College Students | Money
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The T.Y.M. Guide To Money in College
The “Teaching You Money” Steps to Enhancing Your Wealth While in College
- Maximize Learning (Grow Your Knowledge)
- Minimize Expenses (Learn to Budget)
- Avoid Debt
- Be On the Lookout for “Good” Opportunities
- Commit to a Money Plan After College
1. Maximize Learning (Grow Your Knowledge)
You’ll notice I recommend maximizing income after college, but while you’re in college, you’ll want to maximize learning.
Growing your knowledge is a core belief at Teaching You Money. The more you learn about building wealth, the better able you’ll be to actually do it when the time comes. Similarly, the more you learn about yourself, your major, the industry you’d like to get into, etc., the more prepared you’ll be to excel in the next stages of your journey.
Not all learning happens in a classroom. We believe learning comes from experience. So don’t be afraid to seek experience in college – even if that means becoming an unpaid intern for a semester or offering to work for a short time without pay for someone in your future industry.
Growing your knowledge should be your number one focus as you enter and experience college.
2. Minimize Expenses (Learn to Budget)
Looking rich and actually being wealthy are drastically different.
I knew guys in college who would spend the little money they had buying drinks for girls on weekends. They were more interested in spending to impress in the present moment, than becoming financially wealthy for the rest of their lives.
College is the perfect time to learn to live on a shoestring budget. Your classes are expensive, your life doesn’t have to be. Your college years can teach you a lot about discipline, saving, and spending money only on items that are truly necessary.
We believe college is a great time to learn to track your spending, understand where your money goes each month, and eliminate unnecessary expenditures to set yourself up to become wealthy after college.
3. Avoid Debt
If at all possible, avoid debt/loans every step of the way.
There are lots of ways to avoid student loans, and we’ll dive into them often on our blog.
When you get a loan, you agree to pay interest on that loan. Our goal is to earn interest not pay interest – we want to become wealthy! When you are in debt, there are payments constantly hanging over your head. This is the opposite of financial freedom.
The average American has $90,460 of debt. This is money that needs to be paid back (plus interest) – and interest continues to build on your debt over time. If a $90,000 loan charges 6% interest and it takes you 10 years to pay off, you’ll end up paying around $30,000 in interest payments on top of the original $90,000!! No thank you.
It is easy to get sucked into the allure of debt. A friend of mine in college was in the Army ROTC program. Prior to graduating, the Army gave him the option of taking a loan from them to be used however he’d like. He didn’t think about monthly payments or interest rates, all he could think about was the new truck he was going to buy with that money. His loan started accruing interest before his Army salary even started.
This step will be work. It might take an extra job or side-gig (which we’ll talk lots about on the TYM blog). It will definitely take lots of discipline. But you will thank yourself later if you do everything in your power to avoid debt. It will supercharge your ability to work towards wealth immediately upon graduating college.
4. Be On the Lookout for Good Opportunities
I want to be clear – some jobs are not worth your time. Some “opportunities” are actually traps in disguise.
Is it helpful for you to take the bus across town for a low-paying waiter/waitress job at a restaurant that is never busy with a manager that isn’t very nice? I’d say it might be time for a new job.
The idea here is that you want to constantly seek “Good Opportunities” so you can maximize your time and effort – and also maximize your money along the way.
We’ll dive deeper into what a “Good Opportunity” looks like on the TYM blog and YouTube channel. Three quick examples might be:
- Get a job as a receptionist at your dorm. You won’t have to waste any money traveling to the job, and lots of these positions allow you to do homework while you work. Nothing better than getting paid to get your schoolwork done.
- Do a search once a month for new scholarships online, and commit to submitting an application to anything you are eligible for. You may just get a nice big stack of cash from an unexpected source.
- Keep an eye out for speakers or events focused on the industry you’d like to get into. Lots of colleges bring in successful people to enhance the experience of their students. Oftentimes, the best way to get a job offer or internship is by making a real connection with someone at an event like this one.
5. Commit to a Money Plan After College
We have lots of resources on our blog and YouTube channel about specifically what you should do to build wealth once you have your first job out of college, but you won’t be very likely to do any of it unless you are fully committed to it.
While growing your knowledge is beautiful in itself – knowledge falls short without action.
The hope is that upon graduating college, you immediately place yourself in a position to build wealth. When most of your fellow graduates will get thrown into the “real world” and immediately begin taking on debt, spending outside of their means, and running the proverbial rat race – you’ll be building wealth for your future.
It takes discipline to commit to a money plan in your early 20’s. It is our sincere hope that this blog helps you create and stick to a plan that enhances your wealth for years to come.
Teaching You Money – We Want To Help You Become Wealthy
Teaching You Money was created to help you shift your money mindset, grow your knowledge, and build your wealth.
We exist to help you financially thrive.
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*I am not a registered investment advisor*
