The Big Student Money Saving Guide
The Big Student Money Saving Guide
Our student money saving guide is aimed towards how to manage your money as a student so you can make the most of what (little) money you may have.
If you use this guide in conjunction with a student money making guide you should put yourself in good shape towards maximising your student finances for the year ahead. Even if you use only a couple of the tips in our guide you should still see some benefit, so without further ado let’s bring on the first of the tips…
TRAVEL
1. Get a student travel card
Whether you are living away from home or not whilst you are studying it is equally important to invest in a student travel card. The most popular is the 16-25 Railcard which will get you a third of the price of your rail travel. In 2014 the current cost for 1 year is £30 or for 3 years it is £70.
A student railcard can easily repay its cost within a year of study if your university happens to be far away from home or you visit friends around the country at other universities regularly.
There are usually local bus operators that will offer a student bus card if you use buses a lot so it is worth checking with your local operator in the region.
2. Book public transport tickets in advance
An easy way of saving money on journeys is to book your train tickets in advance of travelling. If you know you have a long journey upcoming try to book your train ticket 12 weeks or in advance and you will make massive savings, particularly if you are making long journeys across the country.
3. Walk rather than public transport
If you have the option of being able to walk to lectures you could save yourself a few pounds each day rather than jumping on a bus instead. The added bonus being that you will keep yourself fit.
4. Student Car
Owning a car is expensive at the best of times, so when you are a student the cost can be very high particularly given that students are new drivers and as such insurance costs tend to be at a premium. It is said that the average yearly premium for new student drivers is £1,200.
It would be most cost effective to leave the car with friends or parents, or even sell it with a view to getting back to driving when you leave university but if you can’t part with your car you should do your research on car insurance as this will be the area where you will be able to save the most money.
Use car insurance comparison websites to get the best deal for your situation. Or you could always ring up your preferred provider and try to haggle the cost down – the salesperson might be able to suggest ideas that will lower the cost of the insurance such as driving less frequently for example which would lower insurance costs along with higher insurance excess costs.
A handy online tool can be found at PetrolPrices which will tell you which garages in your area have the cheapest petrol so regularly check the site to make sure you are not getting ripped off at the pump!
FOOD
1. Choose the cheapest supermarket
All of the main supermarkets have different promotions running at different times so it can be difficult to work out whether you are getting better value at one supermarket versus another. This is where a handy tool like MySupermarket comes it because it compares the price of the same product across several different supermarkets so when you choose all your items you will get a running tally of the cost at each supermarket so you know where your items would be cheapest. Very handy.
Alternatively you could shop at one of the budget supermarkets such as a Lidl or Aldi store where you will usually get cheaper products that the bigger supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury’s, etc.
2. Buy own brand or value brand products
All supermarkets have what they term as “value” or “everyday” ranges of products. They are basically products that are slightly cheaper than the equivalent branded items. Various blind taste tests have been performed over the years which have shown that it can be undistinguishable as to whether you are eating a “value” or a “luxury” range item, plus most of the products are created by the same companies in the same factories so a perceived lack of quality is questionable. Plus if you are buying produce from a value range that can be considered as a staple food such as dried pasta, or condiments there really isn’t going to be much difference in taste. I’d suggest steering clear of value range Cola though. Urgh.
3. Shop later in the evening
This is a trick that can grab you a real bargain – it used to be one of my favourite money saving tips when I was a student.
Basically, if you do your shopping later in the evening you will start to see items that have a short shelf life being reduced by huge margins. This is because the supermarket would prefer to discount and sell an item rather than having to simply throw it away as it has passed the use by or sell by date. It is not uncommon to see some massive reductions – as high as 80% off sometimes. Obviously you can’t be picky if you want to grab a bargain as you will be stuck with what is on offer, but typically a whole batch of the same product will be on offer so you could buy several of the item, and freeze what you don’t eat for consumption at a later date.
4. Plan your meals
Having a hectic student lifestyle sometimes means that you are eating on the go or meals can be a bit ad hoc – that is when eating can become expensive.
You can make real savings on food when you plan your meals with others. If you are sharing halls of accommodation or a student house it is usually cost effective to all chip into a food kitty and cook large batches of meals for the whole house rather than everyone cooking independently. Not only does it work out cheaper, but if you rota the cooking you will be in the kitchen less as well.
5. Search for student discounts on food
If you are thinking of going out for food then it always pays to check with the restaurant or pub whether they offer a student discount.
You will be surprised at the amount of eateries that will offer student discounts (particularly in big university towns or cities) so always have your student NUS card handy.
Often the student discount will only last between certain hours of the day or on a specific day so if you get to learn all the times of the local student offers you could plan your nights out around when and where you can get cheap grub!
ONLINE
1. Use a voucher code or get cashback when shopping online
If you are doing any type of shopping online you will want to search for a voucher code for the retailer you are buying from, try to get cashback from the retailer or if you are lucky try to combine the voucher code with getting cashback.
If you’re unfamiliar with how this works, the vast majority of large online retailers partner with companies that will send them new customers through a technique called affiliate marketing. The affiliate marketeers will be given a percentage fee for each paying customer they send to the retailer and in order to provide a further sweetener for these affiliate companies to send more traffic, the retailers will often provide voucher codes which when entered at the point of sale will give discounts such as 10% off the total amount, or free delivery, etc. Each voucher code will have a different type of discount and competition can be fierce as to who can give the best discounts so really do your research before you buy anything online to see if there is a discount, voucher or promo code that can save you money. Good places to start when looking for voucher codes include VoucherCodes.com, VoucherCloud and MyVoucherCodes.
