Hey Biz Kids! Amanda here, with a tip that could save you a lot of money during college! I am very fortunate that my wonderful parents pay for my college tuition, but I carry the responsibility of rent, bills, food, extra activities, and of course…textbooks! The first three expenses I mentioned are inevitable to get around. I must have a place to live and I can’t exactly negotiate a rent price with my landlord. I have to have heat, electricity, and plumbing at my home, and of course…I have to eat! (Of course I usually eat at home or pack a lunch to bring to school so I don’t have to pay $10 for a sandwich!)
For the first two years of college, I constantly dreaded buying the $50-$150 textbooks they require you to purchase from the campus bookstore. The first way to save a LITTLE bit of money is to try to buy your textbook USED instead of NEW. You can score this deal if you get there before the rest of the students with the same idea, saving you maybe $20. Now, in my fourth year of college, I am smart enough to know I can save HUNDREDS of dollars on textbooks by buying the books online. You can often find textbooks used for half the price! Some websites may offer you a great deal to rent the textbook for a quarter or a semester and simply send it back to them by their given return date.
The best deal I found while in college was last year when I was taking a “Geology 101” class. I am a theatre and education major and knew that spending $75 on an “Introduction to Geology of the World 10th edition” was not something I wanted to spend my paycheck on. I researched online and found a seller charging (yes this is true!!) $4 for “Introduction to Geology of the World 9th edition!” I ordered the book right away! The next day in class, I approached my teacher and asked if I would fall behind with a 9th edition of the book versus a 10th edition and he told me the reading was simply laid out in a more understandable and entertaining manner in the new edition, but that the content was the same. Score!