How to Save Money for College

How to Save Money for College

With college education costs getting higher and higher, it is often up to us as parents to find ways to pay for college. We want the best for our children and we know all that often means a lot of sacrifice. It's just part of the parent job description. Paying off student loans early is good but saving for college is better. The key to success with your savings and saving your sanity is starting to save for those college expenses early. We hope that you this How to Save Money for College post inspires you. 

The best advice I have ever received was to start planning for college as soon as your first child is born but I think that many of us could use a little help when it comes to saving early. I know that I can. It can seem like such a daunting task at times, especially with all of the little challenges that life throws our way as we go about our day. It's easy to just say start saving early, but where do you find the money in the budget? How do you do it?

The good news is this. If you start saving early, it doesn't take a lot of day-to-day savings to add up into real dollars by the time the college years roll around for your child. Let's start at day one. You have a brand new baby and money is tight, where do you begin?

How to Save Money for College

Save all of your spare change.

Seriously. Just set up a big jar somewhere in your home and throw all your loose change into the thing every night. You will be surprised at how quickly that change will add up. Our loose change jar is a large old pickle jar, and it gets counted and saved every few months in our house. The last time we emptied it (about a month ago) there was $400 in that jar. Not too bad for a bunch of change!

Use apps that give you a percentage of your purchases back in cash.

Ibotta, Upromise, Ibotta and so many more. There are lots of apps that you can put on your phone and computer that will rebate money back to you for things that you are already purchasing. That's like free money…perfect for savings. We use these types of apps constantly and easily bank $100 a month in savings money this way.

Start saving automatically through your bank.

Most banks will let you set up a monthly auto transfer to savings. Go ahead and set one up, and transfer a little cash every month. This will help you think about savings like a bill…something that just has to be paid every month. Don't focus too much on the amount at first. Set it at an amount that you will be comfortable covering, and don't worry if the amount you can save each month in this way is small. Just remember, small numbers become big numbers when given enough time.

Document your expenses, and look for places to save.

Write down every penny you spend for a month, and I mean everything. Every coffee. Every sandwich. Everything. Then at the end of the month, go through your expenditures and really look at where the money went. More times than not, we have been able to identify places where we could save money as a family after completing this exercise. 

Talk to a professional.

Sometimes a second set of eyes is exactly what it takes to solve a problem, and it certainly helps if those eyes happen to be experts in your problem. Take for example Country Financial. They have a group within their organization whose whole professional purpose is to help parents and families come up with realistic plans on how to deal with future life expenses such as college. Country Financial also has calculators and information that help to make the research and planning part of saving for college a little easier. You can check out some of this info here if you like.

Doing any of these things is a great start and that's what counts…you have to take step one and start. When it comes to saving and paying for college, starting to save as early as possible is the key. Take that first step and get your savings on, and when you're ready, talk to a professional. We hope that you found this How to Save Money for College post valuable.