Extra Sources of Cash to Get You Through College

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If you’re like most students, finances can get pretty tight. You don’t have to feel like you have to choose between having a lot of money and going to college. While it’s difficult to work full time and still carry on a full courseload, there are little sources of cash to get you through college, especially if you’re willing to get creative.

Remember that in college, everyone is stressed out and trying to get things done as fast as possible. If you really have the time to stretch your mind and do something for someone else, you will find that you can pick up a lot of extra money this way. For example, you could help seniors during exam week handle the rest of their daily lives. Running errands for people can get you extra money with ease.

There are also the classics, like selling plasma at a center. This is something that can put extra money in your pocket, though it’s not for everyone. The firs visit to a plasma center is pretty lengthy; as they have to make sure that you’re actually a candidate to give plasma.

You can also do chores, like raking leaves and cleaning up the community living centers. Of course, if your campus has a work study program, you can also be part of that. It’s really a matter of looking into all of your options, and then choosing the ones that fit well into your schedule. It goes without saying that you want to make sure that you still put school first before anything else. It’s easy to feel like you should just give up before you’ve even gotten things started, but you can still churn out more ideas.

For example, you can offer your skills as a writer, or even as a tutor. Be careful that you actually set up a disclosure that states your essays are not to be used verbatim, but as a study tool. Will that stop everyone? No, but it covers you in case a professor accuses you of academic dishonesty for making essays for other people. It’s actually a legal practice, but you will need to be careful at all times.

If you’re still not sure what you can do on campus to earn money, you can seek out your upperclassmen. Seniors always seem to know how to make extra money, because they’ve gone through so many years of college as it stands. Since people are busier than ever before, it’s important to make sure that you catch them at a good time and that you don’t waste their time. In addition, you might want to be provide a little value to them as well — what is it that you do that you could use to help other people in a big way? Try that, and you should no problems in this department at all.

Overall, it’s important not to get discouraged when it comes time to find extra money to get things done in college. If you follow some of the advice in this guide, there’s really no limit to what you can achieve!

5 Common Credit Card Mistakes with Students

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This was a guest post that was provided to us by Tom T. He runs and operates FindCollegeCards, a student credit cards site allowing students to compare credit cards designed for those with no credit.

Credit cards are all over the place, and if you’re in college, there’s a good chance that you’re going to have one in your wallet. Now, before you set out and use it for the first time, or maybe the 100th time, there are some things that you should know before you find yourself in a pile of massive debt. Hopefully, if you follow these tips and avoid these common mistakes, you will be able to avoid debt.

Treat it like cash – Always treat your card like cash. Picture it like cash. By doing so, you will have a different mindset.

Pay in full – Always make sure that you pay in full. By doing so, you’re going to be able to avoid interest rates, and more. This is going to save you tons of money each year.

Budget – By budgeting, you’re going to know what’s on your statement. If you can, log into your account here and there online to see how much your card actually has.

Get rewards – If you’re going to have a card, make sure that you get rewards. That way, you’re going to get rewarded for the spending that you have already done with your money.

Don’t let anyone borrow it – Never give it to friends or family. You don’t know what they are going to do with.

Only buy what you need – Don’t throw beer on the card, etc. You will want to use it for emergencies. Try to use your debit card to help manage your money better.

Mistakes like these are rather easy to avoid. What you will find is that if you avoid these mistakes, you will be able to avoid that D word that we call debt.

A Return to Being Strategic in College

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As you begin learning how to take control of your college education, you might notice a few themes are starting to rise to the surface. The first theme that you will need to pay attention to is the theme of strategy. Indeed, you will need to be strategic in college, now more than ever. It’s easy to think that you really don’t have the power on your side in college, since everyone tells you that you have to be able to go along to get along if you want to get where you want to go. However, is that really the case?

Think about it — colleges are a business, and that business can’t go anywhere profitable without your help. You can dance around the issue all you like, but at the end of the day, colleges serve students. It’s time that they learn that in a big way, and you can help the process by being more strategic.

College is really set up as a winner-take-all system where the strongest grades survive. So why not set it up to your favor by making sure that you get the best start on your college career?

You will need to stop and do some due diligence about your college professors. For example, do you really want to take the professor that seems to delight in failing students? No. By the same token, do you really want to take all easy classes of professors that are known to be a little soft? While it sounds good in theory, you have to think about how your academic record will be perceived by people that are reading it — like future employers. If you don’t package yourself in the best light possible, you could end up really missing out on some great career opportunities.

When you’re trying to be strategic, you really can’t overlook how important a college major is. You want to go where the scholarships are, and that’s something that’s hard for students to hear. When we’re in high school, we get told that you should do what you’re passionate about, and the money will follow. However, reality doesn’t really work that way at all. You will need to go where the money is, and then explore your passion when you’re at a point in your life that you can afford it. This is completely against the advice that other career sites will advocate, but that’s neither here nor there.

Yet, where do you pull the best salary data from? You don’t want to go to the career counselor on campus, because those numbers are skewed. Think about it — if you didn’t get a great starting salary, would you really want to report it to your college recruiter? Definitely not. You have to think about these things if you’re truly trying to be strategic. By the same token, if a career pays really well, someone might not want to disclose it in fear that everyone will rush in and dilute the salary pool further.

The best thing that you can do is your own homework. Talk to actual people that do the profession that you ultimately want to join. Ask tough questions and get good answers. If you take this tactic, there’s really no limit to what you can achieve in college!

