Heading to college in the next few weeks and worried about the rising costs of textbooks?  You’re not alone.  According to this article in Huffington Post more and more students have begun making decisions about which textbooks to buy, and which ones to try and complete a college course without because of the high price of textbooks.  Even buying a used edition of a textbook can come with a high price tag and with students consciously trying to limit their student loan debt, many are unsure what to do.

Renting textbooks may prove to be a great option for you!  There are a few different companies that you can use to rent textbooks through; one of them is Chegg.com. To give you an example of just how much money you can save by renting textbooks, I used one of the most popular rented textbooks on their site.  The Laboratory Manual for General Biology 5th Edition has a list price of $134.95, but can rented for $41.79 for a $93.16 savings.  Savings like that can quickly add up and dramatically cut down your textbook costs. 

Another company that has options to buy books at a discounted price, and now has a section that lets you rent textbooks is half.com.  They are an ebay company and operate along the same ebay guidelines with various sellers on the site.

Just because a textbook is sold in the school bookstore does not mean you have to purchase your copy there.  Research the above options, find out if a classmate has a copy from a previous semester (make sure it is the correct edition though) and consider buying used copies of the books if renting is not a good option for you instead of new ones to help cut the cost of buying your books.

Until next time,
Val