Tips from a college student

I have decided that I should go to college for free. College students are constantly bombarded with advisers and financial aid stuff saying that there are billions of dollars available in scholarships, and yet it seems like no one I know can ever find any of those dollars. So as of today, I am now on the lookout for free money for college, not loans, but free money and scholarships.

Today I called the financial aid office to inquire about any aid the school could offer me and they confirmed exactly what I expected: I'm not eligible for any more than I have because of my parents income bracket. I have been thinking about this and was wondering if I could file taxes independently from my parents and then be eligible for financial aid because I would be in the lowest tax bracket, but I was told that I have to include my parents information on my FAFSA until I'm 24 so that wouldn't work either.

Then I asked the guy at financial aid about any outside scholarships I should apply for, and he said that first of all DO NOT USE FASTWEB. He was very persistent in this and said that all they do is sell all of your information to mass marketing, and that hardly anyone gets results from Fastweb. He gave a longer explanation, but just trust me in that I will no longer be using Fastweb. He said to use search engines and put in criteria that you fit in along with the word 'scholarship' and it should turn up results. I have not had time to investigate this fully, so I will be writing again soon once I try that.

He also said to check local retailers and companies such as Wal-Mart and Costco for scholarships, as well as my parents employers. I have checked my parents employers in the past, but will be checking on that again soon. I need to check the local retailers, but haven't had time yet.

I really hope this new search turns something out, because I really need to get some money for school or I am going to have massive student loans, which is what I am trying to avoid. I have a job, but there is no job you can work in college that even begins to touch the amount you owe. It covers my gas money and has helped me establish some savings, but besides that I'm stuck.

If you have any advice or a success story on finding a scholarship feel free to leave a comment or send me an email at tipsfromacollegestudentblogatgmail.com. If you have some money you want to donate towards the college fund, I would gladly except that. There is a donate link on the right of this page, or you can email me and we can talk.
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If you want an easy $25, along with a good online savings a checking account that both earn good interest rates, you should sign up with ING Direct. Email me or comment on this post for a link to recieve the $25 promotion.

ING's Orange Savings and Electric Orange accounts have good interest rates (Orange Savings is 4.10%APY), and good features too. You can link it to up to 3 banks, so you can easily fund it. The Orange Savings account has an automatic savings feature where you can set it to automatically withdraw a certain amount of money from your checking account on a regular basis to boost your savings. And best of all, if you sign up now you get $25 for free just for signing up!

The Electric Orange account is a checking account that pays a great interest rate of 3.15% APY. You can send checks to people online, which is very useful, and you can use certain ATM's for free.

You can also use these accounts for automatic bill pay, and they deposits made from these accounts to other accounts will count as direct deposits, so you can use them to fulfill the conditions on other promotions later down the road.

If you open a new account, you can get a free $25 bonus. The conditions for this is you have to open it with $250 and open it through a link that I would be happy to send you, all you have to do is send me an email or comment on this post. I will respond to emails ASAP, but only email me if you are definitely going to do it, because I only have a limited number of links available.

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Make sure you read this great article from Money Smart Life about how to pay for all the junk you buy at Christmas. Its about buying stuff on ebay and how you can make some good money at this time of the year.

Selling on eBay after the holidays

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I have been sitting here thinking about ways to get money to pay for college, and then I thought, "duh. apply for scholarships." So I went to the old fastweb site and updated my profile I had created in high school, then started searching. I am eligible for 43 scholarships listed on that site.

This takes some time to search through all of these, but after being in college for a year and a half I have realized how hard it is to get money, so even if I spend 10 hours searching for scholarships, if I can get one then it will be worth it. My ultimate goal is to graduate from college debt-free, and even though my parents are helping I am not on track to meet that goal. Even though working at my job 20 hours a week on top of school is helping, it isn't quite getting me there. This is where the scholarship search comes in. I am trying to take every possible angle on earning money for college, and this is the most obvious.

I would like to encourage any of you who are still in college to check out fastweb, as it is a great time saving database of scholarships that is recognized as the best one to use. You just put your info in and it tells you what to apply for. Scholarships are an easy way to get free money, and they aren't that hard if you can write a decent essay telling why you need money so bad.

Good luck on paying for college and getting those scholarships!

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Everyone needs a little extra money. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, you still want more. Hey, I’m just being honest, I mean its true isn’t it? Don’t you want some more money?

Anyway, I’ve compiled a list of things to do to get a little extra money on the side. All of these are useful in college, most are useful to anyone. So, here’s the list.

#1. Sell stuff on eBay.

