You might be going off to school away from home, or perhaps have just grown tired of living with your parents. Eventually going to find yourself living on your own, a simultaneously exciting and sensitive time in life. However, if you do find yourself in this situation, here’s a list of four great tips to be a financially independent full-time college student.
Become A Freelancer
The freelancer economy is quite large and has many different outlets. Services like Uber and Lyft both specialize in allowing people to make money by driving people around in their own cars. Fiverr is a service where someone can make money by essentially any skill or talent available by offering a product or service for $5 or more. A writer could even accurately write and sell articles on swarm content. While there is some risk involved in individual freelancer actions, such as a recent series of suits against Fiverr users who posted fake reviews on Amazon, these are great ways to make money on your own personal schedule.
Get A Job Based On Your Major
Being a college student, you find yourself in a dilemma: you need money from a decent job to pay for your education, but you need an educational degree to get a decent job. There is also an upcoming dilemma where getting a job after college will be difficult due to a lack of work experience. This all can be solved with a job during the school year that coincides with your major. Some schools have programs where they have you work for companies outside of the school in your field of study. These jobs can be during the school sessions planned around your class schedule, or they can be jobs exclusively to be undertaken on winter and summer breaks. These might not be the best jobs available, but usually when a company knows you are studying for something they would need, they will take the time to make sure you practice the skills you learned in class and pay you to do it.
Get Financial Aid
Financial aid is an important tool a college student can possess as this can cover all college expenses and even provide you with extra money to save and use whenever you need it. The minimum requirement is to fill out an FAFSA application, but you should also be in direct communication with the school’s Financial Aide Office. Certain opportunities can vary from state to state, but schools themselves can also have unique opportunities, such as scholarships. There is a high chance that there is more money that you could easily claim of which you are not aware.
Learn To Budget
You can gain all the money in the world, but if you do not know how to spend it wisely, then it is all practically worthless. You need to know approximately how much your income is going to be, including jobs and financial aid, and how much your expenses need to be, such as your rent, car payment, utilities, and food. Then it comes down to living within your means and saving as much as possible. Going out and having fun is okay, but if you more than likely can’t afford it don’t do it every night. Also, certain areas to live, modes of transportation, and ways to eat might be more expensive than others, and so planning around this is necessary. There are multiple things to consider when trying to live out a financially independent lifestyle in college, and you need to make sure everything will be covered if you are going to succeed.
Essentially, what this all comes down to is income and expenses. Anyone can live comfortably, even a college student, as long as there is more money going in than there is coming out. For some people, it is easy to stay inside or to eat ramen or to take the bus, but for others it is much, much harder. Perhaps you are not quite there yet and need to stay at home a bit longer before going out on your own. Either way, two great blogs are dedicated to helping you cut costs on your daily lives: The Penny Hoarder and The Dollar Stretcher. Remember, there will come a point where you will need to live on your own, and these tips are the tried and true ways of being able to survive in today’s world.