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Comment by InvisibleUp | Hacker News Reader

As a personal anecdote, I'm a college student who started at community college, worked during the summers, and even worked during the semester at jobs paying over $15/hr. Despite all of that, despite rarely if ever spending any money on "fun" things, I'm $30,000 in debt. Tuition and rent are just that expensive now. It's almost impossible to save up when you're throwing just about every dollar you're making just to keep yourself afloat.

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My local community college costs about $11k per year. That includes room, board, books, tuition, and $4,000 of personal expenses for transportation, etc. The closest university is about $16k for everything except personal expenses, so let's add $4k to that to get to $20k (probably a bit high, but we'll use it to use).

So that would come to: $11k $11k $20k $20k ----- $62k

The $16k we budgeted for personal expenses is probably a bit high and I living on campus is much more expensive than other options, but at $15 per hour, you'd only need to work half time to cover all your expenses.

So lets say you work 20 hours a week for 39 weeks during the school year and 40 hours for 13 during the summer. That is 1,300 hours per year. You need to bring in $11.9 per hour to cover your expenses without being particularly frugal. If you live at home, live off campus and cook your own food, graduate a semester early, etc. you can drop your costs down by quite a bit.

For students who did ok in highschool (3.5 GPA, 29 on ACT) the university will give you at least a $2k scholarship. Pell grants will give you up to $5k that you don't need to pay back depending on your financial need. Graduating debt free is very VERY doable.

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