College Archives - Making Sense Of Cents

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

Last Updated: July 22, 2020 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: December 6, 2019 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 12, 2019 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: August 12, 2019 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 39 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…]

How To Determine What College To Apply To

Last Updated: August 12, 2019 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.

Making Sense of Cents and College Ave Student Loans have partnered on a series of blog posts on what to expect when it comes to planning for college…especially when it comes to time to pay. Through the series, we hope families gain a little more insight on how to tackle the next four or more years ahead with a stronger financial footing. All opinions are 100% my own. To learn more, please visit: https://www.collegeavestudentloans.com.

There are over 1,000 colleges in the United States alone.

The list of college majors is long as well.

When deciding what college to apply to, it can be a tough decision.

You shouldn’t just choose whatever college your friend applies to, or the college that the majority of your school is going to.

All colleges are different, and all people are different too. People may be on different career paths, they may have different needs for a college, and so on.

This can make choosing what college to apply and attend a difficult one. [Read more…]

Get A College Degree In 12 Months And For Under $10,000

Last Updated: October 24, 2017 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.

The following content is sponsored by Capella University. All opinions are 100% my own.

As most of you know, I have three college degrees – two undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and Management, as well as my Finance MBA.

One thing I pride myself on is that I was able to graduate early, but I did still accrue a decent amount of debt.

Most colleges don’t make it easy to graduate early or to create a good schedule. I had to work hard towards that and I don’t know of many other people who have been able to do the same.

Recently, I heard about FlexPath from Capella University, which can greatly help a person achieve a faster graduation time.

If you are looking for a college degree, but think that you can’t fit it into your schedule or in the price point that you are wanting, then FlexPath is definitely something that you may want to look further into. [Read more…]

Cutting College Costs: Understanding The Cost And Value Of Your Degree

Last Updated: August 12, 2019 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 49 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.

There’s a myth that expensive colleges are always better than the cheaper ones. As if higher college costs means that you’ll automatically get a great job, you’ll have an extremely high salary, and more.

Well, that’s not always true.

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal:

From the academics [who have studied whether students from elite institutions outperform their peers or not] we know that in terms of future earnings, 1) your choice of field matters more than your choice of college, 2) after controlling for ability, the earnings differences of graduates from elite and non-elite institutions are small at best, and 3) any earnings advantage that may emerge over the long run is difficult to concretely tie back to the effects of one’s college choice.

According to Forbes, tuition for an in-state public college averages around $28,000. Private college tuition was double that amount at an average of $59,000.

For a four year elite university, the cost jumps to $68,000. [Read more…]

About Mr Fundamental

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