Tuition
Not everyone has this expense since not everyone goes to college or has to pay their own expenses. Student loans are a killer and everyone who goes to college almost always has to deal with them. One of the smartest things you can do with college loans, is if you have a relative with the money borrow from them. Because interest rates make you pay even more for college than you are already. It's gradual but either get loans from family without interest or pay it off as soon as possible. If possible you should try to take AP classes that offer similar classes to your possible college course. If you're going to be in the phsycological field take AP Phsyc, engineer? AP physics or engineering. Etc etc.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make, is spend all your money as a kid. Working every summer minimum wage since 16 and you are 18 should accumulate a few thousand dollars. Which could all be of use to pay of student debt. The average American student goes into over 30 thousand dollars of student debts. This can take up to 30 years to pay off. as of early 2019 the student debt was about 1.52 trillion dollars nationwide. With the interest rate the smaller the debt is the lower the cost is too. Say you're at the start and have about 30k in debt. With undergraduate rates which are the lowest now you are $31359 in debt after year one with no payment. Graduate loans are 6.08% and 7.08% of the debt. Then from 30k would be $32340 or $32040. That is over 2 thousand dollars added and gained in debt from the first year and just graduating collage? That's a ton of money.
Minimizing Student Debt
Tip 1.Use as much grant money and scholarships you have available, this reduces thousands of dollars if given the option so you don't have to pay it back later.
Tip 2. Save as much as possible. $100 per month with 10 years with 6.8% interest rate ends as $17,216. Borrowing has payments of $198 a month for 10 years at 6.8% interest. It almost doubles the worth
Tip 3. If you join a Public State college you will have about 30% less student debt than a public college
Tip 4. Figure out how to pay debt before you get stuck in it. Like making sure you have a ladder to get out of a hole.
Tip 5. About half of college expenses are in housing- Go somewhere local and cut back on costs.
Tip 6. Graduate on time- extra classes and years are extra costs.
Tip 7. Have your long term payments less than your pay checks so you still have money. It should be less than your starting salary so you can still afford food and an apartment or so.
Tip 8. Target high rate loans to quicken repayment of your loan debts
Tip 9. Sign up for auto deposit because there is usually 0.5% reduction on costs.
Tip 10. The student loan interest deduction allows up to $2,500 in student loan interest to be deducted on tax returns