Tech Tips for Managing Your Money as a College Student
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Managing finances has been the struggle of every college student since universities began. The impoverished student is a popular figure in the imagination, but you have an advantage that all those broke students before you didn’t have.
It’s never been as easy to manage your money as it is now, with an overwhelming number of tech tools literally at your fingertips. Different tools and approaches work for different people, but the overview below will give you an idea of where to start looking.
Paying for Your Degree
Figuring out how to pay for your degree used to be a much more tedious and time-consuming process. For federal loans, you had to fill out a long document on paper. For private loans, you had to work with a bank or another brick-and-mortar lender. For scholarships, a big book was revised each year to list many of them, or you might get lucky and hear about one.
These days, everything is online, and it’s so much easier. You can use tools to help you identify scholarships you’re eligible for. You can apply for private loans and get an answer about your eligibility in a matter of minutes. Researching these methods for funding your degree is simpler and more streamlined than it’s ever been.
SEE ALSO: Must-Have Gadgets for College-Bound Students
Spending and Budgeting
There are many unconventional ways to save money but sticking to a budget and staying on top of your spending will pretty much guarantee you hit your goals even though isn’t easy for anyone. It can be especially challenging if you’re a college student since it’s probably your first time trying to manage your money on your own.
This is where apps can be really useful. You can use an app to track and categorize all of your spendings to give you a picture of where your money is going. Apps can also help you make a budget based on that information. Some will even send you notifications when you are getting near your limit in a certain category to make sure that you stay under budget.
Automatic Savings
What you’ll probably find when you start tracking your spending is how quickly little expenditures add up. That coffee, candy bar, or parking fee may have only been a few dollars but pay for it a few times a week and you could be looking at upwards of spending hundreds of dollars a year on something that you could really take or leave if you knew its true cost.
The good news is that it can be as easy to save as it is to spend, and once again, apps can help you out. There are several that will round up every transaction and put the money in savings or invest it for you.
Buying and Selling
Look for price comparison calculators and apps that help you locate the cheapest price for items that you need, including secondhand items. In addition, rather than letting possessions you no longer want or need gather dust in the back of your closet, consider selling them. There are apps that make it easy for you to scan and sell various belongings, from books to clothes to cookware and much more.
