Student loans are easy to get, you are pretty much guaranteed to get one as long as you fill out the FAFSA and do the paperwork on time. However, the loan will usually only cover the cost of your classes, depending on how expensive your program is. This puts tuition out of the way for the time being, but what about the books? Textbooks aren’t cheap, and college bookstores are the most expensive place to get them. I realized pretty quickly while I was going to college that spending money on buying brand new textbooks every quarter, was going to cost a small fortune. This is what I started off doing during my first few quarters. I’d buy the books, and then return them after I was done for a partial refund. The only problem was, my partial refund was a fraction of what I was paying. I was hardly getting any money back and it was killing my budget.
Buy Used Books Online or Rent
I started looking into other ways to get books and I came across two options, buying used or renting. Textbooks rental companies are fairly inexpensive and you can find them online. I’ve never personally used them, as I prefer to buy used, but I’ve heard good things about their services. I’ve always bought used books because the books I need for college are ones I plan to hold onto for later use. Being a computer science student, it’s nice to have programming and database books on hand when they’re needed. I have never bought used books from the college bookstore where they’re still overpriced, I prefer to get them online where the prices are low.
Here’s two sources I’ve found for cheap used college textbooks:
- Amazon – This is by far the best place to get used textbooks that you can buy. There are usually hundreds of sellers competing for the lowest price on every single textbook. Make sure you select “USED” when shopping or else it will show you prices for brand new books. Each seller of the textbook will list a condition that it’s in. Most of the sellers are very honest and if the books says “very good” or “like new,” then those are the ones I’d go for. Also check the number of reviews the seller has. If they are a big seller on Amazon that can be trusted they will have hundreds to thousands of positive reviews.
- College Book Renter - If you’re interested in renting books, you might give these guys a try.
