College is expensive and I can only imagine what the costs will be when my 5 boys are of age to attend college, and that is why I will spend valuable time researching ways to save money. I recently came across an article about how renting your college books can help save money. After thinking about it for a bit, I came to the conclusion that this was a brilliant idea!
Think about it, you spend all of that money on your college books and when you are finished with them, what do you do with them? I can remember helping my mother clean out the attic when she moved. My sisters college books were all sitting up there all dusty and unused. My mother didn’t know what to do with them, so we simply got rid of them. Yep, money wasted. I mean, she did use them for a few months, but when she was finished with them it just didn’t seem worth the money you pay to purchase them. (They are so expensive!)
This is why when I reader about renting college books I thought it was a brilliant idea. Not only do you not have to worry about what to do with those big books (they take up more space than you think) when you are finished with them, but you can also save yourself a considerable amount of money (40-90% off of bookstore prices!) If you rent from a place like Campusbookrentals.com you will also receive Free Shipping BOTH ways! They also allow you to highlight in the textbooks, which is great if you are anything like me and need a little extra help following along and keeping your place. Another feature I love is the 30 day Risk-Free return policy! I love all of these as well as the other perks, however my absolute favorite thing (besides the money savings on college books) is that not only will I be helping myself save money, but I will be helping a charitable organization as well when I rent my textbooks from CampusBookRentals.
CampusBookRentals supports the children of Operation Smile, an out of this world organization that performs life changing cleft lip surgeries on children whose families could not otherwise afford it. The long term improvement in quality of life for the children that receive these surgeries is almost incomprehensible. For EVERY book rented, CampusBookRentals.com will donate a portion of those proceeds to Operation Smile. They have their sites set on meeting and exceeding their goal of 1,000 lives changed!
I don’t know about you, but I love purchasing from a company that gives a little of their proceeds to a charity such as this. Changing the lives of others in any way, big or small, is our way to help make a difference.
While browsing through the books available I was impressed with their selection. They don’t just carry college books, but have an assortment (a very large assortment) of books for grade schoolers and others as well. At the end of every year our school sends home an order form for the Summer Bridge Activity books so that we can work on skills at home during the summer and keep our kids learning all year long. I typically cringe when I see the price of these books, especially since I have several children in school now that would need them, but I usually order them anyway. I was impressed that they carried these books. Just to get an idea on the price savings I looked up the Harcourt 3rd grade Science books. The list price (which is not what they charge, but what you could purchase the books elsewhere for) is $75.85. This is a book that you will only need for a short period and then it is just going to sit and collect dust, so renting it would be great! You could rent this book for 55 days for just $49.55, which is a considerable savings.
Will you be searching for ways to save money when your child starts college?
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I have two sons in college, and books are so expensive! This sounds like a great way to help reduce the cost of textbooks!