Poorer Than You

Money: It's Not Just For Rich People

Archives for April 2009

15 Places to Find Free Books Online

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The following is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer, who writes reviews of online classes for OnlineClasses.org.

Finding free stuff online is a great way to save money when you’re in college. Here are 15 places to find free books, audio books, and textbooks online.

Books

Classic Reader – a great source of classic literary works from previous centuries to the start of the 20th century. You can find thousands of free downloadable classics from Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare, and other popular authors.

Get Free Books – offers hundreds of free fiction and nonfiction books that can be downloaded in multiple formats.

Many Books – offers one of the largest collections of free eBooks anywhere. Books are available in multiple formats–they can be read on your desktop or downloaded to a PDA, iPod, or eBook reader.

Project Gutenberg – widely considered to be one of the best sources on the web for free books. The site has nearly 30,000 books in its catalog and provides links to another 70,000 books that can be found for free online.

The Online Books Page – lists more than 35,000 free books in its index, including full text books, definitive collections, and serials.

 

Audio Books

BooksShouldBeFree – provides hundreds of classic audio books along with nonfiction books. Each book can be downloaded in plain text form and as an mp3 file.

Learn Out Loud – specializes in educational books and materials. The site hosts more than 20,000 audio books, MP3 downloads, and podcasts.

Librivox – volunteers record public domain books and publish audio files that can be downloaded by anyone. New books are added weekly.

Lit2Go – offers free stories and poems in mp3 format. You can read along online or print out pages to make your own book.

PodioBooks – features free serialized audio books delivered on site, through iTunes, and via an RSS feed. PodioBooks is a good place to find modern works of fiction by undiscovered authors.


 

Textbooks

Connexions – provides educational materials in a unique format. Hundreds of textbooks are currently available–many include complementary courses and course notes.

FreeTechBooks – lists online computer science, engineering, and programming textbooks that are freely availably over the Internet. This site is also a good place to find lecture notes and other tech-related books.

Textbook Revolt – has saved students tens of thousands of dollars since its inception. Students can give away the textbooks they don’t need anymore and receive the textbooks they need for free in return.

Textbook Revolution – began in response to the rising cost of textbooks. This student-operated site is easily one of the best places to find free textbooks online.

The Global Text Project – dedicates itself to making textbooks freely available online. The site also hopes to make open content electronic textbooks available on paper, CD, or DVD in the near future.

Stephanie’s note: Thanks to Karen for sharing this list of resources on Poorer Than You! Now I have some free books to make my way through!

The Best Time to Start Thinking About Money

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Three years ago, I knew very little about money. The dangerous thing about that time is that I thought I knew quite a bit about money. I’d read one book, picked up on the idea of index funds and establishing a good credit score, but I didn’t know enough to prevent my impending financial meltdown. I was working my way through a college education that would prove to be too expensive to sustain.

Two and half years ago, I was falling into my financial crisis. My credit card was maxed out and one of my student loans had hit its limit – it wouldn’t be renewable the next term of school, so I would have to figure out a way to replace that $3,000 per year. I was just starting to read personal finance blogs and realize how little I truly knew about money… and about myself. A month later, just after the end of the fall term, I dropped out of school.

Two years ago, I was starting to piece things back together. I’d started this site, kept reading, kept learning. I had a freelance job to pay the bills, including the student loans that were about to come out of their grace period. I met with an advisor at school to talk about coming back and switching majors to something less expensive (and more fitting for me) than Film. I set my sights on going back to school in the fall. I was making slow, but steady, progress on my credit card debt.

A year and a half ago, I was finishing up my first term back at school. My emotional life was a mess (boys are trouble!), but I was finally putting my financial life under my belt. Slow progress on my credit card, but I actually had an emergency fund in place to keep me from relying on my credit card too much. I got a new credit card to transfer the balance and save myself money in interest, and to improve my credit score. I haven’t paid credit card interest since. I put the blog on strike. I made the Dean’s List.

A year ago, I’d had minor setbacks (car repairs) but was still making steady progress. I was attacking the credit card debt full force, to make sure that the balance would be gone before the introductory 0% rate on my balance transfer expired. I was looking for summer jobs that would be both good for me and make more money to put toward my credit card. I made the Dean’s List again.

