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Home > Personal Finance Center  > Saving for College > Planning College Expenses – Cut Textbook Costs by More than Half

Saving for College

Planning College Expenses – Cut Textbook Costs by More than Half

A big part of a college savings plan is planning and controlling your expenses. Choosing cheaper colleges closer to home is, of course, a huge cost savings, but you can also dig deeper into the weeds of potential college expenses to see where you will be able to save, and one place often overlooked is in college textbooks. The cost of college textbooks has skyrocketed in recent years with the average per student increasing to about $2500 per year. One way to lower your costs is to buy them used via Amazon.com. It's possible to purchase well-used books at 75% of their original cost. Amazon will also buy back used texts. But the problem with buying used books is that, at some schools, professors are encouraged to update their books regularly rendering older editions unusable.

Another alternative has made its way to the Internet through textbook rental sites, such as CourseSmart.com and LocalTextbook.com. This can cut your textbook costs by nearly two-thirds. So when planning for all of your college expenses make sure to factor in a lower cost for textbooks.