College Archives - Poorer Than You

#AskFAFSA – Financial Aid Twitter Chat

By Stephanie, updated September 28, 2016 Leave a Comment
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Got burning questions about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)? You’re in luck! The knowledgeable folks that work at the Department of Education do a #AskFAFSA Office Hours on the last Wednesday of each month, on Twitter!

You don’t need a Twitter account to follow along with the conversation (though you will need one if you want to ask a question). You can also browse past #AskFAFSA conversations (where your questions might have already been answered!) on the #AskFAFSA Storify page.

Next #AskFAFSA Office Hours: September 28th, 5-6 PM Eastern Time

Topic: Countdown to FAFSA (it opens up on October 1st this year!)

You can also check out the Federal Student Aid event schedule for more upcoming #AskFAFSA events. You get this one opportunity a month to ask the experts your questions about filling out the FAFSA form, so take advantage!

(Feel free to tag me, @stephonee, in your questions!)

College Students: Make Money by Getting Good Grades

By Guest Author, updated April 3, 2013 3 Comments
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Kyle Taylor is a blogger at The Penny Hoarder. Check out his blog to get 100’s of weird and wacky ways to make extra money.

For many college students, money is tight. They might dig through the couch cushions to find entertainment money or return their pop bottles and cans for a deposit refund to pay for books. Other desperate students find side gigs as babysitters, or on campus as work study students.

If you are a college student living on a tight income (or you know someone who is), the best way to make money and still have enough time to go to school is to do a variety of side jobs.

However, recently a few companies have offered college students financial incentive to get good grades. How sweet is that? College students can earn money doing what they are supposed to do–study and do well in school.

Interested? Here are some companies that are offering this program:

GradeFund

GradeFund doesn’t exactly give a college student money for getting good grades, but they offer an incentive. The student sets a goal for the grades she would like to achieve in a particular course or semester, and then the student must find sponsors to pay her if she achieves her goals. Sponsors can be family members (hello parents!), friends, or even corporate sponsors.

Why would a corporation want to sponsor a student and encourage her to get good grades? It is not entirely altruistic. The corporation often uses a site like GradeFund to encourage students to take a particular path in their education. They may even hire some of the students they sponsor when they graduate, according to Mashable.

Ultrinsic

Ultrinsic can also monetarily reward college students with good grades, but their approach is different than GradeFund. Rather than sponsors, Ultrinsic asks students to register, and then, based on several factors, Ultrinsic offers the student a wager of the possibility of the student getting a certain grade in a certain course.

While some may frown on this as gambling, others say it just provides an incentive for students to achieve good grades.

College

Yes, that is right, some colleges pay their students for good grades. A few community colleges in Louisiana experimented with paying their students for good grades. The students in the study had to go to school at least half-time and maintain a C or better GPA. In return, they could earn up to $1,000 over two terms.

While this was a pilot program, several other colleges have explored this option, so if a student attends a college that pays, they could get a very sweet reward in addition to good grades.

You may think the days of getting paid to earn good grades ended when mom and dad stopped paying you a few bucks for every A or B you earned. However, now you can find other businesses and colleges willing to pay you for good grades. Sure, these programs won’t give you spending money for the whole semester, but they do offer another way to make some extra bucks, which may mean less you have to take out on student loans.

Three Quick Financial Fixes for College Students

By Guest Author, updated November 18, 2009 6 Comments
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Stephanie is still sick, but recovering and will be back soon. In the meantime, we have a very special guest poster: Jim Wang! Jim writes about personal finance and other money issues at his personal finance blog Wallet Hacks.

We all know what it’s like to be busy. Whether you’re taking classes or working a 9-to-5, it’s difficult to take a look at your finances when you have so many other things to worry about. Between assignments, long projects, tests, and reviews, it’s understandable that your money issues take a back seat to the things you have to do to make more of it!

That’s why today I’m glad to offer up a few quick financial wins that you can do right now. They don’t take a lot of time, less than half an hour, and they have a big impact on your finances. All of them are free, so they won’t cost you anything, and if you do only one of the things on the list, you’ll have put yourself on the right path. You don’t have to do them all, just pick one.

Check Your Credit History & Score

The single most valuable thing you can do for your finances is to check your credit history and perhaps your score. Identity theft, while not as common as the news would like you to think, is more common than we’d like to admit. It’s important, especially when you’re young, to check your credit history for fraud as well as inaccuracies. Whenever you go out to get a loan to buy a car or perhaps a house, you don’t have to discover errors or identity theft when you’re shopping for interest rates.

Never pay for a credit report, you can get it free by government mandate at AnnualCreditReport.com. You can get a copy from all three bureaus every 12 months, I like to separate my reports every four months so I can get fresh information. If you want to get your credit score, it’ll be a little trickier because you’ll need to sign up for a trial service to see your free FICO credit scores but you can cancel the service immediately. If you want to avoid the hassle of canceling, you can always go with a free service like Credit Karma.

Boost Your Savings

I know it’s hard to save money when you’re in college but if you do, give them a boost by going with a high yield savings account at an online bank like ING Direct. Regular savings accounts earn you practically nothing, whereas an online savings account will give you at least a percent and a half right now.

