Increasing Your College Savings Fund

In my last post, I talked about the best way to increase your college savings fund – budgeting.  If you can get a good handle on your overall household budget, hopefully you can find the opportunity to put more money into the college fund.  There are other ways to increase the college fund too and here are a couple that I like.

Upromise

The one I like the most is Upromise.  It is a website that helps you turn your normal spending into college savings.  I use it mainly for online purchases.  Most of the websites I purchase from kick in a college savings contribution equal to 5% of your total purchase amount (before any tax and shipping charges).  Over time, this really adds up, especially if you are purchasing bigger ticket items online like vacations, computers, jewelry, etc.  There are other ways to save through Upromise too besides just online purchases.  If you click on the link below, you can learn all about Upromise.  I am signed up for their affiliate program, so I will get a small commission from this link.

Your Student Should Get A Job!

Ok, so this is an obvious one.  My daughter started working a summer job after her junior year of high school.  I set out the expectation that she would save $1500 that summer towards college.  Anything she made beyond that was hers to spend.  I have also told her that she will be required to work a part-time job during college.  Every college we visited has indicated that there are plenty of on-campus jobs to choose from.  I will not expect her to work more than 15 hours per week, but that should be enough to contribute over $400 per month towards her college expenses.