School can be an expensive endeavor.  Tuition, books, room, food, spending money- it all adds up. What are some ways to save money if you are sending your kids away to school?

1. Budget

Have a very candid conversation before you send your kids to school on what you are willing to spend. Stick to it.  It will teach your child to live within your/their means if you stay disciplined on a budget and it will be a good life-learning lesson on personal finance. Better yet, have the both of you sit down and prepare a budget together. If there is a shortage in the budget, your child can always look for part-time work to make up the short-fall.

2. Think  prepaid

Instead of giving your kids a conventional credit card to spend at university or college, think about providing a prepaid credit card instead. Prepaid credit cards are like debit cards in that a certain amount of money are stored on the card and when the prepaid credit card runs out of cash it can no longer be used without it being topped up with more money (paid link).

Prepaid credit cards also avoid the issue of high interest rates and teaches someone to budget properly.

Similarly, instead of arming a child with a conventional cell phone, think prepaid cell phones. The concept is the same as the prepaid credit card. You preload a certain amount of time on the phone and once it is used up, the cell phone cannot be used without topping up more minutes; it will teach your children that nothing is free in life. Best of all, most prepaid cell phone carriers do not require you to sign a long term contract.

The issue with conventional cell phones is that roaming, SMS charges, long distance charges do add up (you may be better off buying a  long distance phone card if you are sending your kids away from home rather than get a long distance plan on a conventional phone).

3. Think second-hand

I used to like buying second-hand books simply because someone highlighted all the important sections for me! Text books also go out of date very quickly (how else is a professor to make side income then to put out new editions every few years) so there is no real value in buying new.

Refurnished computers are also a good bargain (and, really, a new computer with massive amounts of memory will be used to download music and movies and not for school-work).

4. It is a dorm room, not a hotel

My regular columnist, Mom2KG, gave me this tip (who, incidentally, I went to school with so I witnessed this first-hand when we went to school). Every orientation week, vendors attempt to rent/sell mini-fridges to people. These tend to be used for nothing more than storing booze, water and more booze. They tend to be luxuries more than anything else so skip the bells and whistles.

Also avoid buying a lot of items for the dorm room (lamps, posters, book shelves etc. ) at the university book store. They tend to be more expensive. One is better off making a Costco or Ikea run beforehand.

5. Do not forget free money

There’s a lot of grants, bursaries and scholarships that most people don’t apply to. People tend to focus on the large entrance scholarships and forget the smaller grants, bursaries and scholarships. Most universities are dying to give this money away. Encourage your child to apply early and apply often. In my last year of law school, they were dying to give money away. I remember people who could afford to cover their own way were still receiving bursaries because the University had to give it away.