Students: Rent Textbooks & Save for Summer

(03/05/2010) Textbooks are not cheap, and parting with hundreds of dollars each quarter is not easy, especially if the books are needed for only one class or year.  Buying used copies of books can help alleviate some of the financial pain caused by textbooks, but there may be a better way.  Informa Research Services, a subsidiary of Informa plc (LSE: INF), suggests students consider renting their books to save even more money.  Put money toward something exciting, like summer travel or large post-graduation purchase.

Rent Your Books
By renting course textbooks from websites such as Chegg.com (http://www.chegg.com/), students can save over $100 per book in some cases.  For example, a new copy of the popular biology course book Biology (by Neil Campbell) normally retails for over $180.  Online at sites such as Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/), students can find this book for about $140.  But by renting this textbook on Chegg.com, students pay less than $60 to rent it for a quarter.  Renting 5 such textbooks could potentially save a student up to $600 per quarter!

Save for Summer Break
Saving money on textbooks can help lessen the cost of education.  Students should use the extra money to fortify a savings account, save for a big purchase, or pay off loans so they can graduate with as little debt as possible.  To maximize their savings, students should find the highest yielding savings products by searching online rate tables.

When looking for a savings product to use, be sure you can contribute the money you save each quarter.  Products that would be good for this purpose would include money market accounts, interest checking accounts, or short-term certificates of deposit.  In addition, students should schedule automatic deposits so that no matter how hectic their schedule gets, contributions continue to be made to their savings account.