In Logos’s 2020 seminary guide, there is an excellent essay by Daniel Zacharias and Benjamin Forrest about how to finance seminary or other similar education.
The essay is particularly helpful because it begins with the premise of minimizing or eliminating any additional debt you might incur on your way through seminary. It’s a wonderful thing to finish paying for seminary at or ahead of the time you finish your degree.
To this end, Zacharias and Forrest recommend that seminarians:
- Commit to minimizing debt;
- Start a budget, and cut unnecessary expenses;
- Be smart about housing;
- Seek out alternative forms of funding; and
- Work like a crazy person.
Zacharias and Forrest’s advice under each heading is what they “wish [they]’d had before [they] enrolled.” The value of what they share rings pretty true to my experience as well.
For the full essay, see Logos’s seminary guide. Or find the original version of the piece from which this essay is adapted in Zacharias and Forrest’s Surviving and Thriving in Seminary (Lexham, 2017).