College living is expensive and its no use crying to the whole world about it! Its time to get moving and find a better way to manage your money as soon as possible. The faster you learn how to manage your money the better for you in the long run. I don’t want to preach but here are a few tips on money management I learnt the hard way!

5 Ways To Be Money Smart As A College Student

1. Most colleges require you to live compulsorily on campus. Although this is really great for security and transport ;Its total rip off for you hard earned money. Most college dorms are way to highly priced and too poky for any one to stay in. If you live off-campus you can save about 50-75% off your current dormitory bills and this is counting the security deposit. It might be difficult to get out of this compulsory rule but beg , borrow , lie or steal to get the necessary permission to live off-campus.
2. Sift your expenses into necessary, absolutely-necessary and non-essential.Try to cut down all non-essentials like Starbucks coffee, cable television, eating out regularly, expensive test books, tobacco, alcohol, movie, clothing etc.
3. Each semester find a student who is trying to sell off possessions .You can really neat requirements like a washer-dryer sets, text books,  etc.A good way to go about this is to contact your professors early on and find out the requirements for new course’s,then get a list of old students from the university office. Contacting them can be pretty difficult with you having to get telephone numbers form the office or using a Orkut or even Facebook to get your requests through.
4. See if any of your friend work nearby and at what institutions. See what you can get off them. For example most students who double as servers do get free meals so try cadging a few off from different type of friends for a better meal time.You can also  try to avoid the college meal plan; its really too expensive .Making a sandwich in the dorm is much more healthy and really cheaper.
5. If you have a whole slot of student loans, a  good idea will be to contact a good debt consolidation agency like student loan dir  which will help you to consolidate your loans at reasonable disocunt.This brings your loans under a single umbrella lender with a single much lesser payment every month. Much better than missing out payments and getting a lousy credit history or declaring bankruptcy!