-Everyone has junk somewhere that they could get rid of. In your home, you have your attic and your garage, 2 places that normally have all kinds of stuff you don’t need. If your in college, you should realize every time you move into or out of a dorm room that you have too much stuff and need to sell it.

#2. Check college career center for work.

-Most colleges have a career center place on their website where local businesses can list work they need done. This is a good place to get some work, whether it is a weekend job or a full-time job.

#3. Classified ads.

-Many times people list stuff in classified ads in local newspapers/Craigslist/Facebook that they need done, such as mowing yards or helping move them into a new house, or help paint their house. . Many times you can make some decent money just by responding to these ads.

#4. Sell your books.

-Amazon and half.com are great. You can sell pretty much any book on there, whether it is a textbook or just a random book someone gave you. You can create space and make money by selling books you don’t need. And for future reference, try checking out books from the library instead of buying them.

#5. Free money.

-Get free money by taking advantage of promotions, such as the ING Direct $25 promotion going on right now. Also, you can get a lot of free money by taking advantage of credit card offers, but you have to be careful with those or you can get yourself in trouble.

#6. Get freebies and sell them.

-There are many ways to get freebies, which I will address in a different post. You can either save money by getting useful stuff such as deodorant, toothpaste, and other random stuff, or you can get freebies like laptops and microwaves and sell them. This is pure profit.

#7. Do something you like and make money for it.

-If you have a hobby making stuff, sell stuff you make. Blog about whatever you love. Figure out what you spend most of your time doing or thinking about, and then create a blog about it. Put Google ad words on there and get some passive income rolling in. Sign up for affiliate links. I've heard some great success stories about people doing this.

Evidently the response I received in this post was wrong, because I just checked my Wachovia Checking account and the money from the promotion was deposited into my account on 10/4/07.

It shows up as 2 separate deposits, one for opening the account with $100 and the other for making a direct deposit of $100.

I haven't been that happy with Wachovia, and probably won't keep the account open, but I am going to read first and make sure that I am allowed to close the account without any fees or losing the bonus. For more on why I'm not happy with Wachovia, click here.

I guess that even though I would never use Wachovia as my primary checking account because of simply not being able to transfer money easily online, it did accomplish it's purpose of getting me $50 for free. So I should be satisfied with the results, as I now have my money.

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It has been about a month and a half now since I opened up my Wachovia checking account so I could get the $50 bonus. I was wondering when this bonus was going to appear in my account, so I decided to sent them a message. In the reply they said that it doesn't show up until 60 days after the promotion ends, which is the end of the year! I think that is a little long, but I guess I should have read the fine print.

I have been getting annoyed with Wachovia because they do not have good online features, the main one being I'm not able to transfer money from other banks to them online. Maybe I've been using too many online banks, but I just expected a bank as big as Wachovia to be able to have a decent online system. I mean, my small credit union does!

Anyway, I am done with that rant now. If you are wondering what promotion that I am talking about, click here for a link to my earlier post on the promotion.

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So you've been home from college all summer, working a ton of hours and making lots of money, right? Well, even if all of that isn't true, hopefully you made at least a little bit of money this summer. The question is, what did you do with this money? Have you blown it all already, is it sitting in the bank, or is it in a dirty sock under your bed? Why not let it make money for you?

Instead of holding onto your money in cash or putting it in a low interest savings account, why not save it and let it work for you at the same time? With an online high yield savings account, if you invest $2,000 you can earn over $100 a year in interest. The highest interest one right now is FNBO Direct at 6% APY. It doesn't have the greatest features, but it is FDIC insured and has a great interest rate. You should use this account if you want to put your money away for a while without having immediate access to it, as it takes several days for transactions to clear. If you want a high yield account that's easier to access, check out ING. You can open an online checking account (called Electric Orange) with an APY of 4%, and with this account you can get a debit card so you can have instant access to it. ING's Orange Savings account has a higher interest rate at 4.5% APY, and you can set it up with your Electric Orange account to move money from one to the other and have instant access.

These accounts have no minimum requirements, and no annual fees. They are a great deal, and if you sign up for ING you can get a $25 referral bonus if you email me for the link to sign up through.

So why are you still holding onto your money? Get online and sign up for one of these accounts! Seriously, its free money without you doing any work. Who doesn't want that?

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Wachovia is running a promotion right now where if you open a new checking account and fund it with $100, they'll give you $25. If you direct deposit another $100 within 90 days, you get another free $25. Thus, $50 free from Wachovia.
Click here for offer
**edit-promotion is now over**