Student Finance Survival Tips

As a student, you have to survive. Ironically, surviving as a student is not difficult at all. The problem comes with lowering your standard of living in order to match your current financial status. That is where it gets hard for most students. Here are a few tips to help make the transition a little easier.

Do not buy the cheapest food

There are two reasons for this. The first is because it is often un-filling and full of water or preservatives. You can fill yourself up on quite a little if the portions are of high enough quality and are of the right size. Lots does not equal value or filling. Secondly, if you force yourself to suffer cheaper nastier food then you are more likely to want to treat yourself more often which is going to make you end up spending more.

Do buy the cheapest household goods

The roles are a little bit reversed when it comes to household goods. Where the value-compressed ham may be a bad choice when it comes to food, the 22c liter of thin bleach is going to do the same job as the expensive thick stuff. The same is true for washing up liquid and even certain types of washing up powder. It is also true of toilet paper if you can resist the urge to pull loads of it off at once.

Body wash is a rip off if it is not as thick as custard

Buy a bar of soap because it will last longer and you will be better value for money. Body wash is too expensive to have when you need a wash, added to which, it is very easy to be ripped off. The cheap and expensive stuff are both dictated by how thick they are. If it is thin/watery, then you will need a cupful in order to get enough on you to have a decent enough scrub. A bar of soap is always the best, plus you can buy in bulk because it never goes off.

Do not buy a car or rent a car

If you buy a car then you will be forever poor. A car and students do not mix. They are too expensive to buy, to insure and too expensive to run. The price of gas is now through the roof, and you will suddenly become everybody’s friend because they will want you to drive them to places and “go places” with you.

Share cars for groceries or order them online

If you know a person with a car, then use them. You can arrange group-shopping trips where three or four of you go shopping at the same time in the same car. You can also make sure that the driver gets gas money from all of you. It saves money on going on your own, plus it is more fun than going on your own. The car will be cramped when it is full of your foodstuff, but it is worth it for the convenience and money saving.

Plan your meals for a week or a month

It sounds like something an autistic person may do, but it is actually very useful, and it has a very weird side effect: It stops you over eating! It’s true, for some reason you will not overeat as much if your meals and snacks have been planned by yourself. It is probably a weird human nature thing, but it could help to quench the urge because you know what meal is coming next.

Plan what you are allowed to eat in one day

If you do make a plan of all your meals and snacks for one week, then you may also try a system of allowing and disallowing yourself certain foods. People on diets do it all the time. Apart from saving you money, it also has the side effect of helping to stop things going off.

Take out a limited amount of money when you go out for a drink

When you are drunk or drinking then you are more likely to spend money in a silly fashion. This happens because it seems like a better idea when you are drunk. Sure, you are still in control of your mind, but ideas that do not seem such a great idea become not so bad. You end up doing things that you secretly want to do, and most of us secretly want to spend our savings.

Create a budget and a plan and you will realize just how much you don’t have

When you create a budget it is not to help, you see where you should spend your money. That is just a small part of the budgeting process. The real reasons is so that you can see just how little money you really have. Work out your budget and you will probably realize that you cannot fully cover your bills for the next three months.