Teen Money Making Ideas » college

Is Community College a Good Idea to Save Money?

Amber — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:49:46 +0000

The following article is from TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com:Escaping home and attending college in another state may be the dream of many teens, but a growing number of people are starting to turn their attentions to community colleges which is a good idea to save money over the cost of state universities. There is also an increase in the number of adults with well rooted lives in their communities who want to further their education and find that community colleges offer the best opportunity for their budget and time schedule.

There are endless reasons why someone might consider attending a community college, but for most people it all comes down to a way to save money. You really can save a ton of money going to a community college near your home, especially once you factor in all of the expenses of college beyond basic tuition.

Obtaining a college education is a long term commitment which requires adjustments in your overall lifestyle, and all of these adjustments can add to the cost of your educational adventure. For someone who doesn’t have money saved up for their education and who doesn’t want to get in over their head in loans, working to pay for their tuition may be their only hope of graduating. It is much easier to pay around $800 (sometimes even less) to a community college than to come up with over $5,000 (sometimes much more) for a larger university each term.

Besides the fact that a community college will be thousands of dollars less than a state university, you also have to consider many other factors including living and transportation expenses, as well as books and other required classroom supplies. These are all areas where attending a community college could save you money.

Living and Transportation Expenses

If you live close to a large university you could still live at home to save on living expenses, but going away for college will require a lot of thought into how much you can afford to pay for housing, utilities, food, and all of the other expenses of daily life. These things don’t go away while we are in college, and in some parts of the country they can even be more expensive than we are used to paying regularly.

The best opportunity for someone worried about paying tuition is to live at home with parents or in whatever your current living arrangement is, so that you are already paying the bills and know what you can afford. For most people, this will mean going to a community college at least for now. The option to transfer to a university a couple years down the road is always open, and in fact most community colleges work closely with state universities to transfer students over smoothly.

You should discuss with an adviser while schedule coursework to make sure whatever you take at the community college will transfer into your degree program at the university when you are ready to transfer. In the meantime, you can save a lot of money on living expenses and tuition by staying at a community college and saving up money.

Driving to and from classes needs to be taken into consideration as well. Most people live reasonably near a community college, while most are rather far away from a large university. Going to the college with the least driving distance will mean less money spent on gas and vehicle maintenance, as well a greater chance that you can work your classes into your work schedule.

Every person’s situation is different, but in most cases it will be much cheaper to live wherever you currently are and go to a community college than to travel to a large university. Even if a larger college is nearby, the savings in tuition will almost always leave community college the better option as far as money goes.

If you will have to move no matter where you go, try to find roommates and rent an apartment as close to the college campus as possible. If you can find an inexpensive room to rent in someone else’s home, it could drastically reduce your living expenses. Many families near colleges regularly rent rooms in their homes and offer safe, inexpensive environments for struggling students.

Books and Supplies

College course books are likely to be about the same price no matter what type of college you attend, but some community college professors do try to use fewer books to keep the cost down. This is especially true for courses which are typically attended by adults trying to further their careers.

If you have not looked through a college bookstore yet, get ready to be amazed at the price of a single book. Textbooks are very expensive, especially for more advanced coursework where the knowledge is more in depth and specialized. Luckily, most will sell used books for a lower price.

Since students get some money back by reselling used books no matter what condition they are in, you will have plenty books to choose from for most courses. Take the time to look through each used book and you will often be able to find one that is in practically brand new condition. When the course is over you can resell it as well, though you will get only a small fraction of what you originally paid for it back. Every little bit helps when it comes to the huge investment of a college education. You may also able to find used textbooks at used bookstores off campus or online at auction sites like EBay. Just be careful that it is the same book by the same authors and that you have the correct edition, since college books are updated regularly.

Besides these two major areas of expense, there are other possible money matters that some people will need to deal with when going to college. Some of these are more often a problem for adults trying to further their education, but they can be issues even for someone who just graduated high school.

• Extra childcare while you are in classes.
• Computer or other equipment that you will need to complete homework assignments, research, or sometimes to communicate with your teachers.
• There may be non-residence tuition fees if you do go to college away from home.

A college education is a long term commitment both in time consumption and financial matters. When money is an issue community college is a good ideas to save money, even if it is just for a couple of years while you work to put back money or secure grants and scholarships to go to a four year college.

There is also the option of taking coursework from home on the internet; and many community colleges now have this option for a wide selection of their courses. This can save a substantial amount of money on gas driving to and from a campus that isn’t that close by, and it can also fit into a tight working schedule when you can’t get off work at times your classes would be held.

Getting a college education may take a lot more money and effort to successfully complete than other things in life, but it is well worth the sacrifice in the end as it increases your job potential, level of pay, and enhances every aspect of your future life.For more information like this, visit TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com.

How Can a College Kid Make Money Online?

Amber — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:08:57 +0000

The following article is from TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com:There are lots of opportunities online for you to earn some extra funds – especially in the area of freelancing. With a lot more businesses choosing to outsource, online freelancers are in an excellent position to benefit. Becoming a freelancer has great benefits for students. You get to work in a field you are passionate about, while being able to pick jobs you find interesting and exciting. If you are studying in the area you freelance in, the extra experience you gain could even result in better grades!

