From National On-Campus Report, December 15, 1999

The cliché of the starving college students is no joke to young adults working their way through college on a limited budget. But students can find ways to lessen the strain on their wallets without crying to poor mom and dad.

Helen Nunn, Director of Financial Aid at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., offers the following tips to help students ease their financial woes:

• Get the most out of your tuition money. "Take the maximum number of credits your college allows without having to pay for course overloads," she said.
• Attend school year-round to graduate in three years.
• Live off-campus with trustworthy friends who will shoulder their share of the bills.
• Don’t eat out and don’t eat elaborately. "Try often to eat high-protein foods like peanut butter and beans instead of meat meals."
• Buy your books from the last user and sell them back to other students.
• Don’t buy a computer. Use the campus computer labs at no charge.
• Get a job. "Work and save your money," Nunn said. "Don’t be an impulse buyer and don’t get tempted by your friends’ spending habits."

Robert Bugai also knows a little about the importance of managing money. After graduating from the University of Alabama, he found himself more than $25,000 in debt with creditors and had his 1982 Honda Accord repossessed. That’s when Bugai decided to turn his financial situation around.

And one of the first things he did was create a budget.

He examined all his expenses for a 30-day period and set about reducing his expenditures. For example, instead of buying soft drinks and candy from expensive vending machines, he started purchasing them in bulk at the local grocery store.

By the time he finished, he found he had trimmed more than 45 percent from his monthly expenses.

"You know what it’s called?" Bugai said. "It’s called common sense."

Now Bugai runs his own company, College Marketing Intelligence, giving seminars to help college students manage their money and working as a freelance reporter, investigating credit card scams on college campuses all over the world.

Bugai also provides a list of things college students can do to help improve their money and credit situations, regardless of whether they are deeply in debt or not:

• Create a budget. Then like Bugai did, examine it closely and cut as much fat as possible. "Keep track of everything you pay for," he said. "Write it all down."
• Run to your creditors. Many times students can call their credit card companies and get them to lower their percentage rates or work out a payment plan for exorbitant credit bills. "Fifty percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing," he said.
• Get a copy of your credit report and make sure that all the information is correct and yours. After all, you don’t want someone mistaking your credit for someone who may have worse credit.
• Look into mystery-shopping programs. "I get paid to stay at hotels. I get paid to eat hamburgers. I get paid to get my oil changed," he said, about all the mystery shopping he does. "I could go on and on."
• Shop for a car through bank repossession departments.
• Plastic surgery – cut up your credit cards. The average student who runs up a $1,000 debt on one card at 18 percent interest making the minimum payment can take up to 12 years to pay that card off.

For more information, contact: Helen Nunn; Phone: 570-372-4453; E-mail: nunn@susque.edu or College Marketing Intelligence, 140 Prospect Ave., North Arlington, NJ 07031-5936; Phone: 201-998-0173; Fax: 201-998-4580; E-mail: 102350.2103@compuserve.com.