Once you have decided that you are definitely going to college and you have found the school that seems to match you perfectly, you really have to start planning out your future education and the expenses involved with it. This of course is one of the most important aspects of school, because if you don’t plan ahead, you could find that the costs are far greater than the money that you have available in order to go to college. By planning ahead it could save you a great deal of agony, when you are stressing out about how you are going to pay for your schooling or how you are going to be able to pay the rent for your apartment or dorm room. The reality is that successful financial planning is key in order for a student to be just as successful in the classroom. A school will put a student’s future on hold in an instant if they are overdue on their tuition or fees. This is why a student really needs to know what they are getting themselves into prior to making the major plunge in the ocean that we call college.
While there are many methods to determine costs, you really have to consider two major types of costs, there are the direct expenses and the indirect expenses that you will have to worry about.
DIRECT EXPENSES
These are the expenses that are directly related to college and obtaining an education. This is going to be all of those expenses that you already knew about prior to registering and the ones that you are going to undoubtedly hear about a million times during the orientation process.
A few examples of these expenses are:
– Textbooks
– Resource fees
– Tuition
– Supplies
While these are essentially all items that are required, it is important to make sure that you include them in your budget. This way you can ensure that you have the most accurate budget possible.
INDIRECT EXPENSES
These are the expenses that you are going to incur as an indirect result of going to college. These are all of the other expenses that you will pay while you are in college. If you don’t pay attention closely to these expenses, they can quickly spiral out of control and can lead to some incredible financial issues for the student extremely fast.
A few examples of these expenses are:
– Housing
– Food
– Transportation
– Entertainment
– Clothing
– Childcare?
There are loads of different expenses that could be thrown into the indirect expenses category. This is also one of the most under planned category, because people just don’t think ahead and realize that they are going to need money to buy food or to ride the bus or to for their housing. While most people understand that there are costs associated with these items, they don’t really budget them, so because of that, it makes it very difficult for them to create a quality budget that they can actually follow.
The key is to make sure that you map out all of your projected expenses and then figure out a plan for covering these expenses. Sure you’ll have your loans, but you may have to consider working a full time job in order to cover your expenses if they are too high. The better you budget now, the less issue you are going to have when it comes time to actually going to school.