My parents aren't helping me with college(well I live at home but I also pay them rent, so there's that) and I pay for all of my own bills except for health insurance(at the moment).
I work full-time as a machinist, attend university out of pocket part time, I'm 23 and make just a touch over 30,000 gross a year (US). I go to college part time and have filled out the fasfa on several occasions(each time with a particular parent getting into a HUGE rage over my needing to know their tax information, which is scary but besides the point) but my parents' combined total income is way too much to help me qualify for any need based assistance aside from scary loans. Any time I search for scholarships I come across these barriers. Students have to be shining examples of society or that their family has to be piss-poor. Needless to say, while I wasn't ever a troublesome kid, I didn't do much volunteering and again, my dad makes a lot of money(but chooses to buy "toys", but the minimalist in me must not judge!) so I can't even get in on those. I'm also white, so minority scholarships are out. Annnnndddd I'm arts major, so there goes any STEM degree scholarship options(and that's why I refuse to go into debt for my degree).
My google-fu is quite possibly the worst and that's really the only kinds of scholarships I keep coming across and I feel like I'm overlooking something huge. Aside from just saving money for classes, going to community college classes(and transferring them over right away to my university, I attend both simultaneously taking a class at each each semester) and paying out of pocket, what am I overlooking? Is there a keyword or a special kind of scholarship I should be looking at? When I turn 24 in November, will there be anything else that will open up to me as an option? I feel so frustrated, I was going to sign up for two classes at the University for the fall but they hit me with a $3,000 bill. I hunted through the artsys page and found a class at the community college that will transfer as a general elective in a topic I adore(history) that I hadn't taken yet with a teacher I adore. That class was about a third of the university class, so I'll drop one of those two at the University and drop the fall semester to about $2000. Imagine some sweaty brow wiping right there!
I feel like I'm doing everything right but also like I'm not. I've never drank, I've never tried drugs, I'm a minimalist who buys used wherever she can and is about to embark on a year long shopping ban but I feel like it'd honestly be easy sauce, just avoid the tamagotchi community and continue avoiding tech news so I don't look lustfully at new phones and digital pets. I really don't know what else I can cut back on. I keep trying to scale back going out to dinner and such with the boyfriend, and I've been trying to get my family to handle the holidays with us all picking a name out of a hat and only having to shop for one person. I have no say, just expectations with the boyfriend of 8 years' family, so I might just stop buying presents for my blood family altogether because I honestly don't feel as much guilt when I piss them off, for some reason. It seriously feels like I'm dropping at least 50-100 bucks on presents a month on people I love, when the very notion of receiving gifts myself repulses me(minimalist and I despise the clutter and the figuring out how to get rid of stuff without offending people.
Sorry for the slew of parenthesis, it's just one of those things that feels like it needs a lot of context.
Any advice you all have, I'd greatly appreciate and take anything you all suggest into careful consideration, I just want to be able to breathe easy when it comes to my tuition along with having a 6 month emergency fund(I recently burned through a lot of it) and saving at least something for retirement.