On a similar vein there are companies that can offer you cashback on your purchases. These are again large scale affiliate companies, but instead of taking the percentage cut from the retailers for every buying customer they refer, they give all or some of their referral percentage fee and give it back to the customer as cashback. If can often take a few months to receive cashback, and not all retailers support this but it is a very easy process to use and there are only two main companies that hold the vast majority of retailers so checking whether you can get cashback on an item is as easy as searching on TopCashback and Quidco.
2. eBay bargains
An excellent way to get a bargain on eBay is to check for items that you are interested in and opt to bid on the items whose auctions finish very late at night or in the early hours. The reason for this is that there will be less competition for the item because most people will be in bed so it is unlikely that you will have many active bidders bidding against you so you should get the item at a price below its true value.
3. Use comparison sites for… everything!
Everyone knows that you can get great bargains by shopping online so think about getting a little extra help to choose the best deals by using comparison sites.
Comparison sites take all the deals that are available in a particular sector and rank them based on various different criteria (usually the cheapest).
Literally every important service that you might need to utilise as a student will have some form of comparison site available so always let a comparison site do the work for you rather than trawling through various sites comparing the deals yourself – often comparison sites will have exclusive deals.
Areas that you should consider using a comparison service include; getting cheaper utility bills, car insurance, student house insurance (contents), mobile phone contracts, mobile phone recycling, broadband comparison, TV package comparison, and comparison on various types of financial product such as loans, credit cards and student bank accounts.
A list of comparison services that might be of use to you include –
www.uswitch.com (various)
www.confused.com (various)
www.endsleigh.co.uk (specialise in student insurance)
www.denied.co.uk/bad-credit-mobile-phone-contracts (useful for comparing phone contracts if you are a student who will likely have a lower credit rating simply because of your young age)
www.moneysupermarket.com (various)
www.mobilephonerecycling.co.uk (if you are looking to sell your mobile phone)
4. Regularly visit student discount websites
There are a great range of websites and Facebook pages that are dedicated to helping students save money, get the best deals and maximise their money.
Many of the deals come and go very quickly so to make sure that you make the most of all the limited deals, regularly check the websites to see the latest and greatest deals.
Websites that you should definitely check out include –
LEISURE
1. NUS extra card
Get yourself an NUS extra card to grab you even more student discounts. The card currently costs £12 for the year and will open the door to hundreds of discounts on a variety of things. Your £12 investment will likely save you an awful lot of money in discounts over the year.
For more details see http://www.nus.org.uk/en/nus-extra/
2. Save money on drinks
Students have been known to work hard and play hard, so if you are going to have a few drinks of an evening it makes sense to do it (as sensibly) and cheaply as possible so often it is a good idea to have a few drinks at home rather than paying pub or club prices which can end up being double or treble what you would pay at an off licence.
3. TV licence?
If you choose to have a TV whilst you are studying away at university it is a legal requirement to have a TV licence. If you do decide to take a TV away with you but you return home for the summer when term finishes, remember to claim back the three months or so that you are not in residence.
Alternatively, a nifty little trick to avoid having to pay the licence fee involves some small print in what you pay for as part of the licence. You must pay for a licence if you want to watch television programs “as they are broadcast”, but this means if you solely watch catch-up, one demand TV over the Internet on your laptop or tablet you would not be liable for a TV licence which would save you around the £15 per month licence fee per month!
QUICK TIPS
1. Work in your favourite shop to save money
If you decide to take part time shop work to help make ends meet you could work try to get work in the shop which you spend most of your money, that way you could use your staff discount to save you money. For example, if you worked in John Lewis you could get a 25% staff discount, 20% off if you worked at BHS and a massive 50% off if you worked at New Look.
2. Buy a printer
It is inevitable that as a student you will need to be printing out lots of reading materials and essays so instead of paying the (high) printing costs in the uni library, get yourself a cheap home printer.
3. Budget your nights out
If you are planning a big night out decide what you want to spend and stick to that. Once you’ve had a few drinks it can be easy for your judgement to slip and you could potentially blow your budget on a single night so try to be strict with your budget, or depending on your point of view just take out the money you need and leave your bank card at home (although you might want the security of having a bank card on you for security purposes if you become stranded away from friends and need to get home in a taxi and your budget doesn’t cover the costs for instance).
4. Music Lover?
Rather than buying expensive CD’s get yourself a free subscription to Spotify where you can stream millions of tracks completely free of charge.
5. Don’t be afraid to haggle
There are often deals to be had for those that are brave enough to ask for a bigger discount. You will usually find this is the case mostly when you are trying to buy something on the telephone via a sales rep. The salesperson will want to fill a quota of sales so if you push hard enough for a certain discount and they need the sales to fill their weekly or monthly quota you might be surprised at how much value you can squeeze out.
6. Choose the best student bank account
All of the major banks are falling over themselves to sign up students to bank with them. They see people in further education as a good bet so they will offer incentives to setup a bank account with them so take advantage of this and look for the bank that currently has the best deal for students.
A great guide covering student bank accounts can be found at http://www.studentmoneysaver.co.uk/student-finance/student-bank-accounts
7. Learn how to homebrew
By learning to brew your own beer you could save a packet. No longer are you required to have a beard and wear a hemp jacket, craft brewing is the new trend. Brewing in the bath tub isn’t advised.
8. Quit smoking
Not only will you save hundreds of pounds per month by quitting smoking you will also feel much better within yourself, cut the risks of getting various cancers, get your sense of smell back and actually be able to taste things properly again.
If you’ve got any other tips that have helped you to save money please enter them in the comments below. Thanks.