Six months ago, my credit card balance was paid off. I was stashing money in savings to prepare for graduation and to reach goals I hadn’t even thought about before. I was paying for my textbooks out of pocket, instead of rolling them into my student loans. I made the Dean’s List again, and took out my last batch of student loans for my last term of school.

Now, I’ve graduated. My savings are beefed up, although not to where I’d hoped they’d be. But I’m also making more money freelancing than I thought I would when I set my savings goal, so my low savings balance is offset a bit for the time being. I’m careful about my money, but I indulge a bit more than I did during the “dark times.” Most of all, I can hardly believe how much things have improved since then.

I never thought I’d make the Dean’s List every term after I returned to school. I never thought my credit card debt would be paid off, especially not before graduation. I never thought I’d have as much as I do in savings. I never thought that learning how to control my finances would have such an impact, making improvements in nearly every facet of my life.

Sometimes I wonder, how much better things might have been if I’d done all this a year earlier than I did. Or even earlier than that – what if I’d gotten smart at 17, before I even started college? I’ll never know for sure. But the Chinese have a proverb for this:

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”

12 Things Every Teenager Needs To Know About Money (And How To Teach Them)

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This is a guest post from Grant Baldwin, the author of Reality Check, a book about helping students transition into the real world. His new website, BrokePiggy.com, answers questions from teenagers about personal finance, savings, and all things money.

This series “12 Things Every Teenager Needs To Know About Money (And How To Teach Them)” is a community blog experience.  This post is only one of the 12 points in the series so to view the other 11, please visit the list of links below.

Two Words: Compound Interest

We all remember those days of sitting in a math class listening to a teacher talk about theorems, abstract algebra, or differential equations.  And the entire time this lecture was going on, we all asked ourselves the same question:

When am I ever going to need this?

Don’t deny it.  You had the same thought I did.  And a lot of class periods that question popped into our minds except for the day we talked about (wait for it)…

Compound Interest.

Ok, maybe you still didn’t grasp compound interest then, but hopefully you’ve seen the light by now and wished you did grasp it better back then!  When it comes to personal finance, that one simple math concept can be your best friend or your worst enemy.  Here’s one way of looking at it…

Which one of these options would be worth more?

  1. Ten thousand dollars per day for 30 days.
  2. One penny that doubles every day for 30 days.

Option #1 would be the better choice for the majority of the time until you look at how the race finishes up.  By the end of 30 days, option #1 would be worth $300,000.  Not bad at all.  But by the end of 30 days, option #2 would be worth (drum roll please)…

$5,368,709.12!!!

Pretty wild huh?  So how do you teach this to a student?  Here are some tips…

  • Show Them The Numbers — Although most teenagers aren’t “number nerds,” they can still see that $5,368,709.12 is a better option than $300,000.  When students look at the possibilities and you teach them they have an advantage, even over you as the parent, it begins to click for most teenagers.  Time is on their side.
  • Help Set Up A Roth IRA — The best investment option for taking advantage of compound interest at a young age is by setting up a Roth IRA.  The only eligibility requirement is that your teen has an earned income.
  • The Tortoise Always Wins The Race — Adults aren’t the only ones looking to get rich quick.  Teenagers fall into that category as well.  Part of your role as a parent is to teach them how slow and steady wins the race.  Teach students to not count on striking it rich in the lottery, winning big on Deal or No Deal, or opening their front door to the prize patrol.  The rabbit may seem faster but the consistency of the tortoise wins the race.

Curious about the other 11 things every teenager needs to know about money? Check them out at the following sites:

How to File the FAFSA Without Your Parents’ Information

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Alone by adotjdotsmith on Flickr The FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is the big, bad form that most colleges in the US use as a basis for financial aid. One of the key points of a the FAFSA is that if you are under 24 years old, you’re pretty much required to include the financial information of one (or both) parents. This is a feature of the FAFSA that really bothers me.

There are a lot of reasons and situations that make this feature of the FAFSA unbearable for some students. In the past, if you could not get the financial information of your custodial parent (for whatever reason), you were out of luck with the FAFSA – you couldn’t even submit it. For many colleges, this meant no chance of aid at all. If you couldn’t pay out of pocket, you couldn’t go at all.

