Today is not a real entry, but more of an exclamation of excitement and accomplishment. As of today, this very moment, I have officially completed my first year of my PhD program. I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am about this and pride doesn't suffice either. I tried taking a picture on my MacBook to show you, but I'm too happy because they all looked like a scary clown.
At any rate, in a few hours I'll be on a plane to Vegas to party for 48 hours (or really sit by a pool, go to Max Brenner, then sit by a pool some more), before I have to be back to start the summer quarter on Monday.
Adios!
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Friday, September 17, 2010
The Real Costs of Education
This week, in only my second week of classes, I have already experienced a major high and low with respect to the length/cost/amount of work to be done for this program. For those of you who are unaware, I'm currently enrolled in a Clinical Psychology PhD program. When I'm done, in 5 years, I'll be a psychologist. My school is pretty flexible in the sense that some people who come in with Masters in Psychology (like I already have) can do the program in 4 years if they have the right classes to transfer. I am not one of the students, but one of the professors and I talked about a possibility that might work in helping me get out early. Long story short, it's not possible because of certain rules about ordering for taking class, doing your practicum, and your dissertation. Coming into the program I already expected to do it in 5 years, but got my hopes up when I thought that maybe my MA might actually be worth the money I paid and put myself into debt over. But when that turned out not to be the case I was extremely disappointed. It's not anyone's fault, I mean, maybe it's the APA's fault for having such strict rules about stuff. But when you go into such a nitpicky profession where people get sued left and right and people's mental health lies in your hands, I can understand the need to regulate and be strict about training.
In any event, because this week I also deposited my loan refund check into the bank (ie. the amount of money I now have to live in for the next 3 months as decided by my federal loan) and it's a lot more money than I initially thought it would be, I've been freaking out a little bit about just how much this part of my education is going to cost me.
Thanks to my mother's unending penny pinching and need to plan everything financial as far in advance as possible, I managed to go to college and not take out any loans. From the moment she discovered she was pregnant (and I am really not lying about this), she began to save for my education. When I was little, we were poor, so she started out small at first, whatever was manageable $5, $10, etc. and grew as her income did. She also saved most monetary gifts we received as children (when you're 5, do you really need the $300 you got for your birthday? Maybe you need $10 or 15, and the rest can be saved). At one of her long term jobs she participated in an income tax free savings program where she took out bonds specifically for education (we paid the tax later when cashing the bonds as opposed to it coming out of her paycheck). And she enrolled us in an amazing program called New York Saves, that is kind of like a Mutual Fund for college. You give them money, they invest, and you get more money back when you cash in for school (many states have 529 programs, not just New York).
While in many areas of life the penny pinching drove me nuts growing up (see my example of back to school clothes shopping), this is one area I hope to emulate when I have kids. This education cost calculator I found really scares me about how much my future child's education might be. But I wonder how much of this is hype and how much of it is true. Right now our economy is in crisis and many schools are raising tuition at alarmingly high rates because the schools are also in crisis. Could things slow down if they get better? Could there be future reform because a degree is so necessary yet only easily attainable by middle and maybe eventually only upper classes? And what about the fact that right now my salary before I stopped working was good by national standards, but ok for local standards. When I am done with school my potential salary could either double or triple depending on the kind of job I get. Even though the bottom line dollar scares the crap out of me, knowing what I could be making by the time I send my theoretical kids to school puts me at ease, but only a little. I have often said that my goal in life (financially) is to make enough money to send my kids to whatever college they want without having to sacrifice other things like a family vacation, or nice Christmas presents, or food on the table. I'm starting to realize now that the combined salary my husband and I will need to be making to do that is going to fall around 300K. Really!? Who can do that?!
