Saving on the essentials
Thursday March 13, 2008
One of the hardest things to do when you have a school loan is saving money. You need to pay for the essentials of your education while having something left over for a social life. How can you put away money with so many strains on your cash? Well, here are a few tips that could see you with a little spare money, and still let you pay off your school loans.
Do utilise second-hand book stores and students above you
Research the books you are going to need for the next semester before you go on break and ask your tutor to help you get in contact with students who are currently ahead of you in your course. By planning beforehand, you will have the greatest opportunity to buy the textbooks you need second-hand, saving you a substantial amount of money.
It is important that you make the effort to get in early, however, as many other students will be competing with you for the same text books. If you leave your search until the next semester has started, the second-hand bookstores may be out of copies of the books you need, and other students will almost certainly have sold the ones they no longer use.
Use a ring binder instead of exercise books
Do some subjects seem to require very few notes, while others take up pages upon pages? Some people suggest having a different book for each subject in order to keep well organised, however a ring binder with dividers allows you to divide paper among subjects as needed, while keeping each subject separate. This could potentially save you money, as you will only need to buy enough loose sheets of paper to cover all of your subjects. An added bonus is that this is more environmentally friendly than buying wasted paper.
Make your own lunch
Just make your own lunch. Forget the many options for food on campus, forget coffee from the cafes, just make and bring your own lunch. Two things happen to university students in their first year: they gain weight and spend a lot more on eating out. You're probably spending about $10 minimum on lunch each day if you're eating out, which doesn't sound like much until you work out that if you do so every day for a month, that's $300 you've spent on being lazy. If that's less than a week's rent for you, moving to a cheaper place would probably solve all of your financial problems.
At home you can make yourself something cheaper, healthier and probably better than whatever they're serving in the refectory that day.
Avoid the bar
This doesn't mean don't drink. Drink responsibly, and only if you legally are allowed to, but it's perfectly fine if you drink. Just do it at home, with cheaper booze that you can buy from warehouse liquor stores. That doesn't mean drink the cheapest goon you can find, either. If you avoid paying the ridiculously marked up prices of alcohol in bars then you can spend less money on better quality drinks. It's not as if you need to go looking for new people to meet when you're at university, you're surrounded by them almost every day, so a bar is a far too expensive way to socialise. Get some people together, buy a reasonable amount of alcohol, and have a party. At least you know the music will be good.
There are other more drastic changes you could make to bring down your spending and push up your savings, but these may take just enough pressure of your school loans payments to keep you in the black.
For information on getting a loan to help you move to your own place, please visit our personal loans page.
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