Texas, US. Living at home with no bills. A super dumb 23 y/o woman when it comes to financial stuff.
I'm a college student that went to CC for 3 years, did terrible, and finally transferred to a 4-year with a major change (previously was accounting, how ironic). I've been there for about a year and a half now, and have paid for everything out of pocket. I'm guessing my CC costs added up to about $4k-$4.5k in total.
Now, I pay for everything. My tuition now is $5.3k per semester with maybe $400 on other costs, and I'm just now realizing that I don't want to have nothing saved up when I'm done. Not to mention, I'm pretty mediocre and the job search is already daunting for good students. I make $9.3k a year after taxes, and maybe an additional grand or so from extra work I get. I probably spend 30% of that on just me (food or hobby shit). I only just got a credit card a few weeks ago, and seeing that bill rack up is scary. For the next school year, it'll total up to $10,814 (parents pay for it and I pay them back). I've been working part-time and saving up since high school, so I have about a year of tuition saved up now and a little left over. I was thinking I could pay them in advance and not worry about it for a while.
I have about 3-4 semesters left of school, and I was thinking that I'd graduate with no debt and it'd all be good, but now I'm thinking I was fucking stupid for not applying for any financial aid, ever. I was a terrible high school student and my grades were bad in CC, so I thought financial aid would be out the window since my family and I are middle-class. Well, clearly I was wrong, because I recently learned that my father actually has a low income (didn't give me a number). He just gets financial support from my aunt. My mother works very few hours part-time and is a housewife for the most part. I haven't applied to FAFSA before because my parents are reluctant to give me their income information, saying that I wouldn't get any money anyway. So, I just left it at that. That was stupid as hell, I should've looked for other avenues. Now I'm literally paying for that mistake. I looked on the site again just now, and it asks if I was born before 1996; I should've done something about it last year (born in 1995)... Guessing that'll hurt me a bit. But I'm going to apply tomorrow and try anyways. Gonna just tell my parents there's no choice for me anymore, see where that goes. I'd be insanely happy over $100, that's a textbook there.
I'm looking for another part-time currently, and am waiting for responses. Might as well take this time to fix things up for the future. I was told to start an investment account as well, been doing some research on how that works. Trying to cut back on spending, but it's such a small dent right now. Feeling a tad overwhelmed by this, and I'm not sure exactly where to start. I'll take any advice I can get.
Submitted December 31, 2018 at 04:23AM by PotlePawtle http://bit.ly/2BTcCSJ