But getting back to the story, because I graduated a year early (APs in high school really helped me out), my mother actually had money left over; so after I received my more than generous graduation gift purchased with some of that, my left over bonds and NY Saves money, in addition to the money I got from working part or full time, went towards my Master's Degree. I only took out one small loan at the end because I wanted to pay off the credit card debt I accumulated and start saving for my wedding. I tried my best to avoid taking out a loan mainly because I knew going into my PhD I would be going into some major debt. And I wanted to do my best to avoid any kind of debt before getting here.
Now that I'm here and my first year loan totals are already more than what my mother paid for my entire undergrad education, and are about the same, maybe even more than what I paid for my Masters, shaving off that extra year looked so good to me. I mean, if I could save 50K, why wouldn't I want to do that? One bad thing about my school is they charge you a full time tuition regardless of how many credits you take, so there is no give when you don't register for the full amount. It actually makes me really angry when I think about it, and most of the people who work there agree that it's a bad practice. So it's a little frustrating to me that it won't ever change.
I started to think about my loan repayment options (thankfully I have many loan forgiveness opportunities as a health care worker, or (potentially) a woman in non-for-profit research, and a minority getting a higher level education degree). And since right now my grades are not high enough to qualify for most grants or scholarships this year I have to hold off on applying for things. Websites like Fast Web and Scholarships.com list out tons of scholarships (that are real) that you can apply to each year. (Be warned though that you will be spammed when you sign up for them with other bogus and real but annoying notifications.) I have used the websites in the past and applied for some, but never got anything, or always looked at the wrong times of the year (each scholarship is different so I don't think there's ever a right time to look, unless you're looking for next year. Then at least you have a leg up on when you need to get applications, apply for things, etc. Keeping a scholarship calendar helps). But until I get my grades for this year, and they are hopefully at least a 3.5 or higher, it's not worth doing anything about.
So many articles are out right now about the "real" cost of a college education. Money you lose by not working vs. debt + money you could gain from more competitive job offerings. Money spent on textbooks, room and board or rent. Money spent on paying to print papers, pencils, laptops, and all kinds of things you may or may not need. It's dizzying when you total it up, and think about the kind of loan you'd have to take out just to pay for a coffee, a 3 subject notebook, and 150 pages worth of printing paper to print out your dissertation.
The epidemic of the chaos caused by the need vs. the cost definitely scares me. We are not all independently wealthy and cannot afford 100K+ education costs. In the meantime I am going to cling to my loan forgiveness, get my grades up, then stalk Fastweb.com in hopes something pans out.
In any event, because this week I also deposited my loan refund check into the bank (ie. the amount of money I now have to live in for the next 3 months as decided by my federal loan) and it's a lot more money than I initially thought it would be, I've been freaking out a little bit about just how much this part of my education is going to cost me.
Thanks to my mother's unending penny pinching and need to plan everything financial as far in advance as possible, I managed to go to college and not take out any loans. From the moment she discovered she was pregnant (and I am really not lying about this), she began to save for my education. When I was little, we were poor, so she started out small at first, whatever was manageable $5, $10, etc. and grew as her income did. She also saved most monetary gifts we received as children (when you're 5, do you really need the $300 you got for your birthday? Maybe you need $10 or 15, and the rest can be saved). At one of her long term jobs she participated in an income tax free savings program where she took out bonds specifically for education (we paid the tax later when cashing the bonds as opposed to it coming out of her paycheck). And she enrolled us in an amazing program called New York Saves, that is kind of like a Mutual Fund for college. You give them money, they invest, and you get more money back when you cash in for school (many states have 529 programs, not just New York).
While in many areas of life the penny pinching drove me nuts growing up (see my example of back to school clothes shopping), this is one area I hope to emulate when I have kids. This education cost calculator I found really scares me about how much my future child's education might be. But I wonder how much of this is hype and how much of it is true. Right now our economy is in crisis and many schools are raising tuition at alarmingly high rates because the schools are also in crisis. Could things slow down if they get better? Could there be future reform because a degree is so necessary yet only easily attainable by middle and maybe eventually only upper classes? And what about the fact that right now my salary before I stopped working was good by national standards, but ok for local standards. When I am done with school my potential salary could either double or triple depending on the kind of job I get. Even though the bottom line dollar scares the crap out of me, knowing what I could be making by the time I send my theoretical kids to school puts me at ease, but only a little. I have often said that my goal in life (financially) is to make enough money to send my kids to whatever college they want without having to sacrifice other things like a family vacation, or nice Christmas presents, or food on the table. I'm starting to realize now that the combined salary my husband and I will need to be making to do that is going to fall around 300K. Really!? Who can do that?!
