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How I Paid for College

My financial journey started out with my bank empty and my ambition full.  I was determined to go to college, start a great career, makes lots of money, and have a fulfilling life. I never hoped to be extremely wealthy, but I wanted to have enough to be able to buy nice clothes, travel, have a nice house, and of course provide well for my children.

Then my financial aid packages arrived…

“The best way to pay for college is to lower the initial price tag.”

Mrs. FireStoker

1. Understand the DANGER of the Financial Aid Office

Anyone who has ever filed for financial aid knows that government student loans do not cover all your expenses.  Your family is expected to contribute a certain percentage out of their own pockets to pay for your college education. Now I had worked really hard throughout high school and had been accepted into some amazing schools in Boston.  However, the tuition of these schools was over 40K!!  I did receive scholarships of 20K from each of these schools – but they were to be spread out over the course of four years. The scholarship sounded wonderful until you realize that it’s actually only 5K per year leaving me with a whopping 35K to pay each year!

My Financial Aid package

My financial aid package from the government included a total of 20K of mostly unsubsidized loans and some subsidized loans. This is not financial aid!  These are loans! You will have to start paying them back within six months of graduating! If you don’t know the difference between a subsidized and unsubsidized loan I will write about this another time) Even if I had taken out the loans that would have still left me with another 15K per year that my family was expected to pay out of their own pocket. They did not have this kind of money so I was given information on private loans to cover the gap.

Here’s the kicker. The financial aid officer at the school was suggesting that everyone took out these loans and that it was completely normal.  I feel bad for the enormous amount of financially uneducated young people who signed for these loans not having the slightest clue as to what that meant.

I REFUSED to take out private loans

My parents had made it clear that I was not going to get any funding for my education. So in addition to taking out 20k of unsubsidized loans I would’ve had to take on an additional 15K of private loans every year. (Why Private loans are a bad Idea is another post for another time) The idea of taking out 35K in loans every year for four year for a total of 140K of student loan debt for an undergraduate degree seemed pretty extreme.   

I don’t know about you, but I found this completely unfair.  Why do the financial decisions of my parents determine how financially healthy the loans choices available to me will be for my education.  After all it wasn’t my parents trying to go to college. It wasn’t they who wanted an education.  In the eyes of my parents I was 18 year old adult and if I wanted to go to school then I had to pay for it.  Why should they pay for MY education?  Why should I be punished for the horrible financial decisions of my parents?

The first way to pay off your student loans is by refusing to take out a loan in the first place!! 

Do NOT let the financial aid counselor tell you what is normal when it comes to YOUR finances.  Their job is to get you funding for your education whether or not it means you will be in debt for the rest of your life or not. This loan “normalcy” is what is causing many people to have the problems they have now with student debt.  People are so strapped to paying their loans that they can’t buy houses, take vacations, or start a family without going into major credit card debt.

2. I started with COMMUNITY COLLEGE

I decided that even though getting accepted to these school was an incredible accomplishment for me, I simply couldn’t afford to go to those colleges.  Reluctantly, I decided to go to a community college, but it was actually a HUGE blessing. One of the many perks of the community college is that when I graduated, I was automatically accepted into other schools the area through a direct transfer program.  This is fairly common practice and if you are considering going to a community college and transferring afterwards. I highly recommend asking about a direct transfer program. 

I didn’t realize how great the community college was until after I graduated and transferred into the state school. I found the quality of my education at the community college was superior to the state school in every way.  The classes were smaller.  The professors cared more about your education because they were less concerned about their research.  I was also surrounded by hard working individuals who also had families, jobs, and other responsibilities in addition to their education.  The professors at the community college understood that and the class schedule was also fairly flexible to accommodate the needs of these “non-traditional” students.

I LIVED at HOME

While taking classes at the community college you can live at home!  This doesn’t sound glamorous when you leave high school, but do you want to be one of those people that go back to live with their parents after graduating college because you have so much debt you can’t afford to pay your rent?!?  I didn’t think so.

