I'm not normally a "go back and do it again" kind of guy, but where college is concerned I am. I've thought a lot about it and these are the things I would do differently and will teach my children to do later on, although I hope to be in a position to pay what they need instead of placing the burden on them, even if that means sacrificing some of the things they want while they are living in my house. It is one of the best gifts that I can think of to give them.

• Get a Job: Working during the summers in high school would have let me build up a few thousand dollars in savings to help pay my living expenses during college.

• Study: Actually applying myself and doing what was expected would have led to much higher grades and a better chance for scholarships and private grants, which are GRADE dependent.

• Live at Home: Going to a school in the same town that my parents lived in would have been a good idea. Living at home would have helped keep my student loan debt down because I wouldn't have needed to pay for room and board. Nothing beats mooching off the folks for a few more years.

• Junior College: Attending a two-year college would have markedly lowered my tuition expenses and they tend to have more flexible hours so I would have been able to maintain a part-time job to help pay for the tuition.

• The Five Year Plan: Taking an extra year to graduate would have allowed me more chances to work without harming my studies and let me earn more money to pay for tuition. A friend of mine took three quarters off, one in each of his first three years, and worked full time while living at home and saved the money. Without his parents help, he graduated with no debt.

• A More Lucrative Major: Journalism, while I enjoyed writing, has not done anything for me professionally. I have never even held a journalistic job. The main reason is because it pays peanuts. Many people graduate with degrees that pay nothing and huge amounts of debt. Not a good combination. I should have majored in business and then focused on getting a job that would utilize my writing ability.

• Live Within My Means: This step alone would have saved me several thousand in debt. As I said in an earlier post, I was living a lifestyle I would be hard pressed to afford today.

Any one of these steps would have saved me money, all of them would have made it possible to graduate without any student loan debt at all. Man, what a great thing that would be.