But getting back to the story, because I graduated a year early (APs in high school really helped me out), my mother actually had money left over; so after I received my more than generous graduation gift purchased with some of that, my left over bonds and NY Saves money, in addition to the money I got from working part or full time, went towards my Master's Degree. I only took out one small loan at the end because I wanted to pay off the credit card debt I accumulated and start saving for my wedding. I tried my best to avoid taking out a loan mainly because I knew going into my PhD I would be going into some major debt. And I wanted to do my best to avoid any kind of debt before getting here.
Now that I'm here and my first year loan totals are already more than what my mother paid for my entire undergrad education, and are about the same, maybe even more than what I paid for my Masters, shaving off that extra year looked so good to me. I mean, if I could save 50K, why wouldn't I want to do that? One bad thing about my school is they charge you a full time tuition regardless of how many credits you take, so there is no give when you don't register for the full amount. It actually makes me really angry when I think about it, and most of the people who work there agree that it's a bad practice. So it's a little frustrating to me that it won't ever change.
I started to think about my loan repayment options (thankfully I have many loan forgiveness opportunities as a health care worker, or (potentially) a woman in non-for-profit research, and a minority getting a higher level education degree). And since right now my grades are not high enough to qualify for most grants or scholarships this year I have to hold off on applying for things. Websites like Fast Web and Scholarships.com list out tons of scholarships (that are real) that you can apply to each year. (Be warned though that you will be spammed when you sign up for them with other bogus and real but annoying notifications.) I have used the websites in the past and applied for some, but never got anything, or always looked at the wrong times of the year (each scholarship is different so I don't think there's ever a right time to look, unless you're looking for next year. Then at least you have a leg up on when you need to get applications, apply for things, etc. Keeping a scholarship calendar helps). But until I get my grades for this year, and they are hopefully at least a 3.5 or higher, it's not worth doing anything about.
So many articles are out right now about the "real" cost of a college education. Money you lose by not working vs. debt + money you could gain from more competitive job offerings. Money spent on textbooks, room and board or rent. Money spent on paying to print papers, pencils, laptops, and all kinds of things you may or may not need. It's dizzying when you total it up, and think about the kind of loan you'd have to take out just to pay for a coffee, a 3 subject notebook, and 150 pages worth of printing paper to print out your dissertation.
The epidemic of the chaos caused by the need vs. the cost definitely scares me. We are not all independently wealthy and cannot afford 100K+ education costs. In the meantime I am going to cling to my loan forgiveness, get my grades up, then stalk Fastweb.com in hopes something pans out.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Back to School on a Budget
It's that time of year again! For some, it's the best time of year, for others, it's the most dreaded. I guess it all depends on if you're a parent, student, or teacher, or any combination of the three. This year, I am once again a student, and shopping for school supplies this year really stressed me out because I did not want to spend money on anything.
Here's a few tips on going back to school on a budget that I have learned myself, and some I learned from my friend, the internet.
- Look at how many pens and pencils you have in your house, do you really need to buy a whole new box of either? Probably not. I think I only use 3 a year, and I know I've got way more than that lying around. The same thing goes for other items on the supply list. You can always buy more if you run out, but there's no point in having 5 half used bottles of glue around. And I know I personally have about 20 post it note pads. Lesson learned there.
