With college tuition fees on a constant rise, student loans tightening up and people with less money in general, it is expected for debt to pile up. That also means, however, that students need to re-evaluate how they spend their money.

There are plenty of students who struggle to afford school, and they make money by working jobs and exercising discretionary spending.

But for each student that fits such a mold, there are even more who spend at will, thinking it’s OK as long as they can’t see the money they’re spending.

It would be a good idea for the university to make a personal finance course a required class for graduation. With classes such as biology and physics being mandatory — subjects that many students at the university could argue they will never put to use following graduation — personal finance is a necessary component of everyday life.

If the university’s goal is to prepare students for the real world after they leave MSU, making such a class mandatory is the perfect way to accomplish this.

Now more than ever, students should set budgets, do away with luxuries such as eating at a restaurant for most meals, and consider getting a job.

Students can save a lot of money by making their own meals and even opting to buy less expensive substitutes, such as off-brand toilet paper, paper towels and other items. It is better to sacrifice a little convenience than to have mounds of debt.

Additionally, while building credit is important, it is better to not have a credit card if students are simply going to ruin their credit by collecting debt. It would be advisable instead to use a debit card if a person is insistent upon carrying plastic. This way, students cannot spend more than they have and will not be shocked and sickened by a monthly credit card statement.

But these measures only will help ease the burden of personal spending, and many students must rely on loans to get through college, which is where most of the debt comes from following graduation.

The lessons learned from changing personal spending habits, though, will have a trickle-down effect on how quickly students will pay back their loans following college. If a student knows how to set up a personal budget for rent, food, transportation and utilities, they can then figure out how much money to set aside to pay back loans.

Still, this process of setting budgets is not ingrained in students’ minds. Students are in a sort of untouchable setting during college, where the weekends often last three days and the future always seems far enough away.

But in reality the future is not that far away.

Don’t wait for that credit card bill to tell you.