3. I worked FULL TIME while in school.

I was offered a small loan at the community college, but it was negligible. The tuition was so low that if I worked full time and lived at home I could pay for the tuition out of my own pocket.  I got a job working as a residential assistant in a group home helping people with disabilities. The shifts were from 3PM-11PM and I took classes during the day.  The minimum wage at the time was $8/hour and I got $10/hour so I thought that was a great gig.  They offered me a low cost health insurance which I gladly accepted as well as plenty of opportunity for overtime.  I did all this while taking rigorous scientific courses.

When I transferred to the state school, I continued to work full time, but I was forced to work overnight shifts because the class schedule made it impossible to work any other type of day time schedule.  Also, a lot of my professors assigned group work which made it impossible to meet anyone if I was working around the class schedule during the day.  I worked four 8-10 hour overnight shifts during the week and picked up overtime on weekends whenever possible. This worked out for me to the effect that I really didn’t have time to be going out on the weekends.  Since I was too busy working and studying, I wasn’t off spending my money on beer and pizza. With the earnings from my job I was able to pay for all my textbooks, school supplies, food, rent, gas, and make my car payment.

NEVER take out loans for your living expenses!

The state school was an hour away from my home and made it IMPOSSIBLE to work, go to class, and sleep.  Room and board at the college was more expensive than it would have been to rent an entire apartment by myself. Still the rent near the school was very high due to all the colleges in the area and the number of students that needed housing.  I know a lot of people that took on additional private loans to PAY RENT!!  There was no way I was going to do this. 

I used Craigslist to find an illegal sublet bedroom rental.  A couple decided to convert the living room of a small one bedroom apartment into a second bedroom to help cover the cost of their rent. They did this using furniture and a curtain as a wall.  It’s college after all and it wasn’t like I was going to be spending too much time there. If you do find an apartment to rent near school try your best to share the cost with as many people as possible. Everyone else is in the same boat.

Know Your Options When It Comes to Textbooks

I bought most of my textbooks used or I borrowed them from the library when available. Sometimes I was able to contact the professor before classes started and ask permission to use the previous edition of the textbooks, which often cost considerably less. Still a lot of classes required the purchase of a software at full price but often had discounted digital textbook.

Skip the Campus Meal Plan

Since I lived off campus I wasn’t required to buy a meal plan, but I was offered a commuter plan that cost less and provided fewer meals. When I did the math on the off campus meal plan it came out to be around $12/meal swipe. This means that even if my lunch was only $8 I would be paying one whole swipe or $12 for the $8 meal. If a meal cost $14 that would be two meal swipes bringing the cost up to $22 for the meal. You don’t ever get your change back, but you ARE allowed to over pay.

For my meals, I bought most of my groceries and cooked at home when I had time. However, since time is more of a luxury when your in college and working full-time, I really didn’t have much time to be shopping and cooking. I figured if I ever ate on campus I should just pay out of my own pocket so I knew I was only paying for what I was buying. If I was trying to pay that much for every meal I ate I would eat at Chili’s every day. I tried my best to eat off campus. The cheapest meal on campus was around $8-$10 and I could fill my belly at taco bell for less than $5 bucks. This is the reality of the fast college diet people. There’s no time or energy left for shopping and food preparation.

4. Take the unsubsidized loans first and the subsidized ones if needed.

In some cases, you may be offered more loans than you actually need. In my situation, even after taking out both the subsidized and unsubsidized loans, I still had more to pay out of my pocket. I used my savings from the overtime I worked in the summer to pay for the gap between the amount the loans covered and what remained of my school balance.  This gap was much smaller at the state school than it would have been at a private school.

There were some students I knew who actually got a check at the end of the year since they “overpaid” with their loans. The smart thing to do would be to A. Use this money to pay back the loans they took out B. use it for the following school year. C If it is a subsidized loan you could maybe use it to buy a small used car. D Use it for a summer study abroad program. What did most students do? They used it to go on vacation and when they graduated they had to pay years of interest for their spring break vacation in Mexico.