- You can reuse old notebooks. A lot of times you don't finish them off before the end of the year and there's tons of pages left. Figure out either a hard copy filing system or scan the pages into PDF format to save on your computer, and use the rest of the notebook for something else. Same thing goes with old binders, or you can always condense binders together and reuse the ones that are now empty.
- Use your over-sized Lindsay Lohan purse as your backpack. What else do you carry in there? You can also buy those smaller sized notebooks if you're worried about where you're going to keep the rest of that stuff.
- Old notebook paper hole punched is now looseleaf paper
- Give your old computer some maintenance before the year starts and you may save on having to buy a new one (this is tricky because I have a husband who works in IT and knows how to fix things while going to a place like Geek Squad or other retailers will cost you money, and sometimes a lot of money. But he's gotten my computer to last at least an extra 2 years, knock on wood longer, just by spending $30 on replacing little things here and there and giving it a good clean up once in awhile)
- An obvious one, shop the sales and use coupons. You can always find them online if you don't have any to clip. There's also the $1 store.
- Did you know Bed Bath and Beyond takes expired coupons? Did you also know that you can give them more than one coupon in a purchase?
- Know your printing paper limits at school (if you can plan out when to print papers or other long things, that will save you $$), also know this is something you can protest and change (as I have seen many times at all the schools I've gone to)
- Get textbooks from other places besides the school store, sometimes you can even get one edition older (but never more) and still get an almost identical version of the same book (check with your professor first, or just ask a friend to share if there's something important in one chapter you miss). Amazon and Half.com tend to work the best for me, but there are other websites you can look into as well. And know the full price of the book and what online shipping costs ahead of time so you can better compare.
- Use Amazon.com student (see older entry about this)
- Don't buy things in the school bookstore if you can help it (EVERYTHING is more expensive there), although there are also times when school stores offer really good package discounts.
- Your child doesn't need the best quality, most expensive everything, but some things are important for them to pick out (like which backpack, or binder) since that is their way to express their personality. That being said, if what they want is way too expensive, you can direct them to the cheaper stuff. And it's always possible to decorate with patches, stickers, etc. This article also suggested that this is a good time to teach your child about budgeting.
- When shopping for new clothes, set a budget that is realistic and know where to go to get as many items as possible that fit in that budget. My mother always had the same budget for us, but when you're 6 and when you're 12 things don't cost the same. And I honestly think it did the exact opposite as far as teaching me to budget went because I often had to choose between things I knew I needed. Sneakers are double the price, and even jeans at cheaper places sky rocket in costs. Take them to stores like H&M that have trendy kid clothes for cheaper prices, or Khol's, Marshall's, etc. where you can get everything in one store at a discount. Khol's is especially good for this because of their insane amounts of coupons and their clearance section cannot be beat. Depending on the age/gender, this is a good time to let them shop as well, of course while keeping them in that budget. Target and Walmart are also good because you can do all your shopping in one store, meaning you need to travel less, are tempted less, and if you have a coupon or can get a discount with a credit card, it'll go even further.
- There are lots of organizations that want to help your child succeed. You can do searches to find local and national charities that will help pay or give away supplies if you simply can't afford to buy everything.
Here's a really good budget calculator I found that might also help.
Shine and Quizzle had a really good tip on how to offset some of the costs of going back to school:
- "Remember all those clothes you took out of your child’s closet because they don’t fit her anymore? Guess what? They probably fit someone else’s kid. Rather than donating them or packing them into your storage closet, take them to a consignment shop and see if you can sell any of them. A consignment shop will sell the clothes for you and give you a portion of the proceeds. By reselling some of your child’s old clothes, you can recoup some of the money you spent buying new ones. A garage sale can help with this too." And I'm guessing you can get rid of a lot of other junk as well.
Here's a few tips on going back to school on a budget that I have learned myself, and some I learned from my friend, the internet.
- Look at how many pens and pencils you have in your house, do you really need to buy a whole new box of either? Probably not. I think I only use 3 a year, and I know I've got way more than that lying around. The same thing goes for other items on the supply list. You can always buy more if you run out, but there's no point in having 5 half used bottles of glue around. And I know I personally have about 20 post it note pads. Lesson learned there.
