How to save for college in 4 years is completely doable. The very first thing to do is to work out the math to see exactly how much you need to save yearly, monthly, and even weekly. College is getting more expensive than ever but that won’t make it unattainable.
According to Fidelity’s rule, you should save $2k/yr for every year of your child’s life for their education. As a result, by 14, you should have saved, at a minimum, $28k. The amount should be even higher than that because if you invested that money at 8% returns, it’s closer to $52k.
However, not everyone has the ability to be that financially disciplined for their children’s education. Maybe you had a financial hiccup or a medical emergency over the years. Therefore, this is to know how to save for college in 4 years starting from nothing.
No matter what, anything is possible. It just takes discipline and creative thinking to save up for college and ensure your children’s future. Education for a country has the biggest payoff returns as a Bachelor’s degree is shown to be worth $2.8M over someone’s lifetime.
It’s become a necessity these days, unfortunately. Companies are more demanding than ever of educated employees and pay a premium for them over a high school graduate. You can absolutely set your children’s future up for success by saving for college in 4 years.
More insane things have been accomplished before.
How to Save for College in 4 Years: 9 Ways
Below are the 9 ways on how to save for college in 4 years. Anybody can get there, even though education costs soared and will continue to soar!
1) Do the Math
The first thing to do is to do the math on how much you need to pay for college. For example, one year’s tuition at the University of Texas at Austin is about $11,000. Approximately $44,000 in total. However, you have enough time to save for the first year’s worth of tuition because you’re starting 4 years early.
Therefore, you would need to save about $2,250 per year to save for one year’s worth of tuition. Completely doable. Then if you can save $11,000 per year for your children’s education per year thereafter, everything works out.
If you want to smooth out the savings evenly, you would need to save $5,500 per year for the next 8 years to save for college. You would save $22,000 by the time your kid starts college in 4 years, then you can save $5,500 per year while they are in college to make up the difference by then.
How to save for college in 4 years starts with doing the math.
2) How to Save for College in 4 Years: Cut Out Expenses
Now is not the time to spend money on vacation. Now is the time to take advantage of any extra paycheck months and save as much money as you possibly can. It’s not the time to go out and enjoy fine dining. It’s time to pad up savings and prepare for the huge expenses that’s coming down the pike.
Investing in your kid’s education will yield great results as long as they are disciplined with their studies and put in the work. I worked like a dog throughout my time in college and it was one of the best investments of my life, even though I over-invested my time into college.
How to save for college in 4 years requires making some sacrifices. Sacrifices that will be well worth it down the road. Simple things like cutting out eating out, vacations, and buying a new computer will pay dividends down the road.
Slashing your fun budget if need be for a few years will be well worth it.
3) Make Your Child Get a Job
When I was in high school, I desperately wanted to get a job. My parents didn’t want me to because they “wanted me to enjoy my childhood” but I was angry when I found that out. I wanted to earn money. Money felt great to me then and it still feels great to me now!
So then I got a job at the failing Sears and earned a whopping $7.25 per year. Anytime someone failed to show up to their shift, I picked up the slack and earn more money. How to save for college in 4 years shouldn’t mean the entire burden is on the parents.
Children should get a job, pay taxes, and learn the value of hard work as well. That’s an extra $5,000 that I earned in a single summer. That was an insane amount of money at the time for me! There’s nothing wrong with getting your children to work and earn some money.
It’s going to be their money to spend, anyway. That is getting them started on real life work from the get-go.
4) Get Scholarships
As much as $100M of scholarship money goes unclaimed every year because of a lack of applicants. That’s a lot of money ready to be taken! We complain about money that we don’t have enough and yet there’s so much free money for the taking. We have to be more rational than this!
When I was going through college, I earned scholarships that lowered the cost of college. It was amazing. I didn’t get complacent and stop applying there. Whenever the school had scholarship opportunities available, I kept going and applied!
In my senior year, I received something like $7.5k in scholarship money. That was a lot of money for me at the time, and it still is today. Every scholarship money helps. The $500 scholarship money is what people usually sleep on because they think it’s not worth it.
If one application can earn you $500 with no competition, then it’s a good deal. How to save for college in 4 years means taking advantage of unclaimed scholarship money.
5) Invest Your Money
This doesn’t mean that you should put your money in risky investments like NFTs and hope for the best. It does mean putting your money in safe investments that has a good risk to reward ratio. For example, in 2022, 2-year treasuries were paying 4.20%! What!
A risk free 4.20% is insane in any world. Savings accounts were paying 3%+ in 2022. A risk free 3 – 4% is a great return for any investor. How to save for college in 4 years doesn’t mean you have to rely solely on saving as much money as you can.
