make money. If you are good at something, try to get yourself on fiverr.com.   sell something on ebay. I always discourage students to take any kind of student loan. To me they are like trap. Once you are in, you are screwed for long time. Student life specially in undergraduate is very challenging in USA. So, prepare yourself for 4 years of rough time. Take a break during summer. Work double shift and save some money for Fall semester. Don’t take credit card, unless you really need it. Try different scholarship website on the internet. From my personal experience, I never able to get any scholarship from internet. May be I wasn’t that great. So, I wont suggest to waste too much time. But there are some great scholarship on your school financial aid website, try them. You have better chance. Try to get involved with some sort of internship program. Sometimes you can work 10-20 hours at your own schedule. By all means try to avoid student loans.