March 11, 2018, by aeyskb
Taking Control Of Your Student Loan…It’s Not Too Late!
It is nearly the end of the semester and your student budget seems to have rapidly disappeared. You can see the money slipping through your fingers. Keeping on top of finances can be difficult as let’s be honest… giving a lump sum of cash to (some, not all… but I’m definitely one!) fiscally fickle teens can lead to bad decisions, broken bank balances and overused overdrafts. Not to worry though! I have a few pieces of advice to help make your student budget go further…
- Meal Plan
Meal planning is a great way to not only be organised for the week ahead. But it also means that there are no stupid impulse buys when you go for a food shop! Through planning your meals, it too means that you will not be wasting any food as you will know exactly why you are purchasing that product. Other benefits include that it is less stress, especially when exam season approaches. Plus, it saves times walking aimlessly around the shops deciding what to get.
- Cook with your housemates
Instead of buying your own food, it would be cheaper and a lot easier to do a food shop collectively with your housemates and make meals together. That way you will be getting more for your money. For example, in first year I spent about £30 per week on food shopping for myself. This year, I do a collective food shop with my house mates and we cook together and it reduced the price to £20 per week. Meaning that extra £10 I’m saving can go towards a night out!
- Plan nights out in advance
Something we pretty much already have to do anyway due to the ticketing system for Nottingham nightclubs but by pre-booking tickets it means that you can put aside money as you know what date you are going out on and know to save money for it, rather than going out spontaneously and blowing all your money in one night!
- Get a part-time job
Pretty straight forward. If you’re not wanting to make any savings or changes to your current spending habits, then this is the right way to go. It also means you can get some experience to add to your C.V. too so it’s a win-win! A great place to find part-time jobs suited to students is on the Unitemps website.
- Let your parents look after your loan
As heart-breaking as it sounds, if you have no savvy when it comes to finances or alternatively, if you do but do not want the responsibility for all this money then this may be the best solution for you. Having your parents send you a weekly budget would allow you to be wise with how you spend it. So you won’t be left with just beans to live on by the end of the semester!
I hope that this information is useful to get through these last few weeks!
Part-time vacancies are available at Unitemps.
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