College Without Ramen Noodles, A Guide to Affording College

By Floyd Saunders

Do you doubt that college is possible for you? Stop doubting and read College Without Ramen Noodles; A Guide to Affording College. In 10 chapters, this highly readable guide provides college students and their parents with dozens of ways to make college a reality. In fact, use enough of these tips, and you may keep college debt at zero.

Author Floyd Saunders has spent the last 20 years helping his five kids get post-secondary education using many of the options highlighted in this book. If you are already working on a degree, start cutting expenses now using 78 practical tips that lower your living expenses. Mr. Saunders even tells you some good reasons why you might be better off with an alternative to a college degree. Regardless of your circumstances, this book offers valuable information as you consider going to college.

For parents, get valuable tips on savings for college and guidance on what to do if you haven't saved enough (it's actually OK you didn't). College Without Ramen Noodles is written from the author's personal experience of sending five kids to college over the past 20 years. His children attended trade schools, private colleges and state universities. Over the past 20 years Mr. Saunders had to use money saved in college funds, loans and current income to fund his children's education.

Mr. Saunders takes his personal experience and combines it with a carefully researched book full of practical advice and tips. You make think college is too expensive or that the only way to afford college is with lots of student loans. In this guide to affording college, the author offers lots of optional ways to get the college education you need to be ready for the career you want and make sure it is still affordable. From working part-time, to getting a full ride scholarship, this book covers all the options.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Floyd Saunders
• Release date: Sep 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9780982401927

Floyd Saunders

Floyd Saunders is the author of several books including: Figuring Out Wall Street, Family Financial Freedom, 10 Step Money, College Without Ramen Noodles and Common Sense Money. Mr. Saunders has also authored four programs for the American Bankers Association, Banking on Mutual Funds and Annuities, Mutual Funds and Annuities, Introduction to Securities Markets and Investing in Securities.Floyd D. Saunders has a diverse background in the financial services industry, including experience in retail banking, investment banking, insurance, investments, financial planning, and tax preparation. He has been an adjunct faculty member for Baker University, St. Mary’s College and Community Colleges in California, teaching courses in personal financial planning, managerial finance, money and banking, and principles of banking. He has also taught extensively for the American Institute of Banking and various banks.Mr. Saunders’ professional experience includes assignments in the business lines of retail banking operations, investment banking, institutional trust and securities services, employee and management training, and systems engineering for banking, accounting, and tax preparation firms. He has worked for Bank of America, JP Morgan and JPMorgan Chase, and as a consultant in the financial services industry. He has prior experience as a registered representative and frequently publishes articles on personal financial planning.Mr. Saunders earned a Master of Arts degree in Management from Central Michigan University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Diego State University.

Book preview

College Without Ramen Noodles:

A Guide to Affording College

By

Floyd Saunders

College Without Ramen Noodles

Copyright 2013 Floyd Saunders

ISBN 13: 978-0-9824019-2-7

ISBN 10: 0-9824019-2-2

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Thanks

Many thanks to my editor and cover designer, Jan Swartzendruber, whose hard work and clear thinking improved the final version significantly.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Yes, You Can Go to College

Chapter Two: Saving for College

Chapter Three: Ten Ways to Make College More Affordable

Chapter Four: Even More Ways to Afford College

Chapter Five: Where to Look for Grants, Scholarships and Loans

Chapter Six: Non-Traditional Ways to Earn a Degree

Chapter Seven: A Better Future – With College

Chapter Eight: Stretching Your Dollars While in College

Chapter Nine: Alternatives to College

Chapter Ten: Nine Reasons Families Might Not Want to Save for College

Summary

Introduction

My daughter, a recent college graduate, assures me that most college students eat a lot of ramen noodles in order to stretch their available money and stay in school. Her younger brother will graduate from high school soon, and he knows his parents can’t write a check to cover his college costs. He’s not a meat-and-potatoes kid, but he’s also hoping to eat more than starch and water for the next four years or more.

Over the past 40 years, since my first son was born, I have lived with the reality that paying for the education of my children would be a struggle. As each of my four additional children joined the family, no master plan magically appeared to help me save for those looming expenses. I have been blessed, so far, to manage by using a combination of savings, loans and current income that – added to their scholarships and grants – have helped four of them complete degrees. And each of my kids has shared the responsibility of paying for college with campus and part-time jobs.

For obvious reasons, I’ve been researching the college cost problem, and, happily, many of the ideas I offer in this book can help you graduate from college on a low-ramen diet. My goal is to help you find alternative ways to get your degree without incurring a crushing load of debt by proposing additional options you might not have considered.

If you are in college now or planning to attend college in the near future, you are facing the daunting fact that education is incredibly expensive. Perhaps you were counting on help from your parents and have learned that their resources are limited. If you are a parent, you may feel that you should be providing the best education possible while facing the reality that tuition has soared at twice the rate of inflation and federal assistance for students is no longer easily available.

As I wrote this book, congress had to deal with the problem that interest rates on government supported student loans were set to double, making college even more expensive. Although a compromise kept interests rates from doubling, they are now pegged to the value of Treasury notes and college debt will continue to burden students. College is not going to get any less expensive, but in College Without Ramen Noodles, I present dozens of alternative ways to afford college without taking on the burden of student loans – or at least making loans a smaller part of resources you must tap.

Prospective college students and their parents have every right to be concerned. But you should also know that even with dire economic news, there are lots of ways to afford a college education.

What’s the secret of paying today’s steep price for a college education while avoiding a diet of Ramen noodles? There are lots of them. But first, here’s a little background explaining why college is so much harder to afford today than it was for your parents.

What happened to the American Dream? In America, we think of college graduation as the first step to achieving the American Dream. The older generation has passed on to their kids the faith that a first-rate college education will be available to anyone who seeks it out. Unfortunately, if you are a student today, you realize that obtaining a college education may be financially out of reach just at the time when you are shopping for colleges.

That’s because the system is broken, as tuition costs are rising faster than inflation while the quality of a college education at many public institutions continues to decline. In fact, since 1978, the cost of attending college has increased more than 1,120 percent.

As a result, the average student now graduates with debts totaling $27,500, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Nearly one in five households are paying off student debt. With this burden on their future budgets, too many college graduates are finding the promise of achieving the American Dream is sadly elusive.

Why has tuition has gone up so far, so quickly? The average yearly tuition increase at most public colleges across the United States is 4.6 percent. That’s more than twice the rate of general rate of inflation, according to data from the College Board. Let’s look at why this happens.

In the days before government subsidized grants and loans were easily available, if you couldn’t afford the cost of college, you didn’t go. Perhaps your parents were like mine, stuck in low paying jobs, with very little in a savings account. That lack of money, creating a resulting lower demand, kept prices in check.

Once the government started providing things like Pell Grants and student loans, a college degree was a realistic goal for almost everyone. In most states tuition was very affordable, and in some cases free.

Grants were given to disadvantaged students, and student loans were made available to everyone else. Now nearly everyone who wanted to attend college did.

This changed the demand curve for the cost of college, and if you understand anything about prices and demand, you know that prices rises anytime there is an increase in demand. It was this injection of money that increased demand for the product (a college education) that caused prices to rapidly rise.

Once everyone could afford to go to college, tuition prices continued to increase to bring in more revenue. Just look back over the past several years. I think you will find that every time the amount of grant money has increased for disadvantaged and poor students, many schools have responded by raising their tuition prices. This has the result of leaving the disadvantaged in the same hole: they have more money available from grants and loans to attend college, but college is now more expensive. Yet even the disadvantaged students have options to make college more affordable,