Review: Reduce the cost of College
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 11, 2012
The cost of a college education continues to rise and in most parts of the country it is rising faster than the increase in the consumer price index or the rate of inflation.  As a student there is not a lot you can about the tuition and fees charged by the college.  But you do have a lot of control over the other expenses you will incur while getting your education.The cost of housing, food, clothing, textbooks, supplies and incidental expenses can be quite significant.  Any thing you can do to reduce these cost will pay huge dividends.  The purpose of this book is to give you plenty of ideas, suggestions and resources which will help you save on the cost of your education.While a lot of the suggestions in this book seem like common sense, if you have never had to fend for yourself, you will probably find that you may have never considered them before.  The benefit of most suggestions in the book is that they are evergreen.  That is if the suggestions are implemented they will continue to save you money each and every week.Of course some of the suggestions, such as buying your textbook used and then selling them at the end of each semester only work twice a year.  But the savings from this one suggestion will pay for the book many times over.In addition to all the suggestions there are numerous links to additional resources - such a sources for buying and selling used textbooks, finding grocery and other coupons and finding free or low cost digital books.There is one suggestion which could save you very significant amounts of money - that you consider attending a community college for the first two years and then transferring to a four year college/university.  You could literally save thousands of dollars by implementing this idea.The book is full of suggestions on how to save on food, housing, clothing, textbooks, supplies and incidentals.  There is also lots of helpful advice on sharing resources with roommates, how to develop frugal habits which will benefit you the rest of our life and how to protect your possessions while at college.You may think that you already know all this information.  But the value is not in knowing, it is in doing.  I would suggest that you read this book a couple of time and then revisit it once a month to make sure the ideas and tips remain fresh in your mind.Follow the advise in this book.  Just following one suggestion will more than pay for the cost.  Implementing a number of the suggestions will significantly reduce the overall cost of your education.I was provided a review copy of this book.