4 Personal Finance Lessons For College Students

When I was in college, I lived a relatively frugal lifestyle.

I commuted to campus from home (where I prepped most of my meals for the week) and only occasionally spent money on fun like going out to dinner with my friends. My main expenses were transportation and sometimes food, which I could afford with the money I earned from my work-study job and internships, along with the help of my parents.  

While this no-frills lifestyle helped save me money, I now realize a couple of financially savvy moves could have helped me achieve the same result without quite so much sacrifice. If I had the chance, there are a couple of changes I would make to how I managed my money back in college.

Living at home with my parents meant being able to save money I otherwise would have had to spend on student housing and meals. Aside from paying the tuition, my parents also made sure that I had some money in my checking account if, for example, I needed to buy food. At the time, I had a Chase College Checking℠ account with my mom, so she could conveniently transfer money into my account whenever I needed it.  

During the second semester of college, I started earning some of my own income through my work-study job, until I graduated in 2020. On top of that, I also earned minimum wage from internships I worked during my last two semesters in college.  

A lot of this money went toward paying my essential expenses like transportation, college supplies and food. But I did sometimes have some extra cash. For three years, I let it sit in my checking account where it didn’t earn any money. When I finally did open an account my senior year, it was a Chase Savings℠ Account that only gave me a measly .01% interest each month.

While getting a savings account was the right idea, I should have gone with a high-yield savings account like the Marcus by Goldman Sachs High-Yield Savings Account, which currently earns a 4.30% APY. The Synchrony Bank High Yield Savings Account also earns a competitive 4.50% APY as of writing with no monthly fees and offers convenient withdrawal options.   

I got my first credit card when my mom added me as an authorized user to her American Express® Gold Card before I left to study abroad during the fall semester of 2018. While I would use the card every once and a while to book trips while abroad, I mostly stayed clear of it because I was afraid of credit card debt.

But while my fear of credit cards kept me free of debt, it cost me in other ways. For example, had I known about the American Express Travel portal, I could’ve earned 3X membership rewards per dollar on flights booked.  

Even after I graduated from college and got a credit card of my own — the Chase Freedom Unlimited® — I still wasn’t using the cash-back rewards in a way that would maximize my money. Instead of redeeming my points to pay for new purchases with Amazon, where the value of each point was only 1 cent, I could have redeemed them for travel-related expenses where I would get 1.5 cents for each point.