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Working your way through college can provide precious work experience and valuable life lessons while teaching you the importance of budgeting your time, money, and more. However, it also presents its share of challenges along the way.
Financial Obstacles
College today is an investment. Depending on the college you wish to attend, the investment can easily exceed that of a starter home, which is why so many students finish their college experience deeply in debt. Working your way through college can help you reduce the debt load you leave college with, putting you in a better position to overcome common financial obstacles that other graduates face in trying to repay their college loans.
However, working your way through college is only beneficial if you do it in combination with other efforts to reduce your costs of attending college at the same time.
Reducing the Cost of College
There are several moves you can make to reduce the overall costs of attending college as you work your way through school, including the following:
The more things you do to reduce your costs when attending college, the higher your odds of eliminating the need to take on student loan debt, which may prove to be crippling if you aren’t able to immediately secure lucrative employment upon graduation.
Minimizing Student Loan Debt
Following the steps above for reducing your costs of attending college can go a long way toward minimizing student loan debt. So can working and saving the bulk of your income to put toward tuition. The more money you pay toward tuition today, without taking out student loans, the less you pay for your education overall.
However, that’s not the only reason you should avoid or minimize student loans whenever possible. For almost every other type of loan, you will have the option of declaring bankruptcy or seeking relief from the burden of the debt. It works that way for homes, vehicles, and even consumer credit card debt. There is no option to discharge student loan debt. Falling behind in student loan payments will harm your credit history and can do considerable damage to your ability to purchase homes and vehicles and even secure employment later in life.
Working your way through college can be a brilliant path to success. That is especially true if you find the right employment during your educational journey. Of course, using the income from your college job, in combination with other efforts to reduce expenses, can help you avoid unnecessary student loan debt, allowing you to begin your career unencumbered by debt.