“Contrary to what non-cheapskates seem to think, only about 10% of the cheapskates polled said that they have a formal, written household budget. Here’s an excerpt from Jeff Yeager’s book The Cheapskate Next Door: And, incidentally, it’s something the best budgeters actually don’t do. This, my friend, is called micromanaging. It’s something you probably don’t want to be doing with your time. Think of your mind’s ideal picture of “budgeting.” What comes up? Do you think of the financially savvy member of the household sitting at the table every month, writing down spending caps in all the family’s different expense categories and minutely balancing available funds? It shouldn’t be an item of too much concern once you’ve structure everything correctly and fixed your spending habits. It should be simple and, after some initial setup, it should become little more than a background process in your head. Well, to be honest, I don’t really want you to have to put a whole ton of thought into budgeting. If you look at my other “Ultimate Guide”-style posts – the one on how to build a personal website, for example – you’ll notice that this one, though lengthy, is still decidedly shorter. Today, I’ll impart my thoughts and experience in the realm of budgeting with an emphasis on doing it in college. As a student, you’ve got to deal with several factors that don’t come up in other stages of life – and you’ve generally got pretty small coffers to boot. If you want to actually graduate from college and end up debt-free, well, you’ll need to know a bit more. The lack of cheat codes and the general importance of having enough money to eat mean you need to have a little bit of budgeting competence. In this life, budgeting is even more important. But, and it pains me to say this, there are no laser-shooting sports car cheats in real life. If you’re anything like me, you learned the basics of budgeting when you were 10 years old by playing Age of Empires II. You had to manage the production of resources – wood, food, gold, and stone – in order to build new facilities, research technologies, and advance through the ages.Įventually, you just typed in the cheat code for the red sports car with laser cannons and tore the Celts a new one. You can talk to the university about getting a bigger loan and also talk to student services or friends and family for emotional support if these are worrying them.Budgeting, as a concept, is very simple. You manage inputs and outputs, hopefully keeping the latter higher than the former. There is student finance that students can take out but most of that will be used to pay for your Uni housing. Uni can be difficult especially when financial issues are involved so if students are really struggling there is always help around them. An average shop around Lidl for one person comes in around £20 a week. The best place to shop is probably Lidl it is cheap and good value – even if your student accommodation is a bit further you could go with a flatmate or a friend then share an Uber on the way back if you don’t feel like carrying the shopping back. This is probably the first time you have had to shop for themselves it can be daunting and nerve wracking, especially with the stresses of a budget. For example, on Unidays they have discounts with Pizza Express, Zizzi, and Dominos, so if students fancy a meal out with their friends but are on a budget this is the perfect solution. They provide students with the possibility to do activities at a cheaper price. There are also ones you can pay for such as TOTUM which is £14.99 a year. The most popular ones are Unidays and StudentBeans because they’re free when you’re in education, all you need is your university email to set up an account. There are tones of different discount cards on the market available to students. You could also try and get a job before arriving to Uni to save up, it’ll come in useful, it will help relieve financial pressures and open up opportunities to be able to go out more and participate in sporting events too such as football matches. All you need is to be accepted into a university and to have a form of ID like a driving or provisional licence. NatWest is also a good option which allows a £3k overdraft. This can be easily set up and they offer a wide range of options for example Santander provide a free railcard for 4 years which will help when you want to put student life to the side and visit family, they also have a £1.5k overdraft limit. There are certain services available to help the students, such as summer jobs, students bank account, discount cards, and where to shop.ĭefinitely look at opening a student bank account. Being at University can become expensive very quickly with clothes shopping, weekly food shops, rent for your student accommodation, and socialising.
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