In less than a year, I will be faced with the incredibly daunting task of paying off my student loans and navigating post-grad finances. Read on for more tips and tricks from me plus information about how you can win $5,000 from College Ave Student Loans!

Without going too in-depth about my personal finances, I’ll just say that my family is lower-middle-class so we rely heavily on loans and scholarships to put my two sisters and I through college.

Thinking about student loans and debt is the last thing you want to do when you graduate. You are starting a new life with a new career in a new place – you don’t want this baggage dragging you down. Personally, I worked my booty off sometimes at three jobs at once. AND I followed the following guidelines. 

Food

When you’re on your own financially in college, buying food can sometimes be the last thing you want to do. For me, I wanted to spend my hard-earned money on clothes or doing fun things with my friends. The reality of college means spending the majority of your part-time paycheck on food, toiletries, and gas. Yippee!

To cut down on food costs, avoid eating out. If you live on campus, investing in a meal plan can be very cost-effective. Keep snacks in you room to avoid those late-night runs to McDonald’s or calling Domino’s at 2 a.m. when you have the drunchies. If you live in an apartment or house, try to cook for yourself as much as often. Cook in bulk and freeze food for eating later.

Another great trick to saving money is meal planning – bake a ton of chicken, make a big pot of rice, and steam some veggies every Sunday night and then store meal-sized portions in the fridge for grabbing throughout the week. This is a great way to avoid fast-food for those who are constantly on the run – like me.

If you have a vice or two, don’s stress too much. For example, I LOVE Starbucks, but I know I can’t afford to have it everyday. I allow myself to spend $20 or $30 (depending on how many hours I worked) on Starbucks a week. If you need to make a little allowance like that, setting a budget will help you feel frugal without feeling completely deprived. You should also allow yourself to go out to eat every once in a while too – once or twice a week was the limit I set for myself. Only you know your finances, so be sure to set limits that feel right to you.

Jobs

You would be surprised by how many jobs there are available for college students. If you live in a college town, local business survive off of hiring students. Your university will have tons of job opportunities as well – most have a public job board online. If they don’t have anything listed, email the heads of different departments to see if they have openings. On-campus jobs are usually really understanding of class schedules and giving lighter hours during finals and midterms.

There are a lot of brands that love hiring college “brand ambassadors” to promote their business on college campuses. Definitely look into that as well if you’re looking for something a little more flexible.

Scholarships

I wish going into college I had known more about hunting for scholarships outside of federal aid or strictly through my university. There are so many options out there that I had no idea about. I am a firm believer that during every high school student’s senior year, they should be required to take a class about scholarship hunting.

You can receive scholarships for ANYTHING – well, pretty much everything. Did you travel to Europe as a child? Did you work as a soccer referee? Did you have a relative that came over on the Mayflower? Seriously, you can capitalize on any little trait or experience that sets you apart from others. The hard part is FINDING those scholarships – it just takes a ton of time. I would recommend setting aside one hour a week your senior year of high school and freshman year of college that is dedicated solely to searching for scholarships.

Rule of thumb: If you never ask, you’ll never know.

Student Loans

Loans can be very confusing especially when you are a freshman. They still terrify and confuse me!

I went to an out-of-state private university in Orange, CA for two years so let’s just say when I did my exit loan counseling and discovered how much I had to pay off after just TWO years (we’re talking roughly $27,000 here people), I may or may not have cried. Even with a half scholarship I was drowning in debt. Thank goodness I transferred to an in-state public school for my last two years or I think I would have just left the country after graduation.

For those of you like me, you just took loans out through the FAFSA. But there are a lot of services out there besides Federal Aid that can help you manage loans. For example, College Ave Student Loans simplifies the student loan process so that you can truly customize your loan experience. They specialize in student loans and offering competitive rates, many repayment options, and a very customer-friendly process. They even have a mobile-friendly application where you can find out your credit decision in three minutes – like, WHAT!

College Ave makes everything so easy for students completely overwhelmed by the whole process – like me. They have an easy-to-use loan calculator and they even offer lower interest rates for students who make payments while they’re in school – you can make monthly payments as low as $25. Everything they do is oriented toward college students who need all the help they can get. When it seems like everyone and their mother is out to take all our money from us, College Ave steps in and offers a saving grace. I just wish I had known about them sooner.

