Hello everyone, my name's Charlotte and I am a Digital Content Ambassador and
today I'm going to be sharing some of my top 10 student budgeting tips.
My first tip would be to download a budgeting app. A lot of online banking apps have this
built in, but essentially you can input what you're spending, what your weekly
budget is depending on how much loan you're getting or the income
you're getting from a job, and then your phone cannot alert you if you're near to
your budget or if you've been spending a lot in a certain category, and I think
having this all on your phone or in an app is probably the best way to keep
track of how much you're spending. My second tip is when you're actually
calculating your budget I think it's really important to put in a little bit
of wiggle room. Sometimes you have to spend a bit more if it's someone's
birthday or for example towards the end of term, there's a lot of society meals
or college balls that you might need to be spending a little bit more money on.
So it's a good idea to leave a little bit more than just your normal expenses
like your food shopping. My third tip is also to budget for the holidays. So
obviously this depends whether you might be working at home over the holidays or
if you won't be working because you have a job at uni. Normally when I
would calculate my budget I would forget about the holidays which are four weeks
at Easter and Christmas and then twelve weeks over the summer holidays. You need
to make sure that your loan stretches over this period as well especially if
you might or might not be working. It's a good idea to keep in mind that you also
need money when you're not a uni as well. My fourth tip is to sign up to
loads of websites that do student deals, student discounts, things like that you
can use all the time just so you know if you have to buy anything expensive like
a laptop you can get the best deal possible, and also so you can keep track
of like things that are on promotion. There's also the Purple Card which is
the Lancaster version of a discount card which applies to things that you buy at
the uni so this can be event tickets for example but it also can be used in a lot
of businesses in town as well. The fifth tip is to shop at cheaper supermarkets.
There's an Aldi, Lidl, Farm Foods in Lancaster and if you buy the own brand
from these supermarkets you can make a lot of savings, but you can also get deliveries
to town or in campus from shops like Asda as well if you want to. It also means you
can shop around so if there's more promotions at one supermarket you can
get a delivery from that supermarket one week and change it around. The sixth tip is to not
eat out too much. It can be tempting but obviously to be making batch meals is
the most cost effective thing to do. To bring your lunch on campus as well
rather than buy on campus every time is a good idea, and you can also cook
with your flat to make like a lot of food and then you can share it out and
spit costs between you. It's a good way to save money. My seventh tip is to hold
off on buying any textbooks before you come to uni and often you can get them
in the library at no cost at all as textbooks can be so expensive, but also
you might find that you don't really need them. Sometimes you can get
ebooks online through the library or just free or you can find alternative
resources. So on my degree for example we don't really use textbooks we just use
journals that we can get through the library for free. So you might feel
like you want to do some reading before you get here but honestly I would advise
not buying any textbooks before you get here and you know what you really, really need.
My eighth tip is to use charity shops or apps where you can buy second-hand
clothes, especially when it comes to costumes for Halloween or Specific themed
events. Charity shops are also really great to replace things. So I smashed all
my plates when I came to university and instead of going and buying a whole set
from somewhere else I just went to a charity shop and bought
four plates for two pounds. You obviously can buy all your stuff from
places like this. There's loads in town and there is also a charity shop on campus
but you can also get secondhand textbooks for example. There's also
the Don't Ditch It campaign, where at the end of the year when
people are moving out from campus, if there's things they don't want to take home with
them instead of throwing it away, they can donate it to the Green Lancaster
campaign and then these things often get sold in the square during the year where
you can pick up some second-hand items for a lot cheaper. My 9th tip is to buy
things with your flatmates. So it might be tempting to buy absolutely everything
in IKEA before you come here but if you hold up, wait and bring just the
essentials, when you get in your flat you can buy things together and actually
share them. So, for example not every single person in a 12-person flat needs a
cheese grater but you could come to uni and you could buy two or three to
share between you. Obviously this depends on your flatmates and you won't
really know them until you get here, but I would advise holding off on buying
absolutely everything because you'll buy so much you don't need and you
can buy everything in town as well. The last tip is to do with train travel so
for me my biggest expense was train travel when I was going home, visiting
the local area, visiting friends at other unis. I actually got a railcard when I
signed up to a student bank account so it's worth searching for deals like that, as
well as booking ahead of time as much as possible. So you'll have the term dates
before you come, so you'll know when you're going home for example. There's a
lots of different websites and apps as well where you can do split ticketing
and try to get the cheapest train tickets possible. It's just a good thing
to factor in because if you're planning to go home quite a bit or to visit
a lot of people just to travel around Lancashire in general it can cost a lot,
so a railcard and booking ahead of time is a really good idea although
a lot of the train travel is quite cheap in the north in general. So those are my
10 tips for student budgeting that I got from my experience or from asking my
friends. Hopefully, this is useful and there's a few things that you might not
thought of that you can think about before you get to uni.