3 Top Tips for Student Budgeting

January is a long month and it may take you by surprise how much you have spent in the last 5 weeks, but maybe being at the bottom of your overdraft with 2 months to go in the term is the push you need to get your budgetary matters in order. These are tips that you may have already heard, but now is the time to take notice and formalize an action plan.
Tip number 1: It is possible to save hundreds of pounds a year solely by being yourself; a student. Subscribe to all the online discount services such as wowcher, student beans, vouchercloud to name but a few. Also, every time you go to buy something, ask if they provide a student discount, remember that they won’t charge you more for asking so don’t worry about looking like a cheap skate.
Tip number 2: As grueling as it may sound, making a spread sheet of your monthly income and outgoings may well be worth the hassle. If you keep your receipts and can physically see how much your spending and whether your lifestyle is sustainable, it may give you the motivation to finally get on top of your finances. You can’t cheat the spread sheet.
Tip number 3: To get a little bit of spare cash throughout the term, if you find your text books from last year aren’t of any use to your module choices this year, sell them, set up an amazon or eBay account or even use the student VLE to flog your old books. Someone somewhere needs that second-hand selling price.

Be Kind, Unwind

As obvious as it sounds during the January exam period, having the ability to switch off, is of huge mental and physical benefits in the present and future. There’s nothing worse than spending your whole day in the library, to come home to a stressful, sleepless night and be living on coffee for an entire term just to stay awake in the core working hours of the day; it’s not healthy. The first piece of advice most students get when it comes to work load at university, is to treat your studies as a full-time 9-5 job, which leaves a further 8 hours a day for recreational, unwinding activities. There are many ways to calm your mind at the end of your day including stretching, meditation, reading a book, watching a film. In order to get a good night’s sleep which is essential in times of thick and fast deadlines, you must leave at least 2 hours before bed away from the books just to give your brain a bit of a break. It may make you feel comparatively lazy now, but if it avoids you burning out in the future, it’s more than worth it.

Graduate Job Searching with the January Blues

It’s not uncommon in the midst of our darkest months of the year for the January Blues to be having an effect on your day-to-day mood. This tip applies to you if you are letting these shorter, colder days get to you in too many aspects of your life. The key is not to let the generally downtrodden mood affect your graduate job search or the all-important January exams. Your number one rule for the month should be to keep a cool head (excuse the pun). If you haven’t heard back from the graduate schemes you would have liked to have heard from, there are plenty more graduate opportunities out there of which you can apply for all year round. Get your priorities in check and don’t fall into the trap of panicking submitting 50 sub-par applications.

New Year, New Start!

We’re 7 days in to 2013 and by now most people have made various new year’s resolutions; giving up alcohol, going to the gym every day and start saving to name but a few. Although these goals may be achievable for some, they certainly aren’t for others.

This week’s tip - instead of setting over 10 goals for January which are destined to failure; set one, yes just one goal that can benefit every aspect of your life. So if you want to improve your fitness in the New Year, which is proven to help focus in the classroom, prepare you better for target driven environments in the work place and also improve health which are all incredibly employable qualities, make this your goal. If you want to start saving, get a hold of your finances, set up a direct debit to a closed ISA that you will meet on time, it will help you to cope when you enter the big world of work. If you want to quit drinking, try finding other activities that you and your friends can do that are non-alcohol related, increasing your list of hobbies will only help your CV in the long run, not to mention the long-term benefits of giving your liver a 6-month break.

New Year’s resolutions are more achievable if they are for a positive change, not negative ones. Think of doing exercise as keeping fit instead of losing weight. Think of stopping drinking as getting some really exciting new hobbies instead of sitting in the corner of a night club wondering why your there. Finally, think of saving as gaining a new found independence and control over your finances instead of ‘cutting back fun’.