Your Financial Journey Through University Begins With Sacrifice
You’ve seen the university narrative play out on the big and small screen. Parents and kids smiling as they flip through university acceptance letters, reading about the perks each school offers. The student accepts an offer to a university program far away from home. A daily commute would be too tiresome, so they decide to live on residence. The summer is spent shopping at IKEA for dorm room decor. Moving day is stressful as mom, dad, and maybe even little brother or sister help the student enter adulthood. The dorm is the cleanest it will ever be. The family stands at the doorway, looking at their fully blossomed child one last time. They won’t be seeing them again until Thanksgiving. They hug, they cry, and they say goodbye. Hollywood’s ideal university transition in a nutshell, but it doesn’t have to be this way, especially if you’re interested in graduating from university with as little debt as possible.
Who’s Paying The Bills?
It’s all great if your parents are footing the bill for your university adventures with no strings attached. Then you can freely roam through the entire university experience, exploring everything residence life offers. Joining groups on campus, socializing, partying, all while studying under some of the brightest minds in the world. That’s the university experience you’ve been exposed to, the one you’ve been told to have. That’s if mom and dad are footing the bill, if not, then you’re facing your first true step into adulthood, finance, and budgeting, and it begins with sacrifice.
Coming out of high school, I knew I would be paying my tuition alone. I had no intention of living on residence because I couldn’t afford it. I applied to communications & digital media programs at University of Toronto, York University, and Ryerson University. I could commute to all three, with most of them offering public transit discounts, so I wouldn’t pay full fare. Most of my friends were heading off to Waterloo, Western, Laurier, and McMaster, to live on residence and learn. A part of me wanted to join them, but I knew it would take me years to financially recover from that expense.
I accepted an offer to University of Toronto’s Communications program. I lived at home. I commuted to school everyday. I studied constantly. I worked weekends to earn money during the year. I joined some groups throughout my four year stay and made a few friends along the way. In the summer I worked six days a week delivering produce to restaurants downtown to pay for the following year’s tuition. I took a student loan as a precaution, but I didn’t use it, instead it earned me interest sitting in my savings account. That was my university life. Of course, I saw some of the wild parties my friends were attending on social media. I felt like I was missing something, and if you take the stay at home and commute approach, you may feel the same way. Remember, whichever decision you make, you will learn from it.
Residence Life vs Raiding Your Parents Fridge at 1AM
Living on residence will teach you about independence and making your own unsupervised decisions, and the consequences that come from them. Living at home will do the same. The difference is the types of consequences you’ll be dealing with. Living at home teaches you about sacrificing wants for needs; a key budgeting and finance principle. We need the education. We need the piece of paper that signifies we’ve completed our training. We want the experience and memories. We want the high-paying job that allows us to live on our own terms with financial freedom. Sacrifice balances these polar opposites.
It may be unattractive to go against the grain of the narrative, but living at home throughout university is not the end of the world, and if you’re funding your own education, you’ll come out ahead. It’s gratifying and very adult to leave university debt free, or nearly debt free. You made the sacrifice for the sake of your finances, and you’re not forced to get a job to pay for your debts. You’re financially free to explore different career opportunities and find a position suiting your skills after graduation. You can build your wealth and put it towards a car, a house, or travelling the world, instead of sending it to the government. It’s the freedom you sacrificed for. Enjoy it. The problem is living with that sacrifice.
University is a once in a lifetime experience. It cannot be replicated. There are experiences you will miss living at home. Deeper connections with friends, memories, and your first true taste of independence. It’s a sacrifice you need to be comfortable with. That’s not to say you can’t have a good time commuting to campus, after all, campus activity is just a train ride away, but be prepared for a different experience. Whichever path you choose, both roads lead to adulthood.
“Are You Going To University To Learn or To Have Fun?”
If someone asks you this, the answer is both, because you will learn outside of lecture material. You will learn from experience. Experience dealing with people and making difficult decisions. Learning from the consequences of staying up until 4AM when you have an 8AM lecture. Learning to balance your time. Learning how to make decisions for yourself without guidance. This is knowledge you don’t receive from a professor or book. You’ll face the same dilemmas living at home, but their presentation will be different.
Living at home will have you managing your time and making decisions around your academics. You’re just not under the same pressure as you would be living on residence. Escape is not just a few steps away. Your friends are not always around you, and you still have your parents to keep you in check.
Think About Your Program
If options are limited, and you’ve only been accepted to one university three hours away from your house to pursue a Sociology degree, it’s up to you if you want to take the financial plunge. If you’ve been accepted to multiple universities for that same degree and you have a choice of living on residence to double your price, or stay home to keep your costs low, my advice is to stay home. Yes, you’ll have to live with your parents, but think of it as an investment your future self will thank you for.
At the end of the day, you’re paying for a B.A, and the money you’ve saved by living at home can be put towards a Master’s Degree, or whatever path you choose. Remember, you’re paying for what the degree will bring you, not the degree itself. The degree will bring you some level of future financial freedom, which you can have immediately if you choose to start saving money while earning your education.
It’s YOUR decision
The Hollywood narrative is not wrong. Whether you live at home or venture off to residence you will be making your first adult financial decisions centred around sacrifice. With the pandemic still very relevant, most universities are offering online courses for semester one, which means you will have no other choice but to stay home and learn. If you believe this will be detrimental to your university experience, there is nothing wrong with taking a year off to work. You will be in a much better financial position to tackle university afterward.
You will learn from your experience and your journey, but it’s up to you to decide how much these experiences will cost, and how much you are willing to pay. If you have access to an investment from your parents, you may want to show them that even though you are a young adult, you understand the value of money and you want to save not just for yourself, but for them as well.
