How To Make Serious Money In College

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According to this Bankrate survey, 29 percent of Americans have no emergency savings. One of the biggest hurdles you have to clear to get your budget on track is the mere act of putting your head down and grappling with it mano e mano. Mint.com is a solid resource in theory, but it offers more of a passive accounting of your finances than a proactive solution to your barely existent savings. Thank you, Mint for alerting me that my balance is low yet again. I’m quite aware.

Fortunately, a number of apps have emerged to assist you in squirreling away some cash without overhauling your spending habits. Since 2005, Bank of America has been running its Keep the Change program, wherein every time you use your BoA debit card, the bank rounds up to the nearest dollar and adds the difference to your savings account. For example, if you spend $6.45 for a burger, $0.55 is automatically transferred from your checking to savings. Similarly, the Wells Fargo Way2Save program drops a whole dollar from your checking to savings account with each debit card swipe.

If you’re looking to get a little more from your money than 0.01% ROI, the app “Acorns” follows a similar structure to the BoA program, but instead puts the change difference into an investment portfolio that can be as aggressive or conservative as you like.

The gig economy is a nightmare that borders on indentured servitude, and the figures companies tell you you’ll earn are often bold-faced lies. Rather than signing up for Lyft, DoorDash, Washio, or any of the other apps designed to wring you dry, why not channel your entrepreneurial spirit into starting a small business of your own?

Nick Friedman, featured in this article’s accompanying video, founded College Hunks Hauling Junk during his senior year of college. He revealed that while it wasn’t always easy to deny himself the extracurricular fun of university life (so he could focus on his business), he’s glad he founded his business at the time he did.

“There’s never a better time to start a business than right now [while in college],” he said. “Every moment you wait, you get more and more responsibilities, which will make it more difficult for you to take the risk of starting a business later.”

Friedman also emphasized something that may seem counterintuitive. Would-be entrepreneurs shouldn’t focus their efforts solely on making money. Instead, he suggests, “Have a purpose and a vision behind what you want to do. If you focus on doing that well, the money should follow.”

Universities present ample opportunities to make extra cash. You just have to know where to look. Psychology and economics departments constantly run experimental studies and are in need of participants (whom they compensate handsomely). Come in, play a pretend stock market game or look at photos on a screen, and walk out 45 minutes later with a crisp $50 bill in your pocket.

If you don’t like the idea of being tested or observed, marketing agencies are throwing serious cash at college students simply for providing feedback on different products. While it may feel icky at first to allow advertisers to burrow into your brain, some of these focus groups offer payouts of $250 or more. That kind of dough could help fund a spring break trip. Hello, Miami. 

Just because your days of standardized testing are behind you (assuming you’re not applying to grad school), that doesn’t mean the trove of information and test-taking tips you’ve crammed into your head has to be jettisoned just yet. Tutoring is the perfect way to milk some extra mileage out of your SAT skills while getting paid and helping someone else in the process.

One tutor, Cameron Johnson, had such a great experience teaching on the side in college that after graduating, he started a small tutoring company in LA called Altitude Education Services. “There’s a difference between being able to do math well and being able to teach math to someone,” said Johnson. Potential tutors should take stock of not only their skills, but also their patience and bedside manor with others. 

In case you’ve been living under a rock, video games are big business. E-Sports competitions have probably sold out more stadiums than The Beatles, and with that level of interest comes serious payouts for participants. Not everyone is cut out for this sort of path, but if you already find yourself playing hours of League of Legends and doing it well, perhaps it’s time to consider entering gaming tournaments and capitalizing on your abilities. Some schools even offer e-sport scholarships, so if you aren’t quite at the stage of pulling in tournament purses, you might be skilled enough to pay off some debt.