I’m Colin, a senior at Tulane’s Freeman School of Business studying finance with a certificate in energy studies. I’m currently spending my second summer interning at a commodities brokerage in New York City, where I am actively figuring out how to live in Manhattan on an intern salary. It is harder than it sounds and I have learned more about budgeting in the past few months than I did in four years of coursework.
I have been working since I was 14, starting at a restaurant and staying there through high school and most of college. Small paychecks, inconsistent hours, and a real need to make things stretch. That experience taught me more about managing money than anything I have read, and it is a big part of why I take this stuff seriously.
I started Dorm Room Finance because most personal finance content is written for people who already have their lives figured out. It assumes you have a salary, a 401k match, and a financial advisor. None of that is useful when you are 20, trying to decide whether to open a Roth IRA with your internship paycheck, or trying to figure out how to not go broke in a city that costs twice as much as everywhere else.
I have made good financial calls and some genuinely bad ones. Opened a Roth IRA at 19 with my first real paycheck (good). Ignored my student loan interest for a year because I did not fully understand how it compounded (less good, and it cost me something real). I write about both because the mistakes are usually more useful than the wins.
My own goals right now are to reach financial independence as early as possible after graduation, build a real investment portfolio over the next few years, and not spend my twenties working a salary I immediately hand back to rent. I track my spending, invest what I can, and try to make the same decisions I write about here.
Outside of finance I am involved in Tulane’s Energy Club, spend more time than I probably should playing chess, and have been building AI tools on the side. The AI work in particular has changed how I think about building things and solving problems, which bleeds into how I approach researching and writing articles here.
What I cover:
- Credit Cards: which ones actually make sense for students, how to build credit from zero, and how to avoid the traps that catch most people in college
- Investing: Roth IRAs, index funds, brokerage accounts, and why starting at 20 matters more than most people realize
- Budgeting: systems that work on a student or entry level income, not a spreadsheet you abandon in two weeks
- Side Hustles: what actually makes money versus what sounds good on Reddit
- First Job Finances: what to do with your first real paycheck so you do not waste the head start
- Banking: the accounts worth having and the fees worth avoiding
The site has 38+ articles across 8 categories with new articles three times a week. I am not a financial advisor and nothing here is professional advice. It is a finance student sharing what he is actually doing and what he has actually learned.
If there is a topic you want covered or a question you cannot find a straight answer to, reach out.