Millionaire greetings from steamy Merida, Yucatan. We’re currently on a five-month adventure in Mexico with plans of traveling to Campeche, Chiapas, and Quintana Roo. (Obviously, this is having a negative effect on my blogging productivity!
Before we hit our FIRE number, we were Travel Rewards Millionaires. Here are the referral links for the credit cards we currently use:
My Experiment Ends On April 4th, 2022, I took and passed my last CLEP exam, the College Composition Modular exam. After completing the exam, I decided to end my credit-acquisition experiment in order to focus on helping my son earn his college degree. Naturally, he intends to earn his degree by using some sort of alternative-degree path.
All in all, I was 19 for 19 on my CLEP exams; I passed them all! Overall, my credit-by-exam batting average is 1,000% (20 for 20) since I also passed a DSST test way back in 2011. Here are the CLEP exams that I took:
My CLEP Transcript: 19 for 19!
Full disclosure: I chickened out on the College Mathematics CLEP exam since I don’t remember anything about math. Bawk, bawk!
My Final Transcript
If you read the first two posts of this series (#1 & #2), you know that I earned years of college in a very short time. How many college credits did I earn? How fast was I able to earn these credits? Allow this table to do the talking:
Doing the Impossible: 5.5 Years of College in 5 Months
Total Costs
Unfortunately, my credit-acquisition experiment was not cost-free; it set me back a whopping $714. In other words, my 5.5 years of college cost about $130 per year of college ($714 / 5.5 years). Here’s a look at the costs for this experiment:
Total Costs for 5.5 Years of College via Alternative Methods
Final Thoughts
Ka-boom! Now, that’s how you hack some college credit! Of course, many of you are probably wondering why a FIREe in his 50’s would waste his time, money, and energy accumulating college credit that he has no plan of ever using.
There are two main reasons I did this. First, I wanted to explore some alt-ed options for my son. I’m happy to report that there are a ton of cost-effective ways to earn college credit. Second, I won’t hide from the fact that I’m tired of watching young adults ruin their financial futures by signing up for student loans. To. Hell. With. That!
I hope my credit-acquisition experiment inspires some of you to develop your own cost-effective alt-ed path. If you like this post, please share it with someone who might benefit from this information. Thanks for reading!
Yours in excessive college credit,
Gerry
Next Post: Back to School #4: If I Wanted Another College Degree…
Useful Resources: Companies and Services that We Actually Use (Lots of affiliate links here!)
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