You don’t just have to squirrel away money in a piggy bank to save money
With the increased costs of tuition fees and the constantly rising cost of living, it can often seem very difficult to raise the funds required to go and stay at university. However, there is nothing we can do about the tuition fees at the moment, but there are plenty of simple ways to keep costs down while living at university. Here are the best few :
Keeping Costs Down at University
Turn off or turn down. Heating and lighting costs are now increasing dramatically and while I’m not suggesting we all switch to candles and sit in the dark, I am suggesting that simple measures such as turning the lights off when no one’s in the room can be a simple solution that saves £’s. Moreover, wrapping up warm instead of putting the heating up to full, is incredibly simple, has the same effect and is free of charge.
The railcard. For a matter of a few £’s you can bag yourself a railcard that can last up to 3 years and get you anywhere for 1/3 to ½ price rail tickets. The original cost of around £70 may seem excessive, but a couple of journeys to home and back, more than outweigh the cost of the card and any other little journeys that you might like further increase its value.
Eating Out. Expensive, expensive, expensive. Eating out is an incredibly costly habit that can rarely be sustained at university. This doesn’t just mean a sit down meal, but ordering in a takeaway can end up costing just as much. Cooking for yourself may seem like a lot of effort after a long day of studying, however it is cheap and if you share the work every night then you can end up saving plenty of money.
Going out. A night out can feel terrible on the morning after, not just because of your throbbing head, but also the hit your bank balance took the night before. Not taking your credit card with you is the most sensible thing to do; it prevents you from having this pit of money that can drop rapidly. This way you cannot spend too much and it also means that if you happen to lose your wallet, it’s only a bit of small change that ends up disappearing.
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to beat the crunch at university. There are countless other ways to save money but they will usually be specific to you. All you need to think of is, ‘is that really necessary’, and often the answer is no.