How to pay for college without going broke?

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Jeffry and Catherine Vecore didn't make a ton of money, but they used it wisely. Here's how they put all six of their kids through school. 

When her two sons were younger, Sarah McCord says she was a stay-at-home mom. But as soon as her oldest hit high school, she went back to work with one goal in mind: using her pay to cover the kids' college tuition. 

"The cost of school, I think, is exorbitant, and I can’t imagine how (a student) would recoup that if a kid were to finance that on their own,'' says McCord, whose salary from her job at a pharmaceutical company covers her younger son's roughly $17,000 a semester in tuition, room and board. "Entry level salaries just aren't going to make a dent in those payments.''

With Americans carrying $1.57 trillion in outstanding student loan debt, many families and students continue to borrow to cover the ever-escalating costs of college tuition. But some are also figuring out more creative ways to pay for higher education, from crowdfunding to corporate reimbursement programs to stashing cash back from purchases they make every day. 

"As college costs continue to rise and there seems to be no end in sight, the gap is going to get narrower and narrower at the top of who can really even afford this anymore,'' says Susan Dabbar, founder and CEO of Admission Smarts, which helps families navigate the college admissions process, from applications to affordability. "More and more people are going to be looking for all of these different ways...to figure out how are we really going to pay for this.''

So how are you going to pay for college?

Last year, 57% of financial aid funding for undergraduate students came from grants, 34% from loans, 7.9% from education tax benefits and less than 1% from student jobs, says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher and vice president of research for Savingforcollege.com. 

Scholarships, offered by everyone from states to fraternal organizations, can also help cut the cost of tuition. And Jeff Levy, an independent educational consultant says "the most creative way to finance a college education is to find the colleges that are the most generous with financial aid, both need-based and non-need-based.''

The average discount from the published cost of attendance is 44% he says. "So for families who are smart about how to shop for college, they can easily cut the cost ... in half by putting sensible colleges on their child's list.''

But Americans are also saving, utilizing tools like 529 plans, which offer tax advantages to families that invest in stocks and bonds.

"Eighteen percent of children under the age of 18 have 529 plans,'' Kantrowitz says, "a relatively low number but it’s been growing. Every dollar you save is a dollar less you're going to have to borrow.''

How to pay for college without going broke?