Managing Your Money and Time

Managing Your Money and Time

Nearly everyone’s heard of “the poor college student.” There’s some truth to that moniker, even for an online college student.

As an online student, you’re saving money on room and board, commuting and parking costs. But you still have expenses outside tuition and fees. And as an online student, you need to budget more than your money; you need to budget your time as well.

Consider some of these tips to help keep your ancillary costs in check and your schedule on track.

Keeping Your Money

Tuition and fees are only part of the costs of education. The cost of textbooks can add to your expenses.

Argosy University - Online Programs, The Art Institute of Pittsburgh - Online Division and South University - Online Programs each have a convenient, online bookstore through which you can order textbooks and supplemental materials and have them shipped to your door.

Other options for buying your learning materials including renting textbooks, buying discount books online and purchasing ebooks, books that can be downloaded to your personal computer or to special reading devices.

Below is a sample of the various online sites:

Discount book sites

Half

CheapestTextbooks

Textbooks

Other places to try:

Craigslist

eBay

Amazon

Book Swapping Sites

Bookins

PaperBackSwap

SwapTree

Book Rental Sites

Chegg

eCampus

BookRenter

ebook Sites

Ebooks can be downloaded to your personal computer or could require an ebook reader such as the Kindle or Nook. Read the product description to decide what ebook suits your needs.

FreeBookSpot

Free-ebooks

ManyBooks

Keeping on Track

Maybe keeping track of assignments and deadlines in a conventional planner isn’t for you; it’s one more thing to forget or lose. However, staying organized is critical to your success as an online student.

The Internet provides free information and help to get organized:

Consider using the calendar feature of a Web search engine or application you already use, such as Google Calendar or Yahoo Calendar.

30 Boxes is free, simple to set up and offers a number of features including adding your calendar to social networking sites.

The Collegiate Planner helps organize the balance between your workload and your activities.

StudyMinder LITE  helps organize assignments and study time.