Online banks are very streamlined right now, you can open a bank account in probably fifteen minutes if you have all the paperwork. It’ll take a few days for the accounts to link up but once they do, you’ll be glad you took the time.

Start An Emergency Fund

You’ll never know when a disaster will strike and with the economy in such a funk lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more emergencies crop up. That’s why it’s important to put a little away into an emergency fund. Emergency funds are funds you put aside to pay for emergencies (easy right?) so that you don’t turn to credit cards or other dangerous short term loans. Emergency funds don’t have to be huge, they can be just a couple dollars, but it’s important you start that fund so that you can weather the disasters.

These are just three very quick wins you can do right now that don’t cost you a penny and could save your butt down the road.

Have an Idea for How Twitter Can Improve the World?

By Stephanie, updated October 26, 2009 4 Comments
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If you’ve got an idea for how Twitter can be used to improve the world, and you can communicate it in less than 140 characters, up to $1,400 could be yours!

CollegeScholarships.org, the organization that once gave me a $100 scholarship for this blog (really!) is sponsoring something new called The 140 Scholarship. The entry requirements (from the site):

Currently attending full-time in post-secondary education; and

If you win, you must be willing to allow us to list your name, your picture, and your twitter username, and your winning Tweet on this page.

To enter, you’ll need to tweet your idea for how Twitter can be used to improve the world, and then put out a second tweet @Scholarship with the hashtag #Scholarship and a link to your tweet about how to improve the world.

Hint: to get the link to your tweet to post in your second tweet, click the time (ex. “2 minutes ago”) underneath your first tweet, then copy the address from your address bar when that tweet is alone on the page.

Hurry! The final day to submit your tweet is Thursday, October 29th 2009 — winners will be chosen and announced on October 30th.

The 140 Scholarship from CollegeScholarships.org

Also, you can follow me on Twitter: @stephonee

College Students: Get a Credit Card RIGHT NOW

By Stephanie, updated October 2, 2009 20 Comments
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I’m a big advocate for college students having at least one credit card. Which is funny, because I got myself into a decent amount of trouble and credit card debt in college. But I do strongly believe that responsible credit card use in college is possible… and even necessary! But new government legislation is going to make getting a credit card and building a credit history very difficult for some college students. If you’re one of them, you’ll want to get a credit card now, before the new laws take effect!

You Need to Build a Credit History

I just graduated from college this year. I’m starting to build my life and get all of the “adult” things that go along with that. Including some really dull things like “renters insurance” to protect my belongings in my new apartment. But when I got my renters insurance a few weeks ago, it came with a letter stating:

Thank you for trusting us as your insurance company. We are committed to your satisfaction and providing you with a competitive rate. Many factors are taken into account to rate insurance, including a credit based insurance score. We recently accessed data from the consumer reporting agency… to price your policy. In part, based on the information provided, you did not receive our lowest rate… [emphasis added]

In plain English: my credit history wasn’t long enough, and my credit score not high enough, to get the lowest rate they offer on renters insurance. And I’m no “credit spring chicken!” I’ve had student loans on my report for five years, and I have two credit cards, each with more than two years of history. Someone with no credit history at all would probably pay far more than I do for renters insurance.

Why? Because no credit history is viewed as just as bad as a bad credit history! Unproven customers are scary to insurance agents and loan officers. Just like a 16-year-old with no driving record is charged a lot for car insurance, a new borrower with no credit history is going to be charged a lot for a loan.

Need more examples? How about my friend who just bought a car, but didn’t get a low car loan rate because he’s only had one credit card for one year? Or how about the fact that in addition to loan officers and insurance companies, your credit history and score might be checked by landlords and employers. Yes, they two can decide whether to rent to you or hire you based on your credit history. Ouch.

You Need to Act Now

The CARD Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in May of this year, will severely limit your ability to get a credit card if you’re under 21. The Congressional Research Service summarizes the relevant portion of the new law as this:

Section 301 –

Amends TILA to prohibit extensions of credit to consumers under age 21, unless the consumer has submitted a written application that meets specified requirements. Requires any such application to be signed by a cosigner, including the parent, legal guardian, spouse, or any other individual who has attained the age of 21 having a means to repay debts incurred by the consumer in connection with the account.

In other words, you’ll need a parent to co-sign your credit card and take responsibility for it if you fail to pay. While this is a good idea in theory, it leaves out in the cold many college students who don’t have a good relationship with their parents (or anyone else over 21). This amendment is set to take effect in February of 2010, but (and this is a big but), a few members of Congress have requested that the new laws take effect December 1st, 2009!

That’s good news for the many other consumer protections the CARD Act offers, but bad news for any college students who don’t yet have a credit card, and would have trouble convincing someone to co-sign for them. If that’s you, your time is limited — build credit now!

Other ways to build credit: A credit card may not be right for you, or you may be reading this article too late to act before the CARD Act takes effect. Either way, MSN Money’s Liz Pulliam Weston has a great list of ways to build credit without credit cards. Any application for credit should be taken seriously — you don’t want to start doing these things willy-nilly. But a charge card or a small federal student loan may be worth it for the benefit to your credit history.

#AskFAFSA – Financial Aid Twitter Chat