Managing your money
Article by Lindsay Blair, 1st year, BA (Hons) Journalism. Image by Lee McNeall, BA(Hons) Art and Design Foundation, 1st year, age 20
This section of TAG will help you think about how you will manage your money at university. Not many students are used to getting lump sums of money like the student loan payments and the temptation to blow it all can be great!
Managing your finances at university is a degree in itself. A life lesson. A valuable self-taught initiative, which, once grasped, will help you to sail through university and life stress free- well, in theory!
Within a few days of arriving at your new university home your bank balance will be fully loaded with loans, grants and bursaries. Not forgetting the black hole that is more commonly known as ‘the overdraft’, interest-free being a tempting perk.
For most, this is the most amount of money you have had in your account. Beware! If you take any of this advice on board, take note of this: don’t, I repeat, don’t blow the cash! By this, I mean- do not spend your whole loan on silly things (mini pool tables, a water slide and a hamster being amongst the favourites that I have experienced) with the opinion that you have plenty of cash to splash. In most cases, you don’t.
Before you can say “student loan”, accommodation fees, grocery bills and those frivolous £10 notes you keep drawing out at the cash point will have eaten their way into your juicy loan – edging ever closer to the dreaded interest-free overdraft. This is usually when panic starts to set in.
From personal experience, learning to manage my finances has been one of the more challenging aspects of the independence gained at university. Still, I don’t think I have fully got the hang of it, but I have definitely been made more aware of what I need to keep money aside for. I keep telling myself that I should draw out a certain amount of money at the start of the week and not go over that amount. Procrastination is still holding me back from this theory.
However, I do think it is a good tip. Work out how much money you would spend each week, taking into account food (I believe that a monthly shop works out cheaper in the long run), socialising, books, office supplies and other necessities and then budget your money around this. Of course, if you can secure a job or already have savings this is a great help.
The best thing to do is to stay aware of how much you have coming in and out of your account on a regular basis. Although, as a student, your overdraft is there to help you and it isn’t the end of the world if you end up going into it, just remember that when you leave university, you will be inundated with debt and so you don’t want to increase this by being careless with your cash!
