How Graduate Students Do Money

I always avoided taking direct loans from friends and family members, however, because I knew I would never actually pay it back, at least not within a reasonable amount of time. Between the stress of being indebted to an evil bank and the stress of letting my financial situation ruin an important personal relationship, I always went with the former. (Plus my family frankly had no money to give me anyway.)

Adam Kotsko has a good post about his time in grad school and his financial strategy for making it all work while his income was limited. When I was in grad school, my strategy was: Try to get as much financial aid as possible to limit the amount of loans I had to take out, and try not to use the loan money to live like I had an income, because, besides some freelance work at the time, my income was essentially zero.

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