Four Ways to Help Your College Student with Finances

In a perfect world, you would have enough money to pay for your child’s college expenses. Unfortunately, with the rising cost of tuition and the stagnation of wages, college is becoming more and more difficult for families to afford.

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Just because you can’t pay for your child’s tuition doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways you can help them with college finances!

Here are four ways you can lessen the burden of college finances for your student.

Send Them Some Spending Money--

Every little bit counts. Even if you can only afford to send them $20 here and there, you can bet that your student will appreciate it!

It’s easier than ever to send money too. No longer do you have to send a check in the mail or share the same bank account. With money transfer services, like Remitly, you can even send money overseas to a student who is studying abroad.

Offer to Pay for Some Expenses--

The biggest expenses are often the ones that come to mind first, if you want to help your student pay for college. If you have the ability, by all means, pay for a portion of their tuition or their housing. If you don’t have a big chunk of cash to help with the two largest college expenses, there are still plenty of other things you can help pay for.

A few other college costs that you can help pay for include:

• Textbooks
• Electronics
• Summer storage
• Fraternity or sorority dues
• Transportation

Help Them Apply for Scholarships--

One of the best ways for a student to lessen their loan burden is to apply for scholarships, but hunting down the right ones and actually applying for them can be difficult. That’s especially the case if you have a child who is busy with extracurricular activities.

Help them find and apply for scholarships. That might mean doing a scholarship search online and sending applicable links to your student, or it could mean assembling the proper application materials and sending them to your college student to fill out. You may even stumble across some grants you can apply for on your child’s behalf!

Help Them with Their Loans--

Chances are, your student will have to take out at least one loan, but they won’t have any idea where to start. You can help by exploring their loan options with them.

From filling out FAFSA information every year to helping them seek out private lenders with the best rates, there’s a lot you can do to make sure your child gets affordable loans.

You can also consider taking out loans yourself. Parent PLUS loans are an option for parents who have the means to take on debt on behalf of their child.

There’s no reason to feel defeated if you can’t pay for your child’s college education! There are plenty of ways you can reduce costs to make life more comfortable for them both now and in the future.