Budgeting as a student can be slightly more tricky that budgeting when you have a full time income. Your income might be varied, and you might have lump sums paid into your account each term rather than a monthly salary.
That said, there is no better time to start learning about budgeting, and making this part of your day-to-day routine- it’s a great habit to take with you into full time employment and adulthood.
Thankfully, unpaid internships are now illegal in the UK- so the likelihood is that you will be compensated for your time when you undertake an internship as a student. However, if your internship is in London and you have no family or friends living in London, you will still need to save up the cash to live there for a month or two.
It’s difficult, but not impossible to support yourself whilst interning. Before you undertake your internship (and perhaps even before you’ve had confirmation of your placement) you might want to save up some money to help pay for the cost of interning.
Learning how to save money on groceries as a student is a brilliant way to set yourself up for the future. Groceries are likely to be one of your biggest areas of expenditure, so it’s a good to have some ideas up your sleeve about how you can reduce this cost.
Food is an absolutely non-negotiable expense, and whilst you want to make sure you’re sticking to a good food budget, you also want to make sure that you are not restricting yourself too much in this area.
To succeed at university you still need to try and eat a relatively balanced diet to stay happy and healthy during one of the most important times of your life.
Managing your money as a student can be a challenge- you’ve never managed lump sums of money before, paid bills or even learnt about personal finance at school. But right now is the absolute best time to form good money habits, before you enter the world of full time employment.
There are a ton of ways to manage your money, but we already spend so much time on our smartphones- so why not use them to our advantage and use them to help save money?
We all know how tight money can be at university- there’s a reason for the student stereotype of beans on toast for every meal! But despite the stereotype, there are ways that you can save money at university so that you can spend more on the things that matter, and keep costs down.
University is likely to be the first time you’ll be away from home, and so it’s a great time to learn some great financial habits for the future.