# Ray for College Students

## Your first budget, without the lecture
Part-time income, student loans, and zero financial education. Ray helps you build real money habits before you graduate.

## The challenge

### Never budgeted before
You know you should have a budget but don't know where to start. Categories, percentages, and rules of thumb feel arbitrary when you make $800 a month.

### Student loans are abstract
You signed promissory notes for numbers that didn't feel real. Now you have $34k in loans and no idea what that actually means for your life after graduation.

### Irregular part-time income
Your hours change every week. Some months you work 25 hours, others 10. Consistent budgeting is impossible when your paycheck is a moving target.

### Building credit from zero
You got a student credit card but aren't sure how much to use it, when to pay, or how any of it affects the credit score you don't have yet.

## How Ray helps

### A budget that matches your actual income
Ray looks at what you actually earn and spend, then suggests a simple budget based on your real numbers, not some influencer's 50/30/20 rule.

`❯ create a budget based on what I actually spend`

### Student loan reality check
Ray calculates what your loans will actually cost after graduation — monthly payment, total interest, payoff timeline — so you can plan before it hits.

`❯ what will my student loan payments look like after graduation?`

### Spending awareness without shame
Ray shows you where your money goes without moralizing about it. See the data, decide for yourself.

`❯ where did my money go this month?`

### Credit card coaching
Ray tracks your credit utilization and payment timing. It flags when you're carrying a balance or getting close to a utilization threshold.

`❯ what's my credit card utilization right now?`

### Your situation
You're a sophomore working part-time at a coffee shop. You made $720 this month but spent $680, mostly on food and going out. You have $34k in student loans accumulating interest.

`❯ I barely have any money left this month. Am I doing something wrong?`

You earned $720 and spent $680 — that's $40 left, which is tight but not unusual for a part-time student. Here's where it went: $310 dining out and delivery, $140 groceries, $120 subscriptions, $110 other. The dining number stands out — that's 46% of your income. If you shifted half of those meals to groceries, you'd save roughly $100/month. Over the school year, that's $900 toward an emergency fund. Your $34k in loans are accruing about $130/month in interest right now — you can't change that yet, but building even a small buffer now will matter a lot at graduation.

## Try Ray free
Open source, local-first, and takes five minutes to set up.

`$npm install -g ray-finance`  
[View on GitHub](https://github.com/cdinnison/ray-finance)