College Consumer Budget | Smart Money Tips for Students
"Real budgeting help for real college students."
A Resident Assistant, commonly called an RA, is a student who lives in a dorm and takes on a peer leadership and support role for the other residents on their floor or in their building — helping with everything from move-in logistics to conflict between roommates to being an on-call point of contact during emergencies. It’s a real job with real responsibilities, but the compensation attached to it makes it one of the most financially significant options covered anywhere in this series.
The “traditional” college experience — moving into a dorm, living on campus, the full-time residential experience — isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t required to get a real degree. If a local school is a genuine option, living at home for a while, even just the first year or two, is one of the largest single savings available to a student, on the same scale as the community college strategy covered earlier in this series — just applied to housing instead of tuition.