WIN $5,000!

College Ave has teamed up with Chegg to give away $5,000 for one student who has awesome college goals. Runner-up gets $2,500 and third place gets $50 to Chegg! The contest rules are all listed here, but basically all you have to do is follow College Ave and Chegg on Instagram and share what your college goals are on Instagram by reposting their picture. Super easy to enter and a pretty sweet deal if you win! Good luck!

This post is brought to you by College Ave Student Loans and Her Campus Media.

As maid of honor for my sister’s wedding, I organized her bridal shower. My sister is the opposite of me – doesn’t like anything too flashy or crazy. She wanted a very low-key, relaxing, and sweet bridal shower. No silly games with toilet paper dresses or ridiculous sexual presents. With the help of my mom, we settled on a tea-party theme keeping in line with the simple, rustic decor of her wedding. Read on below to learn how we planned everything!

Food and Drinks

The bridal shower started at 2 p.m., so it did not fall under any particular meal time. Since we went with the tea party theme, we decided on tea sandwiches, fresh fruit, cake, champagne, wine, tea, and coffee. It was all substantial enough that guests could enjoy a filling meal, but also elegant and light enough to fit the casual atmosphere perfectly.

If you are planning a low-key bridal shower, I would suggest small plates and light nibbles like we had. Scheduling a full-blown dinner or meal will make it feel much more structured and formal. Including a light alcoholic option adds a little spice to the afternoon without giving guests an excuse to get sloppy drunk or out-of-control.

Games and Activities

As I mentioned before, my sister was not thrilled about the typical, cheesy bridal shower games. Since we had my grandma and a few other women who may take offense to the more raunchy games, we decided to eliminate any of those activities. Instead, we planned two games and two activities.

The first game we planned was “Forbidden Words.” A very common game for bridal showers, this game always creates lots of laughs and brings out the competitive side of guests. We gave everyone an over-sized plastic diamond ring and prohibited the use of the words “Ron” (my sister’s fiance), “Wedding,” and “Love.” If you got caught saying one of those words, you had to hand our ring over to the person that heard you. The person with the most rings at the end of the shower wins a prize. For our winners, we gave them cute light pink Essie nail polish.

The second game we planned was “Guess Their Age.” We printed out photos of my sister and her fiance from their younger years and hung them on a big frame. Guests had to guess how old they were in each photo. The person who guessed the most correct wins a nail polish as well.

The activities we planned were very casual ones guests could do at any time. We ordered beautiful advice cards from Etsy (the same store we ordered the invites through) so that guests could impart some wisdom to my sister. We also placed some popsicle sticks in a mason jar and provided sharpies so that everyone could share a date idea. Both of these were very casual but will be nice mementos for my sister.

Decorations

Sticking to the simple, rustic theme of my sister’s wedding, we used burlap and lace for the main table. My sister’s wedding flowers are blue and white hydrangeas, so we used those as the flower centerpieces as well as baby’s breath and some simple greens. To tie in the blue, we had blue accents in the banner from Etsy and napkins from Molbaks. Everything was very simple, inexpensive, yet elegant.

We also used a few chalk boards – one out front and one for the advice cards. Chalk boards are fairly inexpensive and very trendy right now – they add a fun, customizable aspect to the event.

Finally, I scoured the sales racks at Value Village and World Market for inexpensive gold frames and found some great ones for very cheap. Framing little signs like we did adds a polished touch to the displays rather than leaving pieces of paper hanging awkwardly with instructions.

Favors

If you are short on funds or time, don’t worry about producing a party favor for your guests. Nowadays, favors typically get thrown in the trash or forgotten about. This is definitely an expense you can spare.

However, my mom and I wanted to have a little something since it was such a small shower. We knew we wanted to give something practical that our guests could actually use. My little sister came up with the idea of putting washi tape on tea lights and packaging them up super cute. Not only was this incredibly inexpensive, they turned out beautiful and everybody loved them.

I hope this guide to planning a low-key bridal shower was helpful for you. If you have any questions at all or want to share some advice of your own, please comment below! As always, thanks for reading!