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I took the liberty of taking the summer off from blogging, but now that fallis just around the corner I felt compelled to fire up the Pay for College Blogagain. Our family is beginning to implement our own college funding strategiesfor the fall semester so I thought I’d share some of the items on our list. Ifyou have a student heading off to college this month or next you will want tomake sure you have also set yourself up to minimize your college costs.

My son just left last week to head back to Pittsburgh to complete his senioryear at Carnegie Mellon University. He couldn’t wait to get back because he isso looking forward to both his classes and extracurricular activities thisyear. He called me this evening in a very perky mood anticipating his first dayof classes tomorrow. (Hint: This is one of the signs you should get from yourchild if he or she has picked a great fit college!)

Checklist to Minimize Costs for the ComingYear:

• Make sure any scholarship money awarded by the college has been creditedto your student’s account.

• Make sure any private scholarships your child has won for this year hasbeen credited to your student’s account.

• Have your student check with the Financial Aid Office for anyschool-specific or local area private scholarships that might be available foryour student to apply to this year. (My son won a ,000 school-specific privatescholarship last year and he found out he can re-apply this year.)

• Don’t purchase textbooks at the retail price from the campus bookstore.Instead, buy used or rent which should save you 50% – 80%. During this pastyear a number of campus bookstores, by the way, have started renting books.Here are some places to save on books: www.half.com, www.amazon.com, www.chegg.com or www.efollett.com.

• Don’t choose the most expensive meal plan offered by the college. Moststudents will never eat that many meals per week in the campus eateries.

• Work out a realistic monthly budget for your student’s personal expenses.To monitor his progress, have your student set up an account on www.mint.com so he can set up an itemized monthlyspending plan to help stay within budget. (Have your student be responsible forearning his yearly personal expenses through part-time work so he learns how toration income over the year.)

• Purchase an Entertainment Book (www.entertainmentbook.com) for yourchild for the city or town  in which she is attending college for lots of2-for-1 deals and other discounts on everyday items and dining.

• Shop the back-to-school sales online to get free shipping and save salestax to buy the clothes, toiletries, supplies and dorm room items your childwill need this year.

• Opt out of campus-provided health insurance if keeping your child on yourfamily’s policy will save you money. (This saved our family over ,000 peryear.)

• If your student won’t be driving at college, cancel his car insurance.Some auto policies, by the way, will allow you to lower coverage – andtherefore your premiums – to only cover your child while he is home on breaks.(Boy can that save a bundle for a teenager!)

• If your child will be a plane flight away, plan ahead when your child willbe coming home or when you will go visit her. You can sign up for airlinealerts and monitor when fares go on sale. (Tip: Fares often go on saleWednesday and Sunday nights. I just bought a ticket to the east coast for 0less on Sunday than it was the few days before.)

Bottom line, your college bills will add up to a lot less if you work onreducing your expenses in multiple areas. The items on the checklist abovecould easily save you at least ,000 this year alone!

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