Fantastic Freebies – Make Living Affordable on your Student Budget

Author: Sally Croft

If you are attending college on a budget, things can get tight. That is why it is always good idea to be on the lookout for things that will help your money go that much further. Things you can get at no cost like;

Food
Entertainment
Academic help

Things That Are Free but You Don’t Know

Some things in school are covered with your tuition and other fees. So you need to be aware of what is available for you on your campus.

Freebies Are Budget Stretchers

Getting freebies can really stretch your budget and they can be a real advantage when trying to make ends meet on a budget. Until you graduate getting free and cheap things are one of the few benefits of going to college. Here are some of the ones I found;

Filing with FAFSA

Grants are free money that is just out there for the grabbing for those that qualify. But, you will never know unless you file with FAFSA and get it in. A good percentage of students that file qualify for grants and low interest loans, by not filing you will never know.

Fastweb Freebie = Tuneweb

The Fastweb data base of scholarships and grants are well known and registration is free. However what is not so well known is that it gives away free downloadable music when you refer friends to the website. So register and get your friends to sign up and get free tunes.

Freebie Grub

At a good many campuses if you sling the hash at the campus cafeteria you can also chow down for free and I don’t mean scraping leftover food off your classmates dirty trays. I am talking about fresh cooked meals. You can scam free food off of dirty trays if you want but you do not have to work at the cafeteria for that.

Scam and Cram off the Fortune 500

A lot of big corporations like to play the good corporate neighbor by giving free things away on university campuses this is also good marketing for them and a good way for you to scam free things while you cram. The student center is the best place to find these freebies.

Nearby Freebies

Also keep an eye out for the smaller local businesses that do the occasional free give-a-ways to students at the local campus. Local business owned by alumni may give things away to starving students especially after ‘I went there too U.” wins the big game on Saturday.

Don’t Be Stingy Share

If you have any freebies ideas or know of any free offers for university students please share by posting them in the comments. Hungry students will appreciate it

Tags: grants, Scholarship, Student Budget
Posted in Scholarship | 1 Comment »

May

How to find Low Interest Money for your College?

Author: Sally Croft

We know how exciting going off to college can be, but paying for it now that’s another story. College tuition continues to rise and what started out as excitement may turn into stress and panic. This is not the way to start off college and definitely not a way to look forward to the future.

There are thousands of college students paying much more for college than they have to, and that’s because they don’t apply for financial aid or take advantage of scholarships to defray their college expenses. Let’s look at some ways in which you can find low interest money for college and make going to college exciting once again.

Four different types of Student Loan

1. Grants and Scholarships – Grants and scholarships usually come from the federal government or the state, whereas scholarships can come from private outside sources or your college.

2. Education loans – education loans come from two places:

Government loans that have low-interest rates
Private loans, which are more expensive

3. Education tax benefits – You can save money on your income taxes by simply claiming your out-of-pocket costs for college expenses.

4. Work-study funds – Work-study helps you to work on campus and in return you get help with paying for school.

How to find money for college?

FAFSA
First you want to start by filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form (FAFSA). The information you put on this form will help to determine the amount of award you qualify for. This is usually based on your financial need. However, even if you think you may not qualify, still fill out the form.

Apply for scholarships
Scholarships are a wonderful way to help pay for college or even to help cut the cost of having to pay for college on your own. There are a variety of scholarships that you can apply for online. Started by financial aid expert Mark Kantrowicz, FinAid and FastWeb are two online sites that will match you with a scholarship and even tell you how to apply for it. All you have to do is fill out the required information.

Even though some of the scholarships are small, they are still worth applying for. The best thing to do is to apply for a variety of awards, and the smaller the award the less competitive they are and easier to obtain.

Beware of scam artists – Don’t fall for it!

There are always scammers waiting to prey on the innocent and desperate. Don’t be one of their victims. As Kantrowitz said “You should never invest more than a postage stamp to find out information on a scholarship or apply for scholarships. And if you have to pay money to get money, it’s probably a scam.”

That’s good advice to live by. Now it’s time for you to go in search of the college money that has your name on it. And during your quest should you obtain other helpful tips on how to find low interest money for college we’d love to hear them.

Tags: College Money, grants, Scholarship
Posted in Scholarship, Student Loan Articles | No Comments »

Feb

How to locate College Aid – Handy tips for stressful students!

Author: Sally Croft

Locating the best college aid option can be really stressful if you do not have enough information about the sources of college financial aid programs. In order to help you save the stress and strain in finding the right financial aid option, read below the discussion on college financial aid.

Locating College Aid

While college aid is available from various sources, in most cases the real difficult lies in qualifying for the loan. Financial aid for college studies is inevitable given the rising cost of education and increased financial dependence on outside sources. While scholarships and grants help you fund the education at zero cost, more often they not sufficient to cover the entire cost of education.
The real impact of having taken a student loan is felt only at the time of repayment. Even a bachelor’s degree taken few tens of thousands of dollars to complete, leave alone the rest. The only place where the cost of tuition is never a problem is when you choose to go to a community college, but for that you should be aware of the many different sources from where you could fund your education.
Are you good at some sport or special talent? Check out your college or community about the various scholarship programs and if you qualify for any of them, then make it a point to apply. Scholarship amounts are completely free, which means no liability. What stops you from procuring the free money?
If you can afford to find a job in the university or college you study, there can be nothing like that. In addition to all scholarship and grant amounts, the amounts received from work while studying will help you meet up those extra unplanned expenses. Make sure you have sufficient time for both work and study.
Student loan is the best source for college education. As specified earlier, free money grants are not always sufficient to meet the cost of education. So, what should you do in such cases, opt for loans. Both federal and private loans are offered to students who wish to pursue their college education.
While where a choice exists between federal and private loans, it is a sensible option to go for federal loans both in terms of cost of loans and other benefits arising out of it, like deferment and loan forgiveness.
Federal student loan funding comes from huge sources of funds earmarked for this purpose. Hence those of you, who are into serious financial over haul please submit your FAFSA application form and obtain need based grants like PELL grants and Subsidized Stafford Loans.
What about taking classes online? There are several online colleges in existence, that offer excellent online coaching for various degrees namely associate, bachelors and masters. Online education costs much lesser than regular education and is an excellent choice of online learning.