As part of last month’s Back To School Giveaway, the members of the College Money Network joined forces to bring you a series of articles filled with tons of valuable information to help college students start the school year off on the right track. Here’s a convenient roundup of all of the articles we wrote to help college students get their finances in order this school year.

Photo by spakattacks

• 6 Cool Ways To Track Your Expenses Online at Broke Grad Student
• Maximizing Your Financial Aid at Green Panda Treehouse
• 5 Things Every College Freshman Needs To Know at This Writer’s Wallet
• How to Save a Bunch of Money Buying College Textbooks at Spilling Buckets
• Make This the Year for Scholarships at Poorer Than You
• Get an Internship & Make It Count at This Writer’s Wallet
• Broke Student’s Guide to Free Software and Online Resources at Broke Grad Student
• Off-campus fun on the cheap at MFA or Bust
• Keeping Your Student Loans on a Short Leash at Poorer Than You
• Find Cheap Transportation for School and Work at Green Panda Treehouse

More Financial Tips for College Students

We also encouraged other bloggers to participate by sharing their financial tips and advice for college students, and we got some great responses. Be sure to check out these articles for a wealth of great tips on money and college life as the school year goes into full swing.

• Back to School Financial Goal? at LivingAlmostLarge
• 10 Tips For College Bound Students at Moolanomy
• The other Broke Grad Student at So Cal Savvy
• Financial advice for college students: How to not spend $5,000 at Money To Live
• Set yourself up for success while you are in college at Stacking Pennies
• College Student Money Guide: Financial Tips for Student Success at Money Smart Life
• Six sure fire ways for students to ruin their financial future at Saving To Invest
• Back To School Money Tips for College Students at Cash Money Life

The College Money Network’s Back To School Giveaway ended last week, and it was a huge success. We received an astounding 374 entries into the contest, and we had over $200 worth of prizes up for grabs. This means each participant had at least a 2.5% chance of winning a prize. Well, we’ve rolled the virtual dice, and here are the results.

Photo by Goose frabaaa

Christopher Evans is the lucky winner of the iPod nano! Christopher’s advice for college students was to avoid credit cards at all costs and to live in the dorms because it’s convenient and saves money. Sounds like some solid advice from someone who has already been through college.

Rachel Robinson is the winner of the $50 cash prize. She earned her prize by divulging a few money saving tips from her college days, such as sharing food expenses, using coupons, and skipping the weekend clubs unless you have a date who pays. Sometimes it really pays to be a woman.

Mike is the winner of the $20 cash prize. His goal for this school year is to pay off $1250 of his car loan by selling things around the house, cutting costs, and using any gifts that he receives. Best of luck in reaching your goal!

Josie is the winner of The 4-Hour Workweek.

Marilyn R is the winner of a one year subscription to Money Magazine. She plans to get a part-time job and put all of her extra money into a savings account this school year, so she’ll be able to pay the rest of her tuition without taking out private loans. This is a great goal, and we wish you the best of luck in achieving it.

LivingAlmostLarge is also a winner of a one year subscription to Money Magazine. Her advice for college students is to take more time in college (5 years) and to do internships to really learn and decide about future career options. For more details, check out the rest of her post on advice for college students.

Shannon is the winner of a one year subscription to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine. Her advice to college students is to hold off on getting and using a credit card as long as possible.

Tab is the winner of a one year subscription to SmartMoney Magazine.

Sakura is the winner of a $10 eBay certificate.

We’d like to extend a big thanks to everyone who participated in our first giveaway. All of you shared some really great tips and advice for college students, and it was awesome to see college students setting solid financial goals for the school year.

Make sure you don’t miss the College Money Network’s next contest or giveaway by subscribing to our feed to get free updates.

The College Money Network is celebrating the start of another school year by throwing its first giveaway! Not only are we giving away a bunch of awesome prizes, we will also be posting a series of valuable articles over the next two weeks to help students and everyone else put their best financial foot forward.

Prizes

• 4GB iPod nano
• $50 cash
• $20 cash
• Copy of The 4-Hour Workweek
• One-year magazine subscriptions
  • Young Money
  • Kiplinger’s
  • SmartMoney Magazine
  • Money Magazine
• $10 eBay gift certificate

How to Enter

There are multiple ways to earn entries into the Back To School giveaway. Complete as many as you can to increase your chances of winning a prize! You may enter each way once.

