How to go to School on a Budget

I'm not sure if I've told you yet but I am going back to school this fall.  If you've been here for awhile you might remember that I had to take a hardship withdrawal from classes during my second year of college because I was having seizures.  Well I am better now, and have not had a seizure for over two years!, so I'm ready to go back to school.

I am lucky because I still have the scholarship that I got, the Achiever's Scholarship, which will cover most of my tuition, along with any other government financial aid I may receive.  But it might not cover everything.  Last time I was in school it was a public university and this time it is a community college, which will cost way way less, but I don't know yet how much aid I'll be receiving.  Add to that the fact that I make minimum wage and only work part-time and you understand just how much money I don't have.  Money to spend on things like textbooks.  Textbooks are really expensive!  Last time I was in school, I had to buy at least one textbook per class and had five classes each quarter.  Textbooks cost between 70 dollars and hundred dollars, which makes at least $350 per quarter spent on textbooks alone!  The bookstore had a buyback option where I could sell back my textbooks at the end of each quarter but they usually wouldn't buy back a book because it wasn't the edition the class would be using next time, or if they did buy back the books it was for significantly less than I paid for them.  For a good quarter I might get back $30 of the $350 I had to pay.

This is where CampusBookRentals.com comes in.  I wish I could go back in time and tell past me about textbook rentals.  I could have saved so much money to use later on for fun things like paying my rent.  Here are some of the benefits of renting from CampusBookRentals.com:

• you save 40-90% off bookstore prices (yes, you read that right; save up to 90%!)
• free shipping both ways
• you can highlight in your textbooks (which is great because usually the bookstore won't buy back books that have been highlighted in)
• they donate to Operation Smile with each textbook rented; Operation Smile is a great organization that gives cleft lip surgeries to children; You can make children smile while making yourself smile.  Sounds pretty good to me.
• if you love a textbook and want to keep it, you can pay the difference and do just that
• you can return your books for a full refund as long as it's within 21 days

Now if you're like me and are late to the textbook rentals party, you probably still have some old textbooks sitting around taking up precious bookshelf space.  Instead of letting your textbooks sit there and gather dust, you could be making money off of them through Rentback.com!  You get to send away your old textbooks and make money off of them every time they get rented.  Watch this video to learn more.



This fall I will definitely be renting all of my textbooks so I can save more money for paying my rent.

This is a sponsored post, but all opinions are definitely my own.

Save Some Money if You're In College

Today I would like to tell you about something that I wish I had known about when I was in college, renting textbooks.  Textbooks cost about $100 each if you buy them from a bookstore, which is pretty outrageous, especially when you probably won't even end up reading the whole thing.  If you're still in college, you should definitely check out http://www.campusbookrentals.com/.  There are quite a few benefits to renting textbooks through their site, which include but are not limited to:
-saving 40-90% off of bookstore prices!
-free shipping both ways
-30 day risk free guarantee
-can highlight in the textbooks (this is pretty great since bookstores normally won't buy your textbooks if you highlighted in them)
-flexible renting periods
-monthly giveaways, textbook scholarships, shirts, and other prizes. Registration is free and you do not have to be a paying customer to win
-they donate to Operation Smile with each textbook rented (For those of you who don't know, Operation Smile is a great organization that fixes cleft lips for families who could not afford it otherwise.  This allows the children to go through life with more confidence and higher self-esteem.)

Another amazing program offered by this site is called RentBack.  How many of you have tried to sell back your books at the end of the quarter (for usually somewhere around 5% of what you paid for them to start with), only to be told that the bookstore wouldn't buy your books?  It's happened to me many times.  ANd then you're just stuck with all of these textbooks that you are never going to read.  Either that or you donate them to Goodwill or similar for free.  Rentback is a really cool program for current or former college students.  If you still have some textbooks taking up space, look them up on RentBack.  Ship your books to them, and every time your textbooks get rented by students, you'll get paid.  Your textbooks can be rented over and over and over and you'll get paid every single time.  And seriously, who couldn't use a little extra money?!

Check out this video to learn more.