Creative Ways to Pay for College

I wanted to assure my daughter would have good credit when she graduated and therefore be better able to live comfortably on her own. I also needed to find a way to reduce the cost of sending her to college. We lived in Connecticut and her college was in California. That meant several trips a year by plane to come home. I opened a credit card with her name first and my name second. The address was mine so I received all statements. Her school accepted credit cards but I did not have a high enough limit to cover the entire cost at once. I called the school and charged $4,000. The next day I mailed a check to the credit card company to cover the amount charged so I would not have to pay any interest. The check could come from a home equity line of credit, student loan or other resources. I continued to do this for the entire amount due had been charged to my credit card. This accomplished two things.

#1 I earned points on the credit card. Putting the cost of school on the card gave us enough points to pay for round-trip airfare to get her home twice a year at no cost to me.

#2 Since her name was first on the card and the bills came to me, I made sure they were always paid on time. When she graduated college she had excellent credit.