A Guide for College Students to Earn Income and Build Wealth

When you decide to attend college, you forgo immediate income to learn skills to get a larger income later. While this is totally reasonable, missing out on 401K matches or saving 20% of an annual salary of ~50k is a lot of money to miss out on. We all know compound interest works better the longer you let it work so getting started early matters. If you're like me and want to go all the way through a graduate/professional degree, waiting 8–10 years to start investing is a HUGE MISTAKE. Even if your only doing a bachelors, missing those 4 years works against you.

Fortunately, there are still ways to earn a decent income and build wealth as a college student. Below, I will outline a few things I did to start and continue building wealth while I was an undergraduate as well as what I am currently doing as a PhD student.

#1: Find A Position As A Tutor

Tutoring on campus is one of the easiest ways to make money while in college. Almost every university has a tutoring centre where they hire students to work as peer tutors. Subjects to tutors for include math, biology, engineering, Spanish, history, etc. These positions usually pay anywhere from $10/hour and up. Depending on your skillset, you could also tutor for multiple subjects.

One additional benefit is the pay usually does not depend on the number of people you tutor. The pay is usually hourly and if there is no one with an appointment, you can do your homework to fill time. I have not found any other job that will pay you while you do your own homework!

If your university does not hire tutors, try privately tutoring students in your classes. Students are usually willing to pay anywhere from $25–$50 hours depending on the subject. It might seem like a lot at first but relative to paying to take a class over, it’s cheap for them.

If your really good at multiple subjects and your university hires tutors, you can work for the university but private tutor on the side for the subjects the tutoring centre does not offer. When I worked as a tutor, I tutored in algebra and calculus for the university and did private tutoring in statistics on the side. With all the money I was making from this, I was able to cover all my monthly expenses plus have extra to start investing!

#2: Flip Textbooks

If you’ve read my article on how I avoided student loans while getting 3 degrees, you already know I recommend never buying a book new. Used textbooks always sell cheaper and there is a huge market for them. You can use this to your advantage by selling used textbooks as a side hustle.

For example, after the course is over offer to purchase people’s books. Because they want to make some of the money back, they will usually sell them at a steep discount to what the book sells for used when courses start for the semester. When the semester starts, you can sell the books for profit. To make your offer enticing, sell it for below market value but higher than what you paid. With this strategy, both parties benefit so people are more likely to buy from you.

Courses that are required for every student are the best to do this with. Every student is required to take courses like History and English so the market for the books is huge.

#3:Minimize Student Loans

Student loans are the bane of college graduates. Starting out with 50k in debt is a sure way to hurt your financial future. The interest on student loans are no joke either. They can balloon into six figures! Currently, Americans have 1.6 trillion in student loan debt. College degrees are becoming a necessity to earn a living wage. The choice to not go to college has huge implications on your expected future earnings. Thus, the question is not whether to go to college or not but rather can the expenses be reduced. With this perspective, taking student loans without first trying to lower the cost of college is irrational.

There are many things you can do to reduce your college expenses which will reduce the amount you need to pay for college. Combining that with these new income sources you're going to have, you may avoid student loans altogether. This is exactly what happens to me! I never took a student loan and actually made over $100k going to college to receive my BS, MS, and PhD! You can read my article on how to avoid student loans here.

#4:Amazon FBA

Amazon FBA is a low-barrier side hustle you can pick up to generate some income. With Amazon FBA, you send Amazon items and Amazon handles everything from storage of the items to shipping to the customer. Whenever customers buy the items, you make money on the sale. To make this profitable, you need to get the items cheap because Amazon takes a cut of the sale.

One way I have found cheap items is by going to Target and checking the end caps. Target marks things down regularly so you can make trips there to find things. You can also check out YouTube videos to find tips for getting items at different places. You can sell almost anything as long as someone is willing to buy it.

If you're good enough at #2 from above, you can also sell the used textbooks on Amazon!

#5:Open a Brokerage Account

With all these new income streams, you should have leftover money to start investing. You do not need to do anything complicated, you just want to make sure your money is working for you. I tend to buy ETFs that track the SP500 as this strategy requires little effort outside of transferring money. With apps like M1, you can streamline your investing to make it even simpler. Check out my story on how M1 can make things easier.

Hopefully, these tips allow you to start earning extra income and build wealth while being a college student.