RateMyStudentRental Blog

In my earlier blog Out of the Dorms and Into Life (A Guide to Finding the Best Place to Live in College) I identified six steps to finding college housing that works for you and your lifestyle.

• Start Counting Your Benjamins!
• What Are Your Gotta-Have-Its?
• Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live With-Out Them! (Roommates)
• So, Which Place Should I Choose?
• Commit Already!
• Live It Up!

Over the next few months I will be adding a new blog that talks a little more about each step so you can get a better understanding of the step.

Start Counting Your Benjamins!

Originally I wrote:

First, and most important to most students, is the cost of the rent. Hopefully as a student you have some sort of budget in mind for the next 4-5 years of your college career. Finding a place that is within your budget should not be too hard. Also, keep in mind that the theory that “you get what you pay for” isn't always true with student housing; we’ll get into that a little later.

Creating Your Budget & Managing Your Money

Now that you are a college student chances are you are fully enjoying the college experience which consists of more play and less work (after all your homework is done of course)! So, how do we have fun playing with out worry And, if you are working, super – this gives you more reason to manage your money, because you have more to manage.

Establishing a budget is pretty easy, it’s the part where you have to follow your budget that requires a little more self-discipline. Start off by determining your income and expenses.

It is easiest to break down your income and expenses on a month to month basis. Income is fairly easy to identify, since the main source is usually from a job, either full or part time.

Predicting your expenses should take a little thought and effort. For most accurate budgets, look at the last few months of your expenses, how much did you spend on the following activities/items (just to name a few):

• Tuition
• Rent
• Utilities – phone, internet
• Auto – gas, insurance, service
• Groceries
• Dining
• “going out”
• Entertainment – movies, sports
• Shopping – clothing, gadgets
• Emergency money!

Once you have identified and categorized some of your expenses you should prioritize them. What expenses can and should you try to trim? Which expenses are critical to your survival; like entertainment, no one likes to be bored! Just kidding – more like the food and shelter, those play a huge factor in your success in the classroom.

After you are comfortable with your priority and estimates for income and expenses you can compare the two.

Income – Expenses = +/-

If you are in the negative, maybe you should play with your numbers a bit until they look reasonable and calculate to be closer to a positive number, or at least zero!

When your budget looks like it works for you, pay attention to what you allocated for your housing or rent. Rental prices range across the country, ask around and do a little research on campus to find the averages of student housing, you can also use RateMyStudentRental (yeah, another plus, can you blame me, it’s a sweet site!) to filter rental results on your campus by price and check out the ratings and review from other students, is there any correlation between price and quality on your campus? Watch out for the great deals and landlords who have great reviews, a great rental, and an affordable monthly rent.

Using tools like Wasabe (who have a reputation for holding true to their Privacy Policy can help manage your budget and personal finances.

Being smart with your money is important. Keep the following tips in mind about how to spend your money:

• Try to avoid using credit cards.
• If you must use a credit card, pay it off each bill cylce.
• Have your weekly spending allowance in cash and only spend that...when it's gone, even it is Wednesday...wait until Monday to get more cash.
• Pay bills (cell phone, rent, credit card) as soon as the statement comes out so that you are not tempted to spend the money else where.

Reviewing your budget:

If you took the time to put a budget together than you are one step ahead of most. You budget will be most effective if you can stick to it and review how well you are doing. I use Quicken software and each month I input all of my expenses and categorize them (food, auto, clothing, entertainment....etc). Quicken lets you run reports and see how much you have in each category and it also reports income. You can see many different reports and graphs of your financials. This is a good monthly review, compare it to your budget and see where you need to or can reduce or increase spending.

And, I would be doing my Financial Markets Professor wrong if I didn't encourage you to put a little bit of money away into investments now. Whether stock markets (short term and risky) or mutual funds (long term and less risky), we are young as students and can benefit greatly by getting in the habit of investing now.

Happy Budgeting!