The Financial Results…

After all this work, when I finally graduated, I still had about $30K in government backed student loan debt.  I had also taken on a car loan.  I couldn’t afford to buy a used car out of pocket so I had bought a reliable used car from a dealership.  Since I didn’t have any credit card debt, this brought my total debt up to about 38K right out of college.

It took four months for me to find and start my first “real” job post college.  If you want to find out how I paid off all my debt, while still saving for retirement, buying a house and paying for our wedding.  You can read my next post on How to Pay Down Your Debt.

Driving My Gas Budget to the Ground

My latest venture in trying to save more money is trying to cut back on my gas budget. Why attack the gas budget? Well, firstly, gas is just not environmentally friendly. It’s 2019! Climate Change is REAL!! Ok – I’m glad we got that out of the way. The real reason I want to cut down on my gas budget is because I felt it was an area I could really improve. Value #1 of the Fire Philosophies is to Spend Less. If you are already strategic about driving and only go grocery shopping when you have a long list of food items, then it probably wouldn’t be beneficial to start with your

Why I Like to Go Home for Lunch

Part of my job requires me to travel around to various places in my city. I live close enough to these locations that I often get to go home for lunch to check on my dog and eat. I love stopping by my house in the middle of the day because it seems to make work go by faster. There’s always a quick pick me up consisting of hugs and kisses from our CanineStoker waiting at the door. In addition, it doesn’t take as long to get ready in the morning since I’m not packing my lunch to take with me. Sometimes I can even do some dishes or fold some laundry in my 30 minute break. Really there are no downsides to the luxury of going home in the middle of the day for a few minutes.

What going home for lunch means for gas mileage

Since my job requires driving around to various locations, I do get reimbursed for my mileage. I do not get to count my miles leaving the work sites to go home, eat lunch, and go back to work. This means I’m basically driving to work twice every day. I started doing this when we got our dog and I’ve noticed the length of time I go between fill ups at the gas station go down drastically.

Our Gas Budget

We have a very strict gas budget. This includes extra road trips we might take to go somewhere exciting like the beach or a campground that might be an hour or more away. I get $100/month for gas while Mr. FireStoker gets $120/month for gas. We live in a central location and work in different cities. He has a much longer commute than I do, but he’s also not driving around a city all day.

I started to think of different ways I could cut back on the amount I drive to start saving up extra gas money for our road trips. At first it seemed as if I only drove when necessary. But after some soul searching I realized there really was more I could do to cut back. In January I started to bring my lunch with me as much as possible to avoid driving home to pick it up. At first I was sad. I really did enjoy my mid-day hugs and kisses from CanineStoker. Yet I soon found other ways to decompress on my lunch. By the end of the month, I had plenty of extra gas money to bring us on our frugal weekend trip to Boston. I’m going to continue this trend to save as much as possible. Who knows? I may even have to lower my gas budget in the future.

Can You be a One Car Family?

Now if you really want to cut back on your transportation expenses, you can forgo driving altogether. I have a friend who bikes to work and absolutely loves it! That’s one less insurance payment, no registration fees, no maintenance, tires, cleaning, ect. Unfortunately I use large amounts of equipment at work and I’m required to have a vehicle. As for Mr. FireStoker, his commute is so long that biking to work is out of the question. We also don’t have any worthwhile alternative transportation methods in our area like trains, buses, or carpools. However I do bike as much as possible when it is feasible and safe. For example, I biked to a fair and locked it outside the fair grounds. We also saved on parking fees and of course gas!

Have you decided to go do down to one car in your family? Were there any surprise challenges or benefits? What are some creative way you save on gas and transportation?

A Frugal Weekend in Boston

One of the things Mr. FireStoker and I started to focus on when we decided to permanently stay on our frugal poor college student budget is to figure out what really makes us feel fulfilled.  There is a difference between being happy in a moment and the feeling of having a fulfilling life. We didn’t want to cut our finances in such a way that we became unhappy and bitter.  That is not the FIRE way.  After all the whole reason we are trying to retire early and quit our day jobs is to have an even MORE fulfilling life. (See how I said MORE fulfilling That’s because we already feel that our life is fulfilling but there are dreams and desires we have that we could do more easily if we didn’t have to work for money.)