The Importance of Realistic Goals in College

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If you’re serious about going to school, chances are good that you will need to stop and develop the right strategy in order to get in. The last thing that you will want to do is end up going off to college without a single idea of how to success. Let’s face it — college these days isn’t getting any cheaper, which means that it’s even more important to make sure that you actually have the right goals in mind.

What do we mean by “the right goals”? Well, in a nutshell, it’s not just enough to set goals. Yu have to make sure that you set realistic and reasonable goals about college. Far too often students walk into college with a lot of ideas about what they’re actually going to achieve in school, only to find that they really don’t have a lot of ability to get there in the time they want to arrive at their goals. Simply put, if you make goals that are downright impossible to achieve, you will never be able to actually say that you finished college.

Thankfully, there’s another way to go about this than to feel bad that you’re not making the goals that you ultimately want to achieve. The first thing that you will need to think about is trying to get your thoughts down on paper. You should figure out what purpose you actually have for attending school in the first place, giving you the best chances to succeed in the first place. After all, if you don’t know why you’re in school, it can be pretty difficult to make sure that you finish.

From there, you will want to make sure that you connect with people that can actually help you achieve the purpose that you have for attending school. These can include your dorm hall residents and roommates, or it can even go all the way up to your professors. When it comes to your professors, presenting a real plan to get where you want to be is a lot better than sitting down and stammering your way through a 30 minute conversation about your goals. Don’t worry — they will definitely help you, but they need a starting point in order to help you. In other words, you want to make sure that your goals are clear to other people.

For example, it’s not enough just to “get good grades” in college. That’s something that would have been okay in high school, but college is just a different ball game. You don’t want to end up just going through the motions when you could actually be doing so much more. The difference between “get good grades” and “maintain a 3.25 GPA by the end of the semester, achieved by attending tutoring sessions 3 times a week” is that the latter goal is very specific. It not only sets out what you want, but it also points out what you will need to do in order to get where you want to be.

It cannot be stressed enough: setting realistic goals is very important. You will need to make sure that you’re actually keeping a proper schedule and setting the right goals. From there, everything else is possible!

Pursue a Master's Degree

Is It Time to Pursue a Master’s Degree?

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If you’re like most people, education is definitely something important to you. We’ve been raised to understand that the only way to get ahead in life is to get an education. Even though there are other paths, the traditional route is to rise higher and higher in terms of degrees. Getting your undergraduate degree used to be enough. However, advances in technology and applied theory have gotten to the point where in some fields; you really do need a master’s degree in order to stand out. You really do need a master’s degree in order to really make sure that you’re going to get noticed by employers. You really do need a master’s degree in order to not only get noticed, but also to be able to claim management positions in an organization. Even though the master’s degree program is usually shorter than the undergraduate, it’s a program that’s pretty fierce.

So today, you need to really make sure that it’s time in your life to pursue a master’s degree. We phrase it like this because mental readiness is definitely something that you will need to be aware of. A lot of people just go to grad school thinking that it’s going to be a breeze, but this is not the case. You’re going to really need to make sure that you’re focusing on your schooling no matter what. You don’t’ want to find yourself being unable to get the professional goals that you want to achieve simply because you’re not thinking about all of the factors that are involved in your journey.

First and foremost, you will need to think about how you’re going to pay for the degree program. If you’re lucky enough to work at a large corporation, you might have some tuition reimbursement options that you haven’t looked into. Yes, it sucks to pay for things up front but knowing that your company will pay you back for the money that you spend is a good thing. If your company does indeed offer such a program, you will also need to make sure that you keep good records. You will also need to ensure that you have it in your budget to pay for everything up front — it can really strain your family’s budget to pay for a master’s degree. So if you can avoid paying for it up front, that’s definitely a good idea.

Some people take out private school loans, which can be a blessing or a curse. If you’re going to go down this route, you really need to make sure that you can indeed afford it. You don’t’ want to find yourself being unable to take care of anything because you are so stressed from paying for everything!

That leads us to our last point — you want to make sure that you have the room in your schedule. It’s easy to look at the free spots in your schedule and think that you have plenty of time, but what if you’re mistaken? What if you find that you would like to start up a new hobby or hang out with friends during those times? Everything in your life is going to have to take a backseat for at least 2-3 years while you pursue your graduate degree. If you’ve already started a family, you have to make sure that you’ve actually cleared this with everyone in the family or there will be hurt feelings. You want to make sure that everyone knows exactly why you’re doing this — to make everyone’s life better. It can still be hard when the family is used to having you around, but it’s definitely worth it in the long run, when you think about. Having the master’s degree can definitely open a lot of doors that wouldn’t be open otherwise.

Don’t forget that you might run into some criticism. The idea of going to school online instead of a traditional classroom can make people think that you’re not getting as good of an education as you should be. However, if you really think about it, the reality is that you’re getting an equivalent vacation. The online powerhouse schools are actually accredited, which means that your online degree is just as valid as anyone else’s degree — even if they got it at a traditional university.

Overall, what do you think about your decision to get a master’s degree? If you’re not comfortable with it or you have doubts, this might not be the right time to get a degree online — and that’s perfectly okay. However, if you’re ready to plunge in head first into the world of online education, now is the right time to get started!

An online MBA program offers all the benefits of a Masters of Business, but with the convenience of handling course work from home.

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