As if tuition costs and room and board weren’t enough, a semester’s worth of books can feel like enough to pay for a weeklong stay in the hospital without health insurance.  With some people paying upwards of 800 dollars for books, a small fortune is lost over the period of 4 years.  This doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that many students stick around campus for an extra semester or two.  Add in graduate school and you can make a solid down payment on a car once you tally up book fees. 

While some students have turned to robbing banks in order to foot the bill, it’s not impossible to cut book costs.  It takes a little bit of effort to search for books online, rather than just order them from the bookstore.  But, I’ve saved hundreds over the years by purchasing textbooks on the net.  Sites like Half.com and bigwords.com make it easy to search for the best deals.  I’ve saved as much as 90 percent on individual textbooks.  You won’t save that kind of cash on every purchase, but even 10 bucks can get you a cheap night out. 

Furthermore, learning to use an online textbook site can do more than just save you money, it can earn you money.  There have been instances where I have bought a book online then sold it back to the bookstore at semester’s end for more than I paid.  Also, many times selling a book online can beat what the bookstore is willing to pay during textbook buyback time.  Most semesters, I recoup 50 percent or better on my own textbooks.  For a while, I even made money selling other people’s textbooks for them.  Once in a while, books that the bookstore won’t take back are still making money for sellers online.  It’s definitely worth checking out.

You probably won’t make a fortune buying and selling books online, but I was able to finance a new TaylorMade driver and a set of irons.  With the costs of college constantly rising, including tuition, food, books, you name it, you can always look for some new ways to make some moola.  Online book buying and selling is one of the easiest ways to keep more of your money in your hands.  Plus, it doesn’t take any sacrifice of diet or personal hygiene to save some coin.           

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 11:29 am and is filed under Budgeting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.