Naveronski said:

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Making $20k for tuition and fees + rent, bills, insurance, gas, etc.

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This.

You are looking in the $40k+ range when you start adding everything up these days. Holy hell college is expensive.

Save early. Save often. 529s are incredibly flexible for this exact reason. Plan it out over 18 years

I think start as soon as the kid is born.

if you sock away $250 per month from the day the kid is born = $108K for college at 7%.

harge57 said:

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Have a family friend that is starting next fall. He is going to be doing his best to work his way through college. Certainly no easy task.

Not really expecting any specific job opportunities however I am certainly open to passing them along.

What kind of jobs can a kid look into these days where they can make a decent wage and get enough hours in with a college schedule.

I was a salesman at sears autocenter and made right around $20 an hour after commission in 2006, which actually covered my costs pretty well. Tuition was 3500 a semester and rent was $300 a month in a house with 6 guys.

Just looking for ideas.

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Generally its tough to work your way through college and end the year with a balanced budget. Usually you need summer internships/jobs to pad the account, then a job on campus to reduce the draw rate. Usually by may its time to get a summer job again.

The only college kids I knew that were living comfortably through their own means were those who got oil and gas operator internships over the summer.

Between A&M costing more and operators not having as good as time as they used to, I'd say even that group is going to be leaner.

Sidenote that is antithetical to this thread, go work a summer camp after your freshman year. You'll never get much opportunity to do it after college and generally you aren't far enough along in your schooling to be useful for a real internship that pays well.

Chipotle has great tuition assistance benefits. They do $5k per calendar year and,in some cases, more.

Still one of the better options out there IMO. I wouldn't be an Aggie without it. Just maybe, not be infantry though...



Seriously though. I am a dum dum that decided being an engineer was the thing to do. There is no way I could have worked a job and succeeded in school. Aside from a highly specialized tech job in the summers which gave me my do whatever money throughout the academic year. The amount of time I had to devote to my schoolwork was basically two fulltime jobs with a side gig in terms of time. I had MANY stressors in college. Finances were not one of them. Thank you Uncle Sam.

I had forgotten about tuition assistance. Starbucks and Taco Bell also do it. Not sure of amounts but still pretty awesome.

I get not wanting to graduate with debt. But working yourself ragged in college & taking a full course load at the expense of the FUN parts of college, only to graduate and work yourself ragged until the day you die.

There's value in maybe racking up just a bit of debt along the way, if it means actually ENJOYING your college experience. Adulthood comes fast. Why rush through college????

Not everyone has a wonderful time in college. It was a letdown in a lot of ways for me and a lot of other people.

This is very true but also a double edged sword. I was a soldier from 18-22 years old and then left active duty in 2006. I was a young E-5 and had served over a year in Iraq with most of my enlistment being overseas. I started college in the spring of '07 and it was a rude awakening. A lot of people seemed to wonder how such a weird individual was able to become a combat tank soldier and go to war at 18, and they gave me even less respect. I didn't realize at the time how rough those years were for me.

Yes.

Start at Jr College and take two years worth of courses at the lowest cost place to get the credit hours. If you can live with parents at home, you just knocked out half of the cost of college cheaply.

We pay about $6k/semester for a full load of just tuition and fees at A&M. $1k/month. We also budget $1,000/month for rent/food/etc., but this could be done for less, but not a lot less. You have to eat. Daughter lives in a nice aprtment, but some are less money. I knew girls that had 4 people in a 2 bedroom to go cheap. You could go cheaper still by renting a trailer.

If I were paying completely on my own dime, the 2nd two years would likely turn into 3 years to give me a couple of semesters off to get ahead financially.

If you are willing to work more than one job, it can be done, but it's very challenging.

wts2014 said:

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Bus Driver is the best job on campus if he is confident enough to do that. Looks like they are starting at $14 an hour now, and it's regular raises (50 cents after training then a fairly regular quarter based on hours worked). Flexible with class schedules and usually let you work as much as you want (within rest / hours guidelines). Gonna be best bet at it, but still no easy task.

Sidenote, can't believe I started at $8 something for that job in 2012..

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You started at $8/hr in 2012? Get ready, because when I was hired on in '02, I started at $8/hr with a raise every semester. IIRC, I was making $9.25/hr when I graduated. Not sure how it is today, but when I drove, it was the best job on campus and had a lot of people apply for a few spots each semester. This was also back when dispatch was off of Agronomy and chances that your Friday morning driver to your 8am class was out at Alfred T. Hornback's until closing were pretty high.

Hopefully it's still the same as it was then when it comes to scheduling, because we chose our schedule based on seniority) at the beginning of each semester that we held the entire semester, so we could easily work around our school schedule. Dropping routes wasn't too difficult if you had to take a shift off as there were always people looking to pick up extra shifts, and if you were one that had some free time and wanted to drive, someone always wanted to drop a shift or there was a charter looking for drivers.

If I knew of someone going to A&M in the fall that is going to have to work, this would be the job I would urge them to look into. To this day, it is the best job I have ever had and quite a few stories I could tell from shenanigans I saw while driving or from passengers.

Quote:

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if you look at the COA for living on/off campus, you're looking at about $14-15K/semester. That shows lots of built=in costs that shows the real cost of going off to school.

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I remember back when I was a student The Batt did a piece on a guy that chose to not live in a dorm or an apartment for the year due to costs. IIRC, he bought a basic meal plan and rented a locker at the rec for his "closet," and would take care of all of his hygiene stuff there and would do his laundry at the dorms where friends lived. As for sleeping, he'd sleep around different study areas on campus and always had a book with him incase he was questioned so he could just say he fell asleep studying.

Ben Bitner on the football team basically did the same thing.

Several of the ag research labs have pinned their wages for student workers to whatever the bus drivers make.

Some of the labs are paying a couple dollars an hour more if they're asking for specific skills that in turn make that lab some money.

Granted, a couple of them are still at $10/hr so it's a mixed bag.

It's not too hard to find opportunities for $15 an hour around town if you're willing to look, and don't mind physical work outdoors.

However, I don't know that it would be enough to actually pay your way through college unless you're only in class part time. You may be able to do classes online and knock all of your assignment out at night while you're working all day.

My daughter will have paid her own way through school when she graduates from BYU next fall with a degree in accounting. We picked up her living expenses, but she paid books and tuition. She worked every summer during high school pet sitting and babysitting. Her high SAT also lander her a scholarship (small one) plus applied for a multitude of other scholarships - some she got and some she didn't.

Point is, she made enough by keeping herself busy and working on campus during her college to pay her own way. She also got a really good internship that paid her between 40-50 dollars an hour which replenished her funds. Her internship also extended her and gave her a full-time job offer when she graduates next May.

This idea that parents are on the hook for all of a kid's school is crazy to me. In our case, she was able to pay her own way.

A $40-50 per hour internship is definitely a great opportunity.

I was paying $750/month for her food and rent. After four years, that comes out to $30,000 or so. It's a very manageable debt load if she truly paid for everything, to your point. My point is, yes, a job will help. She'll graduate with a full time job with no debt because she picked up scholarship, books and tuition. Had I not picked up food and rent, okay, she would have graduated anyway with a starting salary of $70,000 and $30,000 in debt. Still very manageable.