Finding Fulfillment in a Frugal Way

We have spent the last couple of years trying to put down some roots in our community and invest in our relationships.  Mr. FireStoker and I believe community is so important for well-being and happiness.  It’s actually one of the markers required for longevity. Take a look at the Blue Zones where people live longer than anyone else in the world.  Researchers found 9 things they have in common that help them live a longer happier life. they’re called the Power Nine  Three of the nine have to do with your community and with who you choose to spend your time. Mr. FireStoker and I talk about the concept of time a lot.  We feel that time is the real currency we are all spending.  No one can give you more time, but we do trade our time for money to buy things to make our non-working time – well spent.

What we didn’t expect (or what we really tried to avoid but it’s inevitable) is for our friends to move away so soon.  We have had many of our really good friends leave across the country in a couple short years.  We decided that we still wanted to cultivate these friendships because they’re important to us. It was difficult to think about how we might be able to manage that in a frugal way involving travel.

Well today’s blog is about how we traveled frugally in Boston. I am huge fan of themed events especially free ones. There just happened to be a free chocolate festival in Boston this past January.  Yes Free! The “festival” was basically 2 hours of free chocolate samplings from all the restaurants and shops in Harvard square. We thought it would be the perfect opportunity to visit with our friends. Only weirdos don’t like chocolate.

Travel expenses and Parking

We are close enough to drive to Boston, but far enough that we would want to stay overnight at our friends apartment. My co-worker was kind enough to watch our four-legged stoker for the weekend and off we went. Upon arrival we had to find parking for the event which can be a pretty penny a big city. We like to use a free parking app called ParkWhiz to find and pre-pay for parking. We got a 12 hour parking spot for $10!!! I usually just wait to get to my destination before opening the app to tell me where the closest parking lots/garages are located and how much they will cost. Doing this allowed us to park within one block of the event. If you have never used this app before and you use my link you will get $5 off your first booking.

JUST SOME of the Free samples we got at the festival. A lot of things never made it onto the plate before being eaten. 😛

Entertainment

After stuffing our faces with chocolate for lunch we had some time to kill before dinner. I had previously planned to spend my weekend thrift shopping for some new jeans so instead of browsing the endless streets of cafes I asked my friend, who met us at the festival, if she knew of any thrift stores nearby.  She told me about this place called The Garment District that she really enjoyed. She wasn’t kidding!  This place was amazeballs! And they just happened to have a big sale that weekend!   Yes, a sale at the thrift store.  Everything in the store was 50% off!  I got some much needed clothes – 5 articles of clothing (2 pairs of jeans, a sweater, a long sleeve shirt, and a jacket) for a total of $35!!

This place is literally the best Thrift store I’ve ever been to

An Improv Comedy Show

Afterwards, we went back to our friend’s apartment (where we got to park for free using her guest parking pass) to get set up for the evening and eat some snacks before heading out to an improv comedy show.  The tickets were around $10/person and was within walking distance.

Dinner and Drinks in the city

We were quite hungry after the show and expected to spend quite a bit for dinner. However, our friend has a farm share and wanted to use up some of her vegetables. She made us a surprisingly delicious kohlrabi risotto. It was also super fun meeting and eating with her roommates. After our late dinner we decided to go to a bar for a beer. We chose a place again within walking distance with live entertainment.  We only bought one drink.  The next morning we said our goodbyes and went to visit my Aunt for a late brunch before finally heading home to pick up the dog.  All together the cost to board our dog, get parking in a big city, attend a festival, see a comedy show, eat dinner, drink beer at a bar, and the clothes at the thrift shop all ended up totaling less than $100. 

Room for Spending Improvement

That being said I think its worth nothing that we could’ve made this even way more less expensive if we had decided not to go to the comedy show or the bar.  Our main goals for the weekend was to continue cultivating our current friendships, visit my family, and attend the free chocolate festival. The additional events were fun, but honestly, we couldn’t really talk during the comedy show and the bar was so loud and crowded we couldn’t really conversate either (or barely walk without being groped).  I think next time we will just stay home and play games instead of going out for beer.  It’s still fun. It build stronger community, it’s healthier than beer (maybe depending on your snacks) and way more cost effective.

