College Archives - Making Sense Of Cents

How To Work And Go To College: 10 Tips That Will Help You Succeed

Last Updated: July 18, 2022 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 2 Comments

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Do you want to learn how to work and go to college at the same time?

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 43% of full-time undergraduate students also work at the same time, with 10% working 35 hours or more each week, 17% working 20 to 34 hours per week, 7% working 10 to 19 hours per week, and 6% working less than 10 hours per week.

I usually worked anywhere from 35 to 45 hours per week while I was in undergraduate and graduate school.

I did this from when I first started until I graduated, and I also side hustled several hours a week on top of my full-time job.

Due to that, I really understand what it’s like balancing it all. I had to learn how to work full time and go to school full time.

It wasn’t easy, but it is possible.

If you’re reading this article, I imagine you are thinking about going back to school. Or you’re about to start college and want to work a full-time job while you’re in school. Either way, you’re here wondering how to balance full-time work and study. [Read more…]

How I Paid Off My $40,000 Student Loan Debt In Less Than One Year

Last Updated: July 18, 2022 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 1 Comment

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Are you interested in learning how to pay off student loans? Are you looking for the best way to pay off student loans?

Today, I want to talk about how I paid off my student loans, tips to pay off student loans, and answer many of your top questions about how student loans work.

I graduated college with $40,000 student loan debt, and I paid off my student loans in just 7 months. It’s been several years since I paid them off, but I still receive so many questions about this topic.

There are approximately 45 million student loan borrowers in the U.S. with a total of $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. Yes, that’s trillion.

With so much student loan debt, it’s not surprising that I receive so many questions about how to pay off student loans. Student loans can stay with you for years, and they can affect almost every financial decision you make until they are paid off.

Student loans can prevent you from saving for retirement, make it harder to pay off other types of debt, find the job of your dreams, and so on. [Read more…]

16 Best Online Jobs For College Students & How To Start

Last Updated: February 13, 2023 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 3 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

How can college students make money online? This list of the best online jobs for college students will show you how.

More and more people are attending college and working at the same time. This may be those who are going straight from high school to college, adults going back to college, those working towards more degrees, and so on.

I had to work throughout high school and throughout college, and I will admit that it was tough at times.

While almost all of it was in-person, hourly jobs, I would have loved to find something online instead! It would have made it much easier to balance work and school if I had a flexible, online job like I do now.

I didn’t find out about blogging until towards the end of my time at college, and I wish I would have learned about working online sooner as it would have helped me greatly. [Read more…]

How Do Student Loans Work? What You Need To Know About Borrowing Money For School

Last Updated: March 18, 2022 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 2 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Have you ever wondered how do student loans work?

Maybe you’re thinking about going to school and taking out a student loan, perhaps you are a parent trying to help your child find the best options, or perhaps you are about to start paying down your student loan debt.

Whatever your case may be, I am hoping today’s article will help you learn more about how student loans work, so that you can be prepared for your future.

There are just so many different components to student loans, and it can make it very confusing to understand how student loans work.

There are federal vs. private loans, you can pay them back in a variety of ways, and more.

Student loans are a big part of many people’s lives.

The average amount of student loan debt per borrower is $35,359 and 44.7 million people in the U.S. have student loan debt. [Read more…]

How we’ve saved $130,000 for our children’s education fund in 9 years

Last Updated: May 4, 2022 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 4 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Do you have children? Do you think you might have children someday? If the answer is yes, then you may be wondering about college costs. Here’s an article from a reader who has saved $130,000 for their children’s education fund in 9 years. Enjoy!

College education keeps getting more and more expensive. Many (not all) higher paying jobs require a post-secondary education of some sort.

Saving money for your kids will give them a great head start in life. It will also reduce the burden on you when it comes time to help them out!

Today, I am going to tell you how we’ve saved $130k for our children’s education fund in 9 years.

Related content:

About Mr Fundamental

I am 39 years old and a computer engineer. My wife, Mrs Fundamental, and I live in Canada with our three lovely children.

We have a 9 year-old daughter, and 7 year-old boy/girl twins. My wife is an amazing stay-at-home mom. As a result, this has saved us huge amounts in day-care expenses over the years. [Read more…]

12 Strategies I Used To Avoid Getting Buried in Student Loan Debt

Last Updated: August 16, 2022 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 7 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Today, I have a great guest post from Matt from Method To Your Money. Here are the strategies he used to graduate (nearly) debt-free from college.

If you’re getting ready to attend college, or if you’ve got kids who are preparing to go off to school, student loans can sometimes feel like a forgone conclusion.

In fact, over 70% of graduates leave school with significant student loan debt. That’s 44 million people who owe $1.5 TRILLION dollars, or around $37,000 per person!!

It’s all a bit INSANE!!

But what if I told you that I have found a way to avoid being one of those indebted graduates, a series of strategies to avoid the anchor of student loans and to start your career off on the right foot? A method that I’m already starting to instill in my children so that when they go to college, they’ll be fully prepared to CRUSH it both in the classroom and with their bank accounts.

My family was firmly entrenched in the middle class. My dad is a pastor and my is mom a nurse. Growing up, money was not a limitless resource and my parents always made decisions with finances in mind. [Read more…]

Parents Paying For College – Is This A Good Idea?

Last Updated: February 1, 2021 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 38 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Do you think parents should help pay for their children’s college education? Do you think parents should be required to pay for their children’s college education?

These are tough questions to ask and to answer, but they are very important when thinking about the ever increasing cost of higher education.

These kinds of questions are quite personal to me and relevant to my blog. A major motivation for starting Making Sense of Cents was my $40,000 student loan debt (you can read about how I paid off my student loans in just 7 months).

My student loan debt was higher than the average $30,000 per student, and surprisingly, it is often parents paying for college by taking out loans to cover kid’s education.

I’ve read countless stories of parents who have $200,000 in student loan debt for their children, and it’s these parents paying for college who have found that these debts are causing them to struggle financially, unable to reach their retirement goals, etc. These parents end up drowning in debt because they just honestly want to help their children get through college. What they don’t realize, though, is that there are other ways to help your kids graduate from college. [Read more…]