You thought you were just a cash-strapped student. Think again. Your laptop, the one you’ve been hauling back and forth to class, is probably worth a lot more than you think.

For starters, a brand-new laptop computer is probably going to cost you around $1,000 (and more if you’re buying one of those high-end laptops designed for creative types). The interesting thing is, unlike cars, your laptop is likely to increase in value the more you use it. 

Take a minute to think about the cost of all the data you’ve got stored on your laptop. What would you do if it were all gone?

Download songs from iTunes or MP3 services? If it just costs one dollar a song times all the hundreds or thousands of tracks you have in your music collection; that’s a lot of money Online video rentals and movies are even more costly.

You get into serious money when you look at all the schoolwork you’ve got saved. The average annual cost of tuition and fees at a public four-year university comes in at $6,585. Let’s say you’re taking four classes and you lose an important term paper, which causes you to fail a class. You’d have to pay about $1,650 to retake the class. And that’s not to mention all the time you’re going to spend in summer school so you can graduate on time.

There are also some things saved in your laptop that you simply can’t put a price on. How would you feel if you lost all of your photos of your time at school?

And what about the damage to your social life? Try staying connected to friends without Facebook or asking your parents for money without email. It's tougher to do than you think.

When it comes down to it, your laptop contains your digital identity. Your social networking profiles and saved financial information make your laptop a tempting target for identity theft.

Your laptop: it’s probably worth more than you think. Remember that the next time you think you’re broke.