Learn from your spending mistakes

In my about page I promised to be honest.  While I do feel we did a really great job with our overall spending I know it could’ve been even better. I feel that this transparency is important to learn from each other and also myself.  We don’t like completely cutting our lives off from fun, but I also know that we wouldn’t have felt like we would have missed out on anything by not attending the extra unplanned events.  Still no regrets.  That’s the thing about finances, you can’t beat yourself up about the decisions that you already made.  Note to self.  Don’t take unplanned adventures in the future unless it’s something you really can’t live without and only if there are not alternative ways to bring fulfillment in your life.

Share Your Frugal Adventure

If you would like to share your own frugal adventure, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.  Also how do you build community in a frugal way?  How do you continue to build relationships with your friends and relatives in a frugal way when they are far away?

Why FIRE?

FIRE stands for Financially Independent Retire Early.

There are a lot of different financial “programs” out there that discuss budgets, paying off debt, saving for retirement ect. I’ve always thought a lot about finances because money is a tool that allows freedom. I wanted freedom to make healthy eating choices, the freedom to live wherever I wanted, the ability to freely give to others in need, the freedom to stay home with my future children, the freedom to either design my work, not let work design my life.

I didn’t see how any of that was possible with my salary using the traditional system especially with the current cost of higher education. In fact, after some calculations adjusting for inflation, I figured out that if I had stayed on my current trajectory with my low standard of living while saving for retirement, I would still end up broke and living in squabble after a lifetime of working and saving for retirement.

Meanwhile, the age for retirement keeps going up and who know if you’ll even live that long. If you do who’s to say you’ll actually be able to climb
that mountain in India? Nothing in life is guaranteed. It makes one wonder what all this is for anyways?

Nowadays, a lot of millennials are quitting their jobs to travel and experience more from life. They don’t want to be told that they can only take ten days off out of an entire year. One of the ways they are able to accomplish this is by finding work abroad that provides lodging and food in exchange for short term work.  For example, one of our friends recently finished his masters thesis and instead of starting his career he decided to travel. At on point he lived in Spain on an olive farm with a Dutch family for a month working 5 hours a day in exchange for free lodging and food.

This is not a bad way to get experiences abroad.  In fact, I think it’s pretty amazing, but its definitely not for everyone. Some people, including myself, are not as adventurous as others and would be full of anxiety if we quit our jobs with nothing else lined up.  Not everyone wants children, but I do and I want them to grow up in a very stable home with food on the table and clothes on their body and a decent world-view education. I wouldn’t be able to provide that by keeping up with a lifestyle of traveling the world and exchanging work and time for room and board.  That sounds more like a giant headache than freeing. If I’m to ever have a family I would eventually have to return to a somewhat more traditional way of American life. But then I wouldn’t really have anything saved for retirement when it comes to it and who would take care of me when I’m old?? I wouldn’t want to put that burden on my children.  There has to be an alternative.  And there is!  

Some people work their whole life just to get to retirement and find that they don’t have enough to retire. It’s possible that they have a health condition requiring them to work to keep their healthcare benefits. Maybe by the time they retire, they’re no longer in the best shape to be out climbing mountains in India, or to go scuba diving, or fill in the blank_____. Still others quit their job for a while just to go back to another job when they’re finally “ready” to settle down or “get sick” of traveling.  What if I told you there was another way?  It’s called FIRE.  Financially Independent Retire Early. 

It is about being financially independent enough to only work if you choose
to work. It’s about finding fulfillment through living not working.  When you are free to use your greatest asset TIME as you wish then you can detach from all things considered to give prestige and wealth because you will be more focused on doing things that bring fulfillment – Whatever that may be for you.

If you want to read more about the FIRE movement and learn how to become financially independent so you can retire early, be sure to read my post on “How to be FIRE.”