- You can reuse old notebooks. A lot of times you don't finish them off before the end of the year and there's tons of pages left. Figure out either a hard copy filing system or scan the pages into PDF format to save on your computer, and use the rest of the notebook for something else. Same thing goes with old binders, or you can always condense binders together and reuse the ones that are now empty.
- Use your over-sized Lindsay Lohan purse as your backpack. What else do you carry in there? You can also buy those smaller sized notebooks if you're worried about where you're going to keep the rest of that stuff.
- Old notebook paper hole punched is now looseleaf paper
- Give your old computer some maintenance before the year starts and you may save on having to buy a new one (this is tricky because I have a husband who works in IT and knows how to fix things while going to a place like Geek Squad or other retailers will cost you money, and sometimes a lot of money. But he's gotten my computer to last at least an extra 2 years, knock on wood longer, just by spending $30 on replacing little things here and there and giving it a good clean up once in awhile)
- An obvious one, shop the sales and use coupons. You can always find them online if you don't have any to clip. There's also the $1 store.
- Did you know Bed Bath and Beyond takes expired coupons? Did you also know that you can give them more than one coupon in a purchase?
- Know your printing paper limits at school (if you can plan out when to print papers or other long things, that will save you $$), also know this is something you can protest and change (as I have seen many times at all the schools I've gone to)
- Get textbooks from other places besides the school store, sometimes you can even get one edition older (but never more) and still get an almost identical version of the same book (check with your professor first, or just ask a friend to share if there's something important in one chapter you miss). Amazon and Half.com tend to work the best for me, but there are other websites you can look into as well. And know the full price of the book and what online shipping costs ahead of time so you can better compare.
- Use Amazon.com student (see older entry about this)
- Don't buy things in the school bookstore if you can help it (EVERYTHING is more expensive there), although there are also times when school stores offer really good package discounts.
- Your child doesn't need the best quality, most expensive everything, but some things are important for them to pick out (like which backpack, or binder) since that is their way to express their personality. That being said, if what they want is way too expensive, you can direct them to the cheaper stuff. And it's always possible to decorate with patches, stickers, etc. This article also suggested that this is a good time to teach your child about budgeting.
- When shopping for new clothes, set a budget that is realistic and know where to go to get as many items as possible that fit in that budget. My mother always had the same budget for us, but when you're 6 and when you're 12 things don't cost the same. And I honestly think it did the exact opposite as far as teaching me to budget went because I often had to choose between things I knew I needed. Sneakers are double the price, and even jeans at cheaper places sky rocket in costs. Take them to stores like H&M that have trendy kid clothes for cheaper prices, or Khol's, Marshall's, etc. where you can get everything in one store at a discount. Khol's is especially good for this because of their insane amounts of coupons and their clearance section cannot be beat. Depending on the age/gender, this is a good time to let them shop as well, of course while keeping them in that budget. Target and Walmart are also good because you can do all your shopping in one store, meaning you need to travel less, are tempted less, and if you have a coupon or can get a discount with a credit card, it'll go even further.
- There are lots of organizations that want to help your child succeed. You can do searches to find local and national charities that will help pay or give away supplies if you simply can't afford to buy everything.
Here's a really good budget calculator I found that might also help.
Shine and Quizzle had a really good tip on how to offset some of the costs of going back to school:
- "Remember all those clothes you took out of your child’s closet because they don’t fit her anymore? Guess what? They probably fit someone else’s kid. Rather than donating them or packing them into your storage closet, take them to a consignment shop and see if you can sell any of them. A consignment shop will sell the clothes for you and give you a portion of the proceeds. By reselling some of your child’s old clothes, you can recoup some of the money you spent buying new ones. A garage sale can help with this too." And I'm guessing you can get rid of a lot of other junk as well.
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