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) changed that, starting with the 2009-2010 school year. However, this change comes with a lot of caveats and addendums (also known as “bobby traps and catches”) that you should know about before you file a FAFSA without filling out the “parent” section.

Filing Without Parental Information Barely Helps

According to the 2009-2010 Federal Student Aid Handbook:

Although students whose parents refuse support are not eligible
for a dependency override, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) granted that such students may receive unsubsidized Stafford loans only.

(page 32 of the handbook)

What this means is that students in this situation go from receiving no aid at all to only being eligible for unsubsidized Stafford loans. You can’t get the Pell grant, Perkins loans, or subsidized Stafford loans – all of which are better options than unsubsidized Stafford loans. Unsubsidized Stafford loans are also limited by grade level, and you will not be eligible for the “extra” unsubsidized Stafford loans that students can get when their parents are denied a PLUS loan.

However, this only covers what aid the government will give you. The pure fact that you can now submit a FAFSA means you may be eligible for the aid that your school might provide you. Which brings me to my next point about this new provision:

You’ll Need the Help of Your College’s Financial Aid Officer

Even though you can now submit the FAFSA without parental information, you can’t do it alone. Most of things needed to make this work have to be done by, or with the help of, a college financial aid officer. Additionally, these things must be done by the financial aid officer of the college you’re going to attend.

This means that if you are a potential freshman, you pretty much have to pick the college you want to go to, before you even fill out your financial aid paperwork. That’s a big decision, and normally one you shouldn’t make without seeing the results of your financial aid application. Your best bet is a pick a college that really wants you, and do everything you can to befriend the financial aid officer. You’re going to need them if your parents refuse to fill out the FAFSA or support you.

If you go ahead with filing out the FAFSA by yourself, you’ll need to provide documentation that your parents refuse to both provide information for the FAFSA and refuse to provide any financial support to you. If your parents won’t sign this statement, you’ll need the signature of a third party, such as a teacher, counselor, cleric, or the court.

After you’ve done this, the financial aid officer at your college can then look at your situation and then decide whether to award you unsubsidized Stafford loans, or not. As you can see, it’s not exactly cut-and-dried, or easy, and it certainly requires the assistance of the financial aid officer.

Before You Do This, Make Sure You Really Need To

The absolute best option is to get your parents to provide their information for the FAFSA. You will still be eligible for those unsubsidized Stafford loans, no matter how much your parents make or how much money they have. So it can only help you to have their information.

If you’re having trouble getting their information for the FAFSA, remind them that providing it does not put them under any legal obligation to support you, or to pay a single dime toward your education. In some situations, this may help to coax the information out to them. Still, there are a lot of situations where the parents just can’t be convinced. Or you may not be on speaking terms with them at all.

One last thing to consider is whether you truly are still considered a dependent. If you aren’t, you can fill out the FAFSA as an independent student, and you won’t need their information at all to get the full aid you qualify for. The FAFSA website provides a form to determine whether you are dependent or not.

It may seem unconventional, but for some people, there are ways to become independent. The first is quite simply to join the military. Active duty personnel and veterans are automatically considered independent. The other option is to get married. No, you shouldn’t get married just to get financial aid, but if you are already engaged, you might consider applying for your marriage license early. Just being married on paper is enough to grant you the status of “independent” on the FAFSA – you can have a proper wedding ceremony whenever you want.

If you can’t get the information you need from your parents, and you can’t qualify to file as “independent,” then it’s time to talk to the financial aid officer at the college about filing as a dependent without parental information. I’m sorry that there aren’t more options for you, but hopefully this will help you make things work.

Many thanks to Suddenly Human and NotAnyoneYouKnow from the Financial Aid category at Yahoo! Answers. They brought this financial aid development to my attention and helped me find the source I needed to write this article.

Subscriber Swap Saturday with No Debt Plan

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No Debt Plan is about getting and staying out of debt with a plan. Kevin, the author, is passionate about budgeting, saving for the future, and using goals to reach financial freedom. You can subscribe to his blog by RSS or email.

