What do you usually buy with your refund money? - Financial Aid

[Cherry Bloodrayne]

For those of us who need a little financial help, what do you usually buy with your refund money besides books..?
Do you buy things you need, or want?

I want to get a laptop soo soo badly! I do not want to keep going to the computer lab on campus.
That's more of a want though, in my opinion.

A need would be clothes, college/school supplies, and various other school-related things.

[Will]

BILLS.  And food.  And other unavoidable expenses.

[Cherry Bloodrayne]

BILLS.  And food.  And other unavoidable expenses.

Other good points, forgot about bills. :) Mine gets put on the college credit card, though however.

[mystictiger]

Refund for what?

[Will]

Any money granted or loaned to a student that is not used to cover tuition and books.

[mystictiger]

*sighs fondly*

I miss the days that students in this country received grants. Now all we get is a loan from the government. Which we then have to pay back. Go go student debt! Although I shouldn't really complain about student debt in forum with a high concentration of Americans... >.>

[Oniya]

You're likely to get a large number of sympathizers.

[Ryven]

Socked it away in my savings account.

[mystictiger]

You're likely to get a large number of sympathizers.

Having done both law and medical school, my student debt is a mere US$8k. Friends of mine doing only one of those in not-the-most-expensive-schools are looking at 5-digit sums of debt. I understand, though, that if they go into public service that the repayments get waived or something like that.

[Josh the Aspie]

In general, in the US there are some of those programs, but they are generally limited, and the availability depends on degrees.

If you teach for a minimum number of years, then in at least a few states the student debt is forgiven, but most states require a teaching degree of some kind, or a degree of specialty in the area you practice.

In Colorado, a relatively rural and rather mountainous state, there is a program to forgive student debt if you take a job as a doctor in some of the very very rural areas of the state.  This was done to help reduce the number of people that die due to how long it takes to drive or be driven to a doctor (given that driving across that state takes about as long as driving across 2-3 relatively small European countries).

The thing is that most of these programs are done state-by-state based on the needs of the particular state and the needs of the people in that state.

You're not as likely to be as far away from a doctor in New York state, for example, as you are in the highly-rural parts of Colorado.

Of course given the recent wide-scale changes to how student loans are handled, this may have changed.  I heard that the federal government now directly provides all student loans, rather than it being provided through banks.  However this information was only from one off-hand reference from TV news, so I'd have to more fact-checking to verify that.

[Zakharra]

Of course given the recent wide-scale changes to how student loans are handled, this may have changed.  I heard that the federal government now directly provides all student loans, rather than it being provided through banks.  However this information was only from one off-hand reference from TV news, so I'd have to more fact-checking to verify that.

As far as I know, that is accurate. Only the government  is allowed to give out student loans now. Anything else is illegal.

[Ket]

Not true. You can still get private student loans from banks and credit unions.

It used to be that schools would have select banks they would work with and the federal student loan monies were funneled through those banks to the students. Now the entire process is handled by the government.

[AtlasEros]

I always put it in the bank.

[jorick]

I use mine mainly to pay the bills and buy the essentials, food and clothes and whatnot.  I'll occasionally buy a video game or something else for entertainment, but not often.  Usually I leave those things till holidays/my birthday instead of spending my school money on it.