Sunday, January 5, 2014

Getting The Most From Your Associate Degree

By Hedrick Lepsch


Everyone knows the college clichs. You are almost expected to gain weight when you first start and to be living off of ramen noodles because you are so poor from paying your way through school. However, it does not have to be this way. They may be clichs, but there are "smart poor college students" that know the tricks of the trade and how to avoid eating the same noodles for every meal.

"It's nine o'clock on a Friday morning and it's freezing outside. Why are you here? Shouldn't you be at home in bed with some hot chocolate or something?" The class laughed. Then he announced there would be a pop quiz. The students began to wonder why they came in that morning.

To begin, you must know just how much money you have available to spend. In order to avoid spending your limited money frivolously you must make a budget to see how much money you spend every day, week, and month. Distribute the money to yourself evenly and do not let yourself go over budget. It can be tempting to choose to eat out all the time but save your money for something more important, or choose to eat out somewhere cheap that offers a student discount.

Pay Your Bills

If you have included your bills in your budget you will have scheduled when exactly you have to pay them. Make sure that you never miss a deadline and always pay on time. This way you can avoid having to pay any unnecessary late fees or charges. If you pay your bills online and have a tendency to forget, leave yourself notes around your house and reminders on your phone. You can set them so that an alarm goes off to remind you at the same time and day every month or week.

Protect your Identity

Unnecessary amounts of money are lost or spent when people are careless with their belongings. A lot of damage can be done with a credit card, identification card, or social security card in not a lot of time when it's stolen. Sometimes even if you are careful about your belongings you can fall victim to credit card scams. Do not purchase anything online that does not look credible. Search the name of the website you are planning to purchase from through a search engine to see if it has a lot of online traffic. If it doesn't, chances are it's a credit card scam.

Find your system. With the amounts of information you will have to keep track of, making a system of abbreviations, colors or symbols to help you keep track of information can be very helpful. Don't waste time writing down long scientific words when you can abbreviate. However! Make sure that you write down some sort of key to refer to. You may think that you will understand what you wrote later on, but chances are you won't. Make sure that three weeks down the road you still understand your notes.

Selling things online can be dangerous as well. If someone offers to pay you upon delivery or through a check, do not fall for it. These are common scams that usually end up with the check bouncing leaving you with nothing else to do. Use safer systems such as PayPal to ensure a transfer of funds that both you and your customer can both trust to go through.

If you want to be considered a smart college student while pursuing your graphic arts degree or web design and development degree follow these steps. You will not only be able to save money but you will be able to apply valuable budgeting skills that will allow you to use your money more wisely in the future as well.




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