This interview is part of a new feature he’s developed called Subscriber Swap Saturday. The basic idea is to get the subscribers of one blog to subscribe to the other blog for at least a week, just to try it out. After a week if you don’t find that blogger’s content enticing, drop it. The hope is that over time you will find several writers that you weren’t familiar with who provide meaningful content to you. You can read more about Subscriber Swap Saturday at his get out of debt blog, as well as his interview with me.

And now, Kevin answers some questions I shot at him about his life, his finances, and his site:

You just hit the quarter-century mark this week. Any words of wisdom you’d care to share with us youngins?

Kevin: Ah, nothing like feeling old. 🙂 Just the same old same old — spend less than you earn, do something you love, and live on a budget. Contribute to your 401(K) and, if your 401(K) investment options have high expenses (or are not varied) open up a Roth IRA instead.

Were you good about your money and finances in college, or was that something that you developed after you graduated?

Kevin: I handled money great in college. I’m not so sure about when I learned it, I suppose it was over time. My first few years I lived on campus and didn’t go off campus a lot so there wasn’t a lot of ways for me to spend money anyways. But handling money in college is (or should be!) something on a small scale… I had a small part-time, on-campus job. There wasn’t a lot of money to spend in the first place. The major finance issues pop up once you suddenly have a real income coming in every month.

I’ve been following your blog (in its various forms) pretty much since I started my own blog! How have things changed for you since you started blogging?

Kevin: I was going to mention that as well! I first started out blogging on a domain associated with my name. But that didn’t rank very well for search engine terms associated with my content. That’s when I decided to switch to nodebtplan.net and use that domain to rank better in search engines.

I also made the switch from posting whenever I felt like it to deciding on a schedule (posting once daily) and sticking to it. When I first started I had a lot of topics to cover. When you write an article every day for a year and then some, you have to really start to dig in on some topics. That’s been pretty difficult.

Your blog focuses on something called the “No Debt Plan.” What is that, and how can 20-somethings make the No Debt Plan work for them?

Kevin: The No Debt Plan is essentially a summary of the advice I find myself giving to friends and co-workers time and time again. It’s similar to Dave Ramsey’s plan — you walk through the steps and it will show you how to setup a budget, how to stop living paycheck-to-paycheck, and how to pay off your debt effectively.

To make it work, just read it. I tried to write it so that it didn’t come across convoluted and too complex to understand. I think personal finance writers often make the mistake of getting too far into the nitty gritty of the numbers. Those are good, but for a series of posts like that I tried to back off the numbers a bit. (Although it did sneak in there every once and a while.) Let me also say that the plan isn’t complete… I’ve still got a few more posts up my sleeve.

How about some quick-fire, often-debated personal finance topics:

Credit cards for college student, yay or nay?
If they have an income and can manage it responsibly, yay. Otherwise, nay.

Emergency fund or aggressive debt payoff first?
It depends. If your debt is credit card debt then technically if you had an emergency you could rely on that to pay for living expenses. I prefer for folks to have an emergency fund that works for them (whether $500 or $2,000) and then focus on the highest-interest rate debt first.

Should parents foot the bill for college for their kids?
Not at the expense of retirement savings. I am fine with parents paying for education (my parents and scholarships paid for mine). I think kids really need to try and get as many grants and scholarships as possible — there is a lot of money out there to apply for.

Even though I know your answer to this, it’s the most-hotly-debated: Debt snowball by remaining balance or by interest rate?
Interest rate. Interest rate. Interest rate. The math is clear cut. I do buy the part psychology argument of Dave Ramsey’s plan. But when you run the math and you could save thousands in interest… hey… get your motivation from somewhere else.

And finally, what do you see in the future for Kevin and No Debt Plan? (Tell us all of your secret plans!)

Kevin: Ah if I could only see into the future. I plan to continue blogging and would love to get to the point that I could blog full time. I have a few new blog ideas (as in new, separate blogs), but I just don’t have the extra time to develop them. I’ll finish my MBA in August and I am considering getting my Certified Financial Planner certification.

All that and keeping the dog worn out. 🙂

It was a really exciting opportunity for me to exchange these interviews with Kevin. As I said in this interview, the two of us have been tracking each other’s sites pretty much the whole time so far! I consider Kevin one of my “old friends” of blogging, and I would definitely appreciate it if you gave his site a chance. Subscribe to his site by RSS or email. And don’t forget to check out my answers to his interview questions!

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