Recently I wrote about student loans; here’s a practical tip for saving money while you’re in college. As soon as the semester ends, sell your used textbooks. Too many students hold on to books for years, moving them from place to place and rarely opening them. Because textbooks lose value over time—editions change and information becomes outdated—selling them while they’re still current will usually get you a better price. There’s little reason to keep them on the off chance you’ll reference them someday.
I’ve always moved my furniture myself, but once I considered hiring movers. When I called for an estimate I learned something surprising: movers frequently transport boxes of books and magazines, and because those items are very heavy, the cost goes up quickly when movers charge by weight. That’s another reason to pare down your collection and sell textbooks promptly.
– Jill
P.S. Funny story: while searching for an image for this post I found one with a caption that perfectly matched my point. It read, “I don’t know why but I have a hard time getting rid of my old textbooks. I keep thinking one day I will reference them but I haven’t in all these years yet still I keep thinking I will.” I laughed—wish I could send this post to that person!
From Mike: You can recover a good portion of your textbook costs if you sell right after the semester ends. If the same edition is used the next term, demand will be higher and you’ll get better offers. Wait too long, and professors often adopt newer editions, making older copies much less valuable.
At my university, the campus bookstore bought back books for about one-third of the retail price. They also resold used copies at roughly half price. I learned to buy used books at the start of term and sell them back at the end—doing so often reduced my textbook expense to just a sixth to a quarter of the cost of buying new editions.
On the rare occasions I kept textbooks, I always regretted it. They became clutter, and by the time I decided to get rid of them their resale value had evaporated.
How do you save on college textbooks? Share your tips in the comments below.
Photo credit: LifeSupercharger