When it comes to freelancing, play to your strengths. Employers are looking for people with skills in three main areas – clerical, creative and information technology.

1) Clerical work often consists of typing or acting as a virtual assistant (VA) helping out with administrative tasks, research or data entry.

2) Creative work is usually writing (either articles or fiction), photography, graphic design or video editing.

3) If you are skilled in areas such as web design or programming, there is a lot of highly paid work available helping people and companies create better websites.

What you can expect to get paid per job depends on a couple of factors. Firstly, the size of the job. Being hired to fiddle with a couple of pages of html will earn you less than building a full java enabled website for a big company. A second factor is how much you want to charge. As a freelancer, you set your own wage. Of course, pricing yourself too high before you have a good reputation may make it difficult for you to get work. Thirdly, freelance sites often have a bid minimum to stop underpricing.

While more clerical freelancing opportunities occur on-site, most of the time your work environment will be where ever you choose to work from. This makes online freelancing an excellent choice for college kids who don’t want to be forever traveling out to new places of employment. For people in the information technology and creative field, all you may need is access to your home computer. If you are a college kid looking to make money online, go check out the freelancing possibilities. There’s nothing to lose, and a lot to gain.

Get a life! Get a freelance job, work at home and make loads of money. Click here to start. For more information like this, visit TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com.

How College Students Can Make Money in the Summer In 12 of the Top Home-Based Businesses

Amber — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:52:31 +0000

The following article is from TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com:How college students can make money is one of the most pressing concerns that most college students have today. Between the fees associated with tuition, books, transportation and other expenses, the financial obligations that many college students face can be overwhelming. However, one way to overcome this is to start your own home-based business to help cover the expense of going to school. There are a number of tried and true home-based businesses that college students can start on a shoe-string budget. Many of these require very little, if any, startup capital at all. Below, you can find a discussion of 12 of the most popular ways for how college students can make money over the summer so they can have the extra cash they need when they start back to school. So are you ready to find out what these business are? Ok, let’s go!

1. Private tutoring – now here’s a home-based business idea that doesn’t require much to get started. You can start a business tutoring students in just about any subject that you’re good in. You can advertise your services at places that are frequented by families such as schools, community centers, libraries, supermarkets and more. You can start first in your own neighborhood by passing out flyers to your neighborers, putting flyers on cars and under doors, etc, etc. Then, from there you can move on to your broader community to advertise your services. in the article, How English Can Be Your Ticket to A Quick Money-Making Career, we discuss how you can tutor English to the widely growing immigrant community as a way of making money. Also, the article Teenagers Earning Money in the Summer, discusses non academic areas that you can tutor children in. Both of these articles offer helpful tips for staring your own home-based business over the summer.

2. Building computers – building computers is not as hard as you might think. It basically boils down to snapping parts into place. You can offer to build custom built computers for people at a cheaper price than they would be able to buy it for in a store. If you don’t know anything about building computers, get a book and learn, or find some online tutorials that will show you how (check out this tutorial on how stuff works). Learning to build computers is something that you can learn in just a few hours. After that, you can spend your time perfecting your ability and practicing it on your own.

3. Child-care services – child care services is one of those tried and true home-based business that’s been around for as long as we can remember. The reason it’s so tried and true is because people are always looking for good people to care for their children while they are away at work. Now you can turn your love of children into one of the most popular home-based business opportunities around.

4. Catering service or personal chef – if you have a knack for cooking, why not make some money off of it by starting a catering service or personal chef business? You can start right in your own kitchen and the expense will be very low. To succeed, you can specialize in certain type of dishes such as gluten free cooking or vegetarian food. We go into much more details in the article: How To Start Your Own Highly Profitable Catering Service.

5. Gift baskets business – this is a business idea which we’ve written about several times here on TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com. The gift basket business is a popular one for good reason – low overhead and repeat sales. Just as with the catering service mentioned above, you should try to specialize in a particular area so you can set yourself apart from everyone else. Here are 50 Gift Basket Making Ideas and you can check out the article: How To Start a Gift Basket Business on a Shoestring Budget for more idea.

6. Concierge service – concierge service is not just for the very rich any more. With so little time to do things, lots of people would welcome the idea of hiring a concierge to take care of mundane tasks for them. You can benefit from this by making money by offering a personal concierge service to busy people. If you live in an apartment building, you can start there by knocking on doors or slipping flyers under people’s doors and offering your services to them. You can do things for people like pick up their laundry, shop for them, pick up and drop off stuff, run errands, etc. etc.

7. Desktop publishing – If you’ve got a knack for brochures, making flyers, newsletters, or anything of this sort, you could offer desktop publishing services to small businesses in your area.

8. Web design – If you’re good at designing web sites, you could consider making money for your skills by offering to build websites for people. This makes a perfect home-based business. You can hawk your skills at the numerous webmasters forum around the World Wide Web such as sitepoint.com or warriorsforum.com.

9. Make your own jewelry – Not only can if be very lucrative, but designing your own jewelry can be very satisfying. If you have the skills, you should definitely turn this into a home-based business idea. Be sure to wear the jewelry that you make as a way of advertising what you do.

