Have you ever stopped to think about how expensive it

Have you ever stopped to think about how expensive it is to live? There are so many things that we need to spend money on each day. My husband and I tried to come up with a new budget for the household now that we have our oldest child starting college. Our son did receive a scholarship, but we are trying to help him out so he will not have large student loans to repay. He has worked part time in high school and is planning on keeping a job when he starts college, but we will still need to help him pay for credits and books. He is going to live at home for the first semester and commute the thirty minutes to campus. We told him that if he feels too disconnected to the other students he can move to the campus.

He was very excited when he came home from class registration. He was able to get all the general education courses he wanted and would be done with classes by noon that gives him three hours to study before he needs to be at his job. He asked me for a ride to campus to pick up his books. I dropped him at the university book store while I went to run errands. When I went to pick him up he was stunned at the prices of the books. His earth science book was over a hundred dollars. He was told that most of the science books were expensive. He is going to have many science classes for his major so he knows now that his book fees are going to be very high. He said there was a used earth science book available, but it had a great deal of underlining in it and he was concerned that this may hinder his studying. I told him that he should take good care of his books, especially those that he knew he did not want to keep so that he could sell them. I also suggested that any books for his major, like the earth science book, should be new so if he needed them in the future for research, they will be in good shape.

So far he is able to keep up with his studies as well as his part-time job. He tells us he likes staying at home because he concentrates more on his studies. He has made some friends on campus and has been invited to a few parties. I am glad he is being practical about his approach to school otherwise we would be spending a great deal of our savings.