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My parents paid for the first year and a half, and then I got a job and paid for the rest. Tuition was like 10K per year at a public state school. I also tested

My parents paid for the first year and a half, and then I got a job and paid for the rest. Tuition was like 10K per year at a public state school. I also tested out of a couple classes due to advanced placement in HS. One of us was doing software/web development and another was financial accounting (CPA). This was not a small town, it was a suburb of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. The farther out you move from the city, the lower the cost of living, but we had a 30-40 minute commute. Neither of us wanted to pay for cable so we saved like $8K over a number of years skipping out on that.

sanderjd 8y ago
Thanks for the data points! I suspected one or both of you might have chosen a geographically transferable profession that requires limited or no post-grad like accounting or nursing. I think these are the best kinds of jobs to target. What else fits into this category? Maybe software / web development fits too, though I don't think it's so geographically transferable. I wish teaching (which is what lots of my college friends do) was one of these, but alas, it pays extremely poorly. I guess outlying suburbs of somewhat-but-but-wildly-bustling metros are viable as low-cost / high-employment places to live, though I'm not sure requiring long commutes that aren't well suited to mass transit is a great solution for most people. Most people with tons of college debt that I know worked the entire time, so YMMV on that one. The people I know without debt are actually more likely to have not worked (because their parents were paying).