by Hope
Sea Cadet comes by every week to hang out with mom. He started back to school this week too, completing his Associates in Paramedicine. This is the next step towards his ultimate goal of being a PA. He’s working as an EMT (still part time), a bowling alley mechanic (also part time), for me doing web work (part time) and then going to school full time. He’s a busy guy!
Thankfully, because of the twins being a special needs adoption, they qualify for the maximum is financial aid. So his school is essentially paid for. But there’s a downside to that as well…he’s not careful with that money. So when he came by last week, he brought the books he’d just picked up for his classes. $1,000 is books!! Ouch! Covered by student grants, but still.
On the other hand, Princess and I work diligently to keep her costs as low as possible. So when it was time for her to get books, she did the legwork and I did the keyboard work. She got the list of books needed for her 16 credit hours of classes and visited the college bookstore to take note of availability, costs, new/used, online vs paper book. With that information, we shopped around…and score!
She got all her books for the semester for just at $250. Some of the books were $300 by themselves if purchased new.
Our Trick
Amazon textbook rental! Most of her books for between $25-32 to rent for the semester. And because she’s in a big city now, all were delivered within 2 days. Awesome, awesome! The most she paid for a book was $60. (By the end of the first week of class, the professor uploaded it for free to the class portal, so she was bummed about that spend.)
She will have to ship them back right after her classes are over in December. But we were both thrilled with how frugal we were with the spend. Especially after she compared what she would have spent if she just went to the college bookstore and purchased them…
(Sea Cadet knows all this. We did it for his dual enrollment classes. He just didn’t plan ahead this time and is not as concerned about saving money since it’s all covered for him.)
Any other money savings tips for college program? Or technical programs?
Hope is a resourceful, solutions-driven online business manager with over two decades of experience helping clients streamline operations, manage projects, and grow their businesses through digital marketing and technology.
But life has a way of rewriting your plans.
A year ago, Hope made the decision to move in with her aging parents full time – a season she wouldn’t trade, even as it came with its own financial and emotional weight. Earlier this year, she lost her mother, and is now walking the tender, disorienting path of grief while learning what “forward” looks like from here.
Hope came to the Blogging Away Debt community in 2015 as a single mom raising five foster and adoptive children. She’s written through job changes, financial setbacks, and the bittersweet transition to an empty nest. Her kids are finding their footing in the world now – and so is she.
Rooted in faith and fueled by the same perseverance she’s brought to every hard season, Hope is ready to face her finances with fresh eyes and an honest pen. She believes that clarity, courage, and community can change the trajectory of anyone’s story including her own.
She lives in Austin, TX with her dad, loves adventures with her dog Addie, and is figuring out, one step at a time, what this next chapter is meant to be.
It’s been many years since I was in college, but a younger coworker of mine mentioned that he would find the textbook’s IBAN number and type that into Google followed by “PDF” and “free”. He was often able to find free digital copies of the books he needed for class
This is a great idea. I didn’t even think of it, probably because I do not like online book reading very much.
But Princess doesn’t mind it. We will definitely incorporate this into our process for next semester!
Thank you!
…or perhaps he made the perfectly reasonable choice to accept free books that will be useful references for his career and future studies? Maybe next semester you can help the kid juggling school and multiple jobs as much as your Princess.
I am always available to help him, he knows that. The difference is I’m no longer paying his bill, managing his schedule, etc. So I can make myself available…but it’s up to him to take advantage of it.
And you are right, these may come in handy down the road. I would just have shopped around a bit. And it might have saved significantly.
Sorry to be snarky but it just seems funny that you’re criticizing your son for his spending habits. Pot meet kettle.
True, but don’t we always want our kids to be better than us…
With my oldest we were able to shop around quite a bit for used or rental textbooks and that was nice the first 2 years he was in college. My youngest son’s school almost exclusively used “codes” for all their electronic books so there was no opportunity to save unfortunately. My older son’s college had also transferred to that system by the time he’d graduated. I’m sure there was a financial benefit for the university with that but it certainly made it tough on the students looking for any type of financial savings.
It’s been 15 years since I’ve been in school. But they used to have soft cover “international” editions of most textbooks that you could buy online. They were a fraction of the cost of the hard copy US editions (maybe 1/3rd). You did have to check to ensure the homework questions were in the same order though. But as long as you had a friend in the class you could cross-check pretty easily.