Ah, college. I can look back fondly on the experience because I'm doing just that — looking back. That is, until my monthly student loan statements show up in my mail box.

While just about everyone can attest to hearing college students complain — and justifiably so, in this humble columnist's opinion — about the constant hikes in college tuition each year, it's easier for those who've been off campus for any length of time to forget the hefty price tags associated with another college expense: buying textbooks.

According to statistics featured in the Huffington Post article

the average student will spend nearly $1,000 per year on textbooks, a cost due to prices that have risen twice as fast as inflation over the past 20 years — four times as fast as median household income.

So what's a college student to do if they want to spend less on textbooks? The Huffington Post article offers the cost-saving options of book rentals and going digital. Rental websites linked from the article include

,

,

,

and

, with the websites

,

and

listed as sites that will help you find the least expensive options.

When it comes to going digital,

can reportedly save you up to 80 percent, while

and Barnes & Noble's

can help save you up to 60 percent.

Textbook rental seems like kind of a hassle, but if it could have saved you hundreds of dollars a year it seems foolish not to try it. The biggest draw of digital — for those of us who remember slogging back and forth across campus a dozen times a day — has to be the ability to carry all your books to class without throwing out your back carrying a 50-pound backpack.

If I could offer additional advice to college students looking to save on textbooks, here's what I'd recommend:

1. Check textbooks out from the library.

Often textbooks are available for checkout at the university library, and are sometimes available at the public library. Find out what you need early on and check it out fast, as there likely will be few copies and many people seeking a free textbook for the semester.



2. Share textbooks.

This sounds easy, but if you're not terribly social or don't have many acquaintances in your courses it can be tricky. It can be worth it getting to know someone who has the same classes as you, however, if it can save you half the cost or more of a textbook.





3. Borrow textbooks and make photocopies.

It's no secret that information is free — anything you can read in your math textbook you can read somewhere else online. What is valuable about textbooks are the questions they contain that some college instructors choose to base their assignments on. You could get by without a buying your math textbook for the semester if you had even limited access to another student's copy so you could photocopy just the problems assigned.



4. Find previous editions and buy those instead.

More times than I'd like to admit in college I purchased an $80 new version of a text only to compare it to the previous edition later in the semester and find out the two were exactly the same except for an additional index or two we didn't even reference in class. The biggest difference: The older editions cost as little as $1 in used textbook sales.



5. Save your receipts and don't open books until you're sure you'll use them.

Again, it happened more often than I'd like to admit that I'd get to a class after opening my shrink-wrapped textbooks only to have the instructor say "Nevermind, we won't be using those books this semester." On one occasion, my classmates and I paid $70 each for a cardboard pamphlet that included a code to a digital text inside, which, after I had opened it, we were told we didn't need. That's a wasted $70 I'm paying interest on now, when I'd rather be putting that money toward college for my infant daughter. It's better to wait to open your textbooks until your instructors' first assignments.

What tips do you have for saving money on textbooks? Let us know in the comments section below or email me at

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