How The Heck do I fund college, with no aid?

[nykorn]

I have a full time job and children, so I cannot get another job AND do schooling.  Ideally I would be thrilled to complete 30 credits in 6 months, but realistically, I see going 2 terms..Would love real suggestions..

A clarification on what I wrote before.

Tuition is rising at WGU as of September 2024. To pay for 6 months of WGU you need to set aside roughly $24 a day. Track EVERY SINGLE purchase in an app and check what you can reduce. Don't write "Food $100", write exact products ("Cheese $5") and put them into overarching categories ("Dairy") - it only takes a few seconds per item after the initial setup, but there may be apps that automatically do all this if you just scan the item's barcode.

- Reduce mobile data usage and change to cheaper phone plans. I was on Boost Mobile for $12 a month (2gb mobile data, unlimited talk/text) now I'm on Q Link (free for low income - 4.5gb mobile data, unlimited talk/text). Most people I know are on phone plans that cost them like $40 per line per month because they can't stop watching videos or playing mobile games on mobile data.

- $70 at my local supermarket gets me less than a full bag of groceries, but gets me 6 bags of groceries at a food liquidation outlet. Also invest in special packaging for the fridge that makes your food last days longer, the packaging will quickly pay for itself when you aren't having to toss out moldy cucumbers.

- I live 3 miles from work which is a 12min ride by ebike. Electricity is $8.04 kWh here. It costs me $2.80 to charge my ebike once (which, when possible, I do at work anyways) which gets me to work and back twice, so $1.40 per commute. I used to live with a 2 hour commute distance paying over $200 a month for a bus pass. Consider your commute time as unpaid work hours and decide if you need to find a job closer to your house. Think about long-term costs of everything you use: My mom claims driving is cheap to just get around town, but then pays $1,500 when a car part breaks. The most expensive bike part I've had to buy was $60 for solid foam tire tubes to stop flats. Not just for commuting - I can carry 6 grocery bags on my bike with minimal equipment, and even more if I were to attach a good back tire bike rack.

- I used to save at least $100 a month on my heating bill in winter by using electric blankets instead of central heating, air conditioner or heat fans.

- If you are friendly with your neighbors and their wifi reaches to your house, you may be able to strike a deal with them to share wifi and cut your bill in half.

- With a part-time job like AI editing, you can even do it in 2 minute sessions. So you can throw in minutes here and there at any time when it would be a bigger waste of time to do WGU, like during lunch breaks or while waiting for pasta to boil. With English teaching you can do as short as 15min sessions, which is still enough to get in one session during your lunch break at work. WGU is better when you can have uninterrupted sessions, because otherwise you will end up rereading the course material or homework instructions a lot.

Specifically because you have kids and some people need reminders of this:
- In the majority of cases your kid doesn't need a phone or phone line. You can set aside a prepaid minute phone, put like $10 worth of minutes on there and let them have it only when they're going out independently (not going to a friend's house whose phone they can use etc).
- You don't need to spend money on presents. Plenty of opportunities to get free items or make stuff from materials you have. Work on this slowly throughout the year instead of waiting until near birthdays and Christmas.
- If you insist on paying for haircuts instead of diy, go to a haircutting school where you get discounts for helping out trainees.

I am currently using the "0% APY for 12-15 months" credit card method to pay off my Swedish student loans, which are currently at 1.25% interest. The credit card gets 1% cashback. I'm basically saving $300 by doing this, which isn't that much but is still significant.

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Anyways, can you elaborate on this 5% discount. Is there a list of participating partners somewhere. Or a link about it. I've never heard of it.

It isn't advertised publicly on their website but it appears in news articles from time to time. Most states, and some unions, get you 5% (essentially $200) off tuition each term if you fulfill certain requirements. The most common type is that you graduated from a state college (including community college for an AA) before coming to WGU. When you register to WGU, you need to provide proof that you graduated (transcript and diploma) and submit it like a credit transfer, even if your credits will not actually transfer. I additionally sent them proof of the discount through their "upload additional files" section as well as Emailed them about it, just in case. It took a while for them to apply the discount but they did after a few weeks.

Here are a few sample links about it:

Washington - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases...72388.html
California - https://www.wgu.edu/blog/wgu-california-...e1906.html
Reddit thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU/comments/17...ount_with/

Note that all the links I found only mentioned it was valid for people with a community college Associate's applying for a transfer to a Bachelor's. However I have a community college Associate's and applied for a Master's and they gave me the same discount. A few months ago when I was looking for it, I managed to find proof that this discount is given to almost all states, and some states give an even bigger discount. However now when I search again, all the search engines have decreased in quality in such a short time, I can find almost nothing relevant anymore.