Now, I wished someone would’ve told me about this my first year (I could have used that money to pay off my credit cards). Before I get into it, let me ask you…

Have You Been In A Class Where You Literally Never Cracked Open The Textbook…Ever? (Even Though The Textbook Was REQUIRED!)

Think about how many classes you’ve taken where it was a huge hassle to hunt down the right textbook and beat bookstore “shortages.”

When you buy a textbook the price is sometimes so high you could have bought a whole month’s worth of groceries instead. You usually don’t think about it because, “Hey it’s for college.”

When you take it home, it rests in one place…your closet, where it hides in a dark corner all semester. Hulk SMASH!

It’s like the sleazy salesman convincing you to buy junk then you realize, “I don’t need this crap! I’m not even using it.” I hate that feeling of being taken advantage of. I hate the feeling of realizing I’m a big fat sucker for falling for it even more.

When you go back to return it they give you pennies where you spent dollars.

RIP OFF!

Then they turn around and sell the same junk you returned for full price to another willing victim, and so on…

Colleges do this every semester and get away with murder. Keep in mind, college is big business. They know how to prey on your hopes and fears to get you to buy textbooks that would better serve you as toilet paper. So a year and half before graduating I decided to test something out. Here’s…

How To Slaughter Your College’s Cash Cow

Here’s what I tested 3 semesters before graduating from college and stopped buying textbooks for good:

1. I wrote down all the books that my classes required.
2. I didn’t buy any.
3. I went to class.
4. I kept going to class and doing assignments until it clicked in my mind, “This class actually uses the book regularly.”
5. If I had to, I borrowed the textbook from the library or a friend. Surprisingly this wasn’t necessary for most classes.

If the library didn’t have the so called “new edition,” I borrowed the previous edition. It’s usually the same book with a new cover. To be safe, compare it to the edition the class is using.

I ended up buying 1 book that semester because I couldn’t find it anywhere and didn’t want to borrow it from my classmates. Of course I bought it used over the internet because that’s how I saved a ton on books the previous semesters.

Sometimes I just went into the library or bookstore, studied, took notes, or finished an assignment and turned it in the next day. No distractions.

I was amazed how little I used any textbook. Most of the classes I took had the bulk of what was tested on in the lecture notes, handouts, or online.

You can drop your textbooks and keep hundreds if not thousands of dollars in your pocket. This works best if you have confidence in your own study skills.