It also means making the most of your money that you have. Money is the best employee ever. It doesn’t complain, ask for a vacation, or have a personal life outside of work. It does what you tell it to do without any pushback. You can lift the burden of saving money for college as you put the money to work.
Investments changed many lives for the better.
6) How to Save for College in 4 Years: Start Side Hustles
Side hustles grew in popularity amidst record high inflation. People realized their employer won’t help them with the cost of living, even if they generate record profits. Therefore, we have to depend on ourselves and ourselves only to financially protect ourselves!
How to save for college in 4 years doesn’t mean depending on your employer to provide your family with an education. It means depending on yourself to financially stand on your own two feet. Too many people clock out after a 9-5 that they don’t work a 5-9.
The 5-9 is where the real money is made. Not only can you earn additional money, you learn new skills. I’m a finance guy and I never would’ve learned about social medial marketing or SEO if I didn’t diversify my skillsets by starting new platforms such as a blog or Twitter.
You’ll be surprised at how far you can take your side hustle.
7) Consider Community College
There’s no reason to go to an expensive $50k private school. 2 + 2 will ALWAYS equal 4 whether you go to a private school or a community college. How to save for college in 4 years is possible if you lower expectations and go to a cheaper school to get the basics out of the way.
In the first year, what you learn in community college is not materially different than what you learn at a state university. The basics are all the same and the credits transfer anyway. I was actually already a Sophomore by the time I attended college because of my high school classes.
And I was only 17 at the time! There’s nothing you learn in a state university that you can’t learn in community college. If high school classes are good enough to transfer credits with, then a community college is good enough to transfer credits with as well.
There’s nothing wrong with the cheaper option.
8) Make Colleges Bid Against Each Other
If you got into one school who offered scholarships and lowered your tuition bill to $10,000 per year, but another school is offering scholarships and lower your bill to $13,000 per year, then there’s no harm in calling the financial aid office for the second university and asking to lower your bill to $10k/yr.
The worst that they say is no. You’re not going to get flagged by the university for asking nor will you get tracked by the University for any subsequent dealings you will have with them. How to save for college in 4 years means putting your negotiating skills to good use.
Too many people use negotiating skills during a job offer, car buying, and house buying. But they never think to use their negotiation skills to lower college costs. Obviously, you have to be in a position to use two colleges bid against each other in the first place.
When you are in that position, use your positioning to your advantage.
9) Graduate Earlier
I went into college as a Sophomore at 17. There’s no reason why you can’t graduate earlier. Even so, college isn’t all too difficult. All you have to do is put in the work and do well on tests. That’s it. You could graduate earlier if you just compact more classes in college.
There’s no law that says you have to be in college for 4 years straight. If you graduate one year earlier and save the money while you earn money afterwards? That’s getting ahead of your peers in an enormous way. A dollar in your 20s is worth much more than a dollar in your 30s.
A year is a very significant amount of time to amass wealth, but no one really realizes or sees it that way. They think just a year passed and nothing special happened. That’s not the case. How to save for college in 4 years is making every year of your life count.
You don’t have to follow the crowd and can certainly follow a different path forward. It’s one of my biggest regrets in college, to this day.
How to Save for College in 4 Years is Possible
It’s not too late to save for college. How to save for college in 4 years is more than possible for the vast majority. It just takes discipline and actual planning to get there. Many people have saved more money in 4 years than the cost of college itself.
It’s never too late to start and achieve your goals. The only ones who doesn’t achieve their goals are the ones who never started in the first place. Your children deserve to acquire and get an education. If you need a little help to get there, there’s nothing wrong with getting them to work a job for it.
The cost of education is soaring but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a good deal to get an education. Just like there are deals in grocery stores, there are deals going on for college education costs. Harvard is even free now for low income families.
Affordability is just an excuse. How to save for college in 4 years is more than possible for the vast majority of people. If there’s a will, there’s a way. College is one of the best returns of money that you can get for the vast majority of people.
That doesn’t mean pour your entire life into college. It does mean figuring out how to save for college in 4 years, even if it’s easier to just give up and let it go. The dream of a college education is one worth pursuing. It’s not for everybody but it will work out for the vast majority.
It’s time to protect your children’s future.
How to Save for College in 4 Years: Shortlist
- Do the math
- How to save for college in 4 years: cut out expenses
- Make your child get a job
- Get scholarships
- Invest your money
- How to save for college in 4 years: Start side hustles
- Consider community college
- Make colleges bid against each other
- Consider a state school instead of a private school
