Everyone has dreams. Those dreams can be related to personal goals such as one day owning a house, or they can be career-oriented goals such as pursuing social justice, doing what you can to help your community to be successful, and become a well-respected civic leader and manager. While everyone’s dreams may differ, one thing they have in common is that each dream requires an action plan, which are the steps needed to achieve your dream.
Career goals tend to have a much more obvious action plan, as many of them require higher education of some sort. Take, for example, that dream of pursuing social justice and doing what you can to be a successful civil leader and manager. Obtaining your master of public administration degree at an institution like the University of San Francisco can certainly help you to lay the groundwork and land that dream job. First things first, though, you need to be able to afford that university program.
With affordability in mind, we’ve put together five tips that will help you to get your finances in order so you can afford a university education.
Create a Budget for Yourself
In order to get your finances in order, it’s essential that you start by creating a budget. It’s impossible to know how much you can save and where you can make cuts if you don’t have a budget to work from. Once you create a budget, the next important step is that you have to stick with it. Spending more than your budget allows will not only take away from your savings, but it can also lead you straight into debt and further away from your educational goals.
Look Into Scholarship Programs
A great solution for prospective university students to bring down the cost of their education is to apply to various scholarship programs. You’ll find scholarships of all amounts available, and there is nothing to stop you from applying to more than one. As a tip, sometimes the smaller scholarship amounts have less competition. If you land a couple of these smaller ones, suddenly the cost of your education is substantially decreased.
Downsize Your Life
Sometimes it may be necessary to downsize things in your life in order to free up a little money that you can use for savings. This could include selling your vehicle and relying on public transit or purchasing a cheap used vehicle instead. You may even elect to downsize your living arrangements and look for something more affordable. This can be a hard step but try to keep your end goal in mind. Remember, downsizing is temporary.
Work While Attending School
If your plan had been to just focus on school, it may be time to make an adjustment. Having a part-time job while attending university can help you to cover your living expenses and still provide you with savings so you can afford the following year.
Making Sacrifices for the Future
Getting your finances in order isn’t necessarily going to be painless and easy, but keeping your end goal in mind – which is your future career – can certainly help to lessen the blow and keep you motivated.
