The College Years

Fall 2004 was the start of my college life at Northeastern University. I was young, naive, and very free with my money. My freshman year would be the only year that my parents helped pay for college. The rest of my college years were funded by different awards through the school, federal grants and loans, and private student loans. I spent a total of 5 years in school including 18-months of co-op (paid internship) experience.

Now, there was a lot of things that I could have done differently while in college, but looking back, I'm glad I made those big choices like working during school. I always had a job or two during the year. I made a timeline of my work history. I have no idea how I did it during my middler year (2006-2007). I must have had amazing time management skills because I manage to hold three part-time jobs (about 25 hours a week, 16 hours were weekdays), go to school full-time, exercise 30-45 minutes a day, and get a full 8 hours of sleep.

So you would think I would be swimming in money from working so much. Not so. I didn't know a thing about saving. I went shopping every weekend and sent every 4th paycheck home to my mom (I got paid every other week). I only managed to save 20% of my money from each co-op, only to use it again for books and other necessities during the school year. 

I wish I was smarter back during my college years. I should have saved at least 30% of all earned income (after taxes) and put 50% towards paying off the interest on my student loans. The last 20% would have covered all my fun expenses. If I have money left over from paying the student loan interest, I should have saved it up to pay the school directly and not taken that amount out in loans. It would have been a good idea to also move off-campus and find cheaper housing. 

Well, there you have it - the reason why I'm paying about $780 per month in student loan payments is mostly due to housing costs. A semester at NU costs about $4200 - 5400 per semester or $1050 - 1350 per month. The only time I didn't live on-campus was when I went home the summer after freshman year, my first co-op, and my two-month trip to Cali. I had $80k worth of student loans from Sallie Mae and the federal government plus $10k worth of capitalized interest from my Sallie Mae loans.

What a shocker it was to get the total before the end of my grace period back in October 2009!

Part 1: Growing Up with Mommy     Part 2: The High School Years