If you are a current college student: Share your financial goal for the upcoming semester, quarter, or school year and how you will achieve it. Make the goal specific and explain the actions you will take to achieve it. This is to ensure that students are making a conscious effort to create a real financial goal, not writing something just to enter the giveaway. Here’s an example of a good entry:

My financial goal is to save $1,000 by the end of the school year. I will do this by getting a part-time job and putting $100/month in a high yield savings account.

• Leave a comment on this post with your response. (1 entry)
• Write a post on your own blog about your “Back To School Financial Goal” and email us to let us know. (3 entries)

OR

If you are not a college student: Share some tips and ideas for managing your finances as a student. If you’ve already been there and done that, what is the most important financial advice you would give to college students? If you’re still in high school, share some of your current money tips.

• Leave a comment on this post with your response. (1 entry)
• Write a post on your own blog with your “Financial Advice for College Students” or “High School Money Tips” and email us to let us know. (3 entries)

Everyone may also:

• Subscribe to the College Money Network group feed. (2 entries)
• Mention the CMN network and include a link to this post on one of your favorite sites (e.g. comment on a blog, post in a forum, etc.). Email us with a link to where you mentioned it, so we can record the entry. (3 entries)

Bonus opportunities:

• Visit individual College Money Network member sites for opportunities to earn additional entries, e.g. subscribing to individual RSS feeds. Copying and pasting your comment on multiple blogs does NOT count. (Up to 6 extra)
  • Spilling Buckets
  • This Writer’s Wallet
  • Poorer Than You
  • Broke-Ass Student
  • Broke Grad Student
  • Green Panda Treehouse
  • MFA or Bust

How To Win

All valid entries will be assigned a unique number. We will use a random number generator to select the winning numbers. Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received.

All entries must be received by August 31, 2008 at 11:59 PM PST.

Winners will be notified the following week. After all the prizes have been claimed, we will release an official announcement with all of the winners.

Rules and Restrictions

• All winners must be 18 years of age or older and live in the United States.
• No purchase is necessary to participate in this giveaway.
• We will choose the winners from the qualified participants. We are the sole judges of adding entries to the list. Plagiarized content, trackback from splogs, spams, non-goal oriented comments, and comments containing abusive or inappropriate languages will not be considered.
• To award the prizes, we must be able to contact you. Please leave a valid email address with your comment, or make sure we can contact you through your web site. Your contact information will not be shared with anyone else.
• For certain prizes, winners will be required to submit a physical address to ship the prize. Again, your contact information will never be shared with anyone.
• Prizes are provided as-is, and substitutions may be made at our discretion.
• Winners must reply within 1 week from the time we notify them to claim their prize. Otherwise, they forfeit their prize, and it will be awarded to an alternate.

We’re excited to introduce the newest members of the College Money Network. Spilling Buckets is a 23/24 year old blogging duo residing in Rochester, New York. Their story begins shortly after graduation as they start their careers and a life together. Get yourself acquainted with Les and Ry by checking out their goals for 2008. Then prepare to be awed when you see how they track their income and expenses. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

The College Money Network is a diverse group of college students, grad students, and recent graduates who blog about personal finance in a way that’s easy for other college students and twenty somethings to relate. By forming a network, we hope to provide a single location where college students and twenty somethings can visit for the best information on personal finance.

The founding members of the College Money Network are:

• Broke-Ass Student [RSS]
• Broke Grad Student [RSS]
• Green Panda Treehouse [RSS]
• MFA or Bust [RSS]
• Poorer Than You [RSS]
• This Writer’s Wallet [RSS]

Getting Started

Here’s some information that will help you find your way around the College Money Network site.

Network Updates
On the home page, we will make important announcements regarding news, writing projects, etc. related to the network. You will also see summaries of the latest posts from our blogs.

Network Feed
Subscribe to the aggregate College Money Network feed via RSS or email to get free updates whenever we post new content.

Network-Wide Search
The search box at the top right allows you to search all of the blogs in the College Money Network. If you’re interested in a certain topic, you can perform a single search from here and find out what all of us have to say on the topic in one convenient location.

Quick Links to Our Network Blogs
Located below the search box are links directly to our network members’ sites.

Individual Headline Feeds
Beneath the quick links, you’ll find links to the 5 latest headlines from each network blog.

Whether you’re a soon-to-be college student, current college student, grad student, recent grad, or parent of any of the previously mentioned, we hope that you’ll find the College Money Network to be a useful resource for you.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.