How to budget as a student

Becoming a student is an exciting moment. You’ll be leaving home to live in a new city, with the prospect of new friends and adulthood on the horizon.

But it can also be difficult to settle. Budgeting, in particular, can be challenging – even with a student loan and a maintenance loan. Below, we explore how you can budget effectively as a student.

Add up your income

The first step to budgeting is working out your income. Begin by considering the loans you’ve got coming in. From there, add on any bursaries, part-time jobs and any help you’ll be getting from your parents. Ideally, you’ll then be able to work out what your monthly income is as the basis of your budget.

Consider outgoings

The next step is to calculate your outgoings. Start with the essentials: travel, rent, bills, education supplies and food will all need accounting for each month. Next, you should compare this to your income. Ideally, you’ll still have plenty of income left over for you to spend on other things such as entertainment, nights out, drinks, hobbies and sports equipment. Measure your outgoings against your income to establish whether your lifestyle will be sustainable. If not, you’ll have to consider trimming your spending or looking for extra funding.

Extra funding

There are ways of securing extra funding to help you budget. For a start, by arranging an overdraft with your bank you can unlock interest-free funds. Alternatively, if you need money to tide you over until your income improves you could look into quick loans for students with bad credit to give you a financial boost. However, extra funding should form part of your planned budget – it shouldn’t be an impulsive way of easing financial pressure.

Commitment

Ultimately though, commitment is one of the key parts of budgeting. It’s okay if you slip up at first – this is something that happens to everyone. Instead, you should use mistakes as a learning experience and use them to improve your budgeting in the future. By the end of your time at university, you should have developed the experience to budget efficiently and carefully.

Becoming a student can be an overwhelming time – especially as you begin to look after your own money. And by following the advice above, you’ll be all set to responsibly manage your money.