10. Personal trainer or exercise instructor – If you are any kind of exercise enthusiast, then you may want to consider starting a home-based business as a personal trainer or exercise instructor.

11. Cleaning service – If you are good at keeping everything clean, you could start a home-based business offering cleaning services. Again, you can start in your own apartment building – if you live in one or you could start in your own neighborhood. Cleaning is something that a lot of people wish they didn’t have to do and you can capitalize on this by offering your service. Try to pick a specialty or offer different kinds of cleaning services such as carpet cleaning. Or maybe you can offer to go around to people’s homes on Sunday mornings and clean their cars.

12. Personal shopper – if you’re a talented shopper with an eye for style and fashion, consider starting a home-based business as a personal shopper you can supplement this further as a mystery shopper. We offer a list of several sites that hire mystery shoppers in this article: The In’s and Out of Becoming a Mystery Shopper.

More home-based business ideas:

How to start a catering business

Earn a huge income tinting windows

Easy photography business

Office cleaning business

Start a jewelry for $50 or less

$100 Per Hour Computer Home Business – Hot!

How to start a fitness business

How to start your own lawn care business

How to start your own secretarial and typing work from home businessFor more information like this, visit TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com.

Where to Find Free College Money

Amber — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:38:31 +0000

The following article is from TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com:Most college students can attest to the difficulty of finding a way to pay for their university education. The average college tuition today in the United States is about $30,000 a year, a price that the average college student will find staggering and difficult to face. Even with any assistance they can obtain from their parents and college jobs, students will most likely need all the help they can get to pay for their college educations. There are many sources available for free college money that will enable students to afford their education and graduate with as little debt as possible. In utilizing these sources, be sure to research each opportunity to ensure its suitability for you.

The most reliable way for students to find help in funding their education is through college scholarships. Most universities offer free college money to students who fit their scholarship requirements, but unfortunately, these funds are often limited and extremely competitive. For students who do not meet the rigorous requirements to obtain these scholarships from the university of their choice, other options are available.

One website that lists scholarships for students is Fast-Web. This free website helps students make other important educational decisions, such as choosing a college and finding jobs and internships. Fast-Web provides detailed and personalized results in searches by requiring users to fill out a questionnaire. By using websites such as these that list scholarship opportunities that are lesser-known to the average person, students can optimize their chances of finding free college money.

Scholarship Xperts is a free website to find free college money (US residents only). They offer a fast, easy & free scholarship search service. Additionally, they offer a time-saving service and customized information that students, parents and educators want with a name they can trust. Best of all, Scholarship Xperts is a member of the Better Business Bureau and has been endorsed by Sallie Mae, Kaplan, and Yahoo! Education. Their free search service has been voted “Best of the Web” by Forbes.com since 2003. In order to search for free college money, you must complete their online questionnaire which they use to find free scholarship money to suit each individual student. No purchase is necessary but to do a seach, you must complete their scholarship questionaire.

Grant Research provides the most comprehensive database for federal and private grants on the Internet. This information is invaluable for any person or institution who would like to take advantage of the billions of dollars given away by the government each year. When you sign up to their website you also receives a free 14 day trial enrollment in their free college money Online Help Center. This includes 24 Hour Email Access to Grant Specialists, Funding Instruction Courses, Recently Updated Grants and access to their Grant Writing Specialists. Grant Research was recently featured on ABC news and MSNBC News.

Another great source of free college money is through filling out a FAFSA form at fafsa.ed.gov to receive a Federal Pell Grant. Depending on your income, you may be eligible to receive a government grant to assist in paying for college expenses including tuition, rent, and food. Additionally, students in certain majors may be eligible to receive a National Science & Math Access to Retain Talent, or SMART, Grant which can provide up to $4,000 in students’ junior and senior years of college. Students can receive a SMART Grant by becoming a recipient of a Pell Grant and fitting other requirements. These governmental education programs can be a great source of free college money to students who are eligible to receive funds.

Fedmoney.org is a helpful online guide to federal grants and loans available to students. This free website enables students to browse through the various programs offered by the government to assist college students and decide which grants and loans might be right for them.

College-scholarships.com is another source for finding scholarships online. In addition to scholarship information, this website has compiled a list of useful college information, including addresses and telephone numbers of various universities’ admissions offices and email addresses and telephone numbers for scholarships, and links to universities’ online applications. These tools will prove useful for students interested in learning more about colleges, applying online, getting directly in touch with people in charge of admissions, and locating sources of free college money on the internet.

The key thing to remember when searching for free college money at these and other websites, is you should be prepared to be patient with the process. For example, you should be ready to go through the step of filling out their questionaires in order to access their scholarship database. Many scholarship matching services will require you to fill out a questionaire before they will allow you access to their information. In most cases, they use this information to match up the information you entered with what may be a suitable grant or sholarship for you. If you don’t have the time and patience to deal with this, then this may not be the avenue for you to obtain free college money. However, if you can be patient with the process, then the rewards can eventually pay off.
For more information like this, visit TeenMoneyMakingIdeas.Com.