This Cheddar News report highlights the importance of setting a college budget as well as some of the best ways to save money and spend less. 

This Cheddar News report highlights the importance of setting a college budget as well as some of the best ways to save money and spend less.&nbsp;

Wake Up With Cheddar

Stretching Your Dollar: The Importance of Setting a College Budget 

Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to news. I'm now I'm headed do. It's now time for stretching your dollar. Indeed. Yeah, we're, this is where we highlight some of the ways that you can be savvy and also save your money. So with inflation still high, Hannah, it's important to set and keep a budget, especially for students that are heading off to college. And Janice Lieberman has more on how they can save. Take a look at this, whether you're going back to school yourself or you're sending your child to college, you need to be aware of all the other expenses involved and not get carried away with impulse buys, going back to college as an adult or leaving home for the first time is exciting but also costly. You need to set a budget and stick to it. There are tools you can use to see what you're spending on and what you have left in your account. Use a tool like mint dot com, use a tool like Papaya. There's so many apps out there and we know our kids love to spend time on their phones, put them to work, give them a certain amount of money. You can Venmo it to them and say, here's what you get, set the allowance and when it's gone it's gone. Make sure that they know how much it costs. Sometimes it's easy, easy to swipe and go and there's no real cost to that. They think it was free. But we know it actually costs money, especially if we're giving them that money to spend. It's never too early to have this talk with your kids. We've been talking to her about not spending money. Um, she's 16 so she likes to go to the mall, hang out with her friends and it's always, you know, she wants to ride here and a ride there and I explain to her guess it's expensive and you know, to go to the mall, you need to spend money and if you're going back to school later in life, you likely have other family expenses to take into account that might make college even more expensive. When you think about when you're older, what are the milestones in life that you might have to postpone? Maybe you won't be able to buy the first home, but you actually will stay in that apartment and rent a little bit longer. So you can pay for your education and figure out if going back makes financial sense. So really know what the cost benefit is by going back to college, going back for that second degree or graduate school. It really is. A financial investment that does set some timelines differently than you might have originally thought. Don't forget to take advantage of any student discounts. You can Amazon Amtrak movies and more. I'm Janice Lieberman and that's the real deal. All right. Our thanks to Janice Lieberman for that report. I mean, thinking back to college, I mean, did you, were you able to manage a budget? I, because I wasn't either. I was spending so much money. But do you remember when you first show up on a college campus? There are all these uh credit card, my credit card and a lot of these kids. I mean, we, we fell victim to it too. We're 17, 18 and we're like, yeah, sure, give me that credit card and you don't know how to budget. Like it's almost, they're, they're targeting you on purpose. It's kind of dangerous when it comes to our, it is also on top of that. I was eating out so much. Yes, I was eating in like the cafeteria and the commissary and stuff like that. But then my friends were like, let's go to dinner, let's go do this, let's go to the bars, let's go whatever. And then you're just like charging all of this. So I literally, I cannot tell you how many overdraft fees I was paying on my debit card all the time when I was in college, you need to get into that overdraft cycle and then every time you get paid, it's still over. Yes. Exactly. And I was getting budgets for my parents, like, my parents would send me money and as Jana says, when you run out of money you're done. But I was literally trying to find every which way from another job or with that to sort of put all that money back out of my debit card. And then it'd be like the next second. Well, my 13 year old is headed to college in five years. Not too far, but we're all, we already got him a little, a credit card to kind of help him budget. And now it's a little easier with apple pay. So we know where he's spending money, there's better things out there but still very dangerous. Be very careful before you sign up. I think all of this is, is the earlier, the better to start getting kids learn how to budget and learn about finances, the easier, the better you end up like us and you know, much older, still learning how to budget more. Wake up next guys.