Budgeting At Uni

Money, money, money

We all know that when that student finance hits your bank account at the beginning of term that the urge to spend it is so strong. It takes an immense amount of willpower to be able to stop yourself from snapping up your whole asos basket (well I mean it does for me)

One thing uni has taught me is that I’m so bad with money. For me a budget is non existent and I then spend a month just scraping the pennies together and living off of 50p noodles. I know this isn’t a good thing and you would think that after being in a uni environment I would’ve learnt by now! But one of my New Years resolutions was to become better with money so here are a couple of tips that have helped me!! So they could literally help anyone because when I say I’m the worst, I truly mean I’m terrible.

1 - Get a Monzo card

Everyone I knew was raving over this neon orange card that you get when you sign up to Monzo so I thought why not, it must be worth the hype...and let me tell you it is! So Monzo are an online bank that can be used for any banking purposes but I used it specifically to budget. So I set myself a weekly budget and then monzo will send me notifications if I’m spending too much of my budget to quickly, when I’m close to going over budget and if my the off chance I’m on target and spending well within my budget!!

2 - Pack your lunches for uni

This probably sounds like the most simplistic thing but trust me, packing lunch will save you so much money. I used to be so bad for running late and having to spend stupid amounts of money on campus or in the city for lunch. So you’re staying within you budget! Not only does this save money but it’s also a better way of making sure you’re eating well too!! So it’s essentially a win win!

3 - Make a small weekly budget!

So realistically I could spend £40 a week with my budget but I lower that down to £20 so I stop buying unneeded things. It’s a great way of saving money and to also limit yourself. Instead of me think that I have some wiggle room in my budget that I’ll just throw away on some earrings or makeup, I stop and realise that it’s over the £20 budget I’ve set for myself and won’t by the unnecessary item.

I’ve definitely got a lot more work to do when it comes to being good at budgeting but for now these 3 tips have really helped me a lot and I hope they can maybe help some of you!