Getting By Financially Whilst Attending University

Anyone who has attended university and isn’t heir to a trust fund knows that money is always tight. Even some students who are fortunate enough to be born to a moderately affluent family know what it is like to run out of money before they run out of month. Residing on campus, where basic monthly living expenses are fixed and (hopefully) covered by scholarships, grants, or parents’ contributions can take the mundane worries off, but other “matters of consequence” still arise, the costs of which can leave any student strapped. There are a few things that a student can do to stretch those limited funds, some of which you might not have considered (and others, you would likely prefer not to consider).

First order of business is to prioritise your expenses. They range from the absolutely, positively essential items that you seriously cannot do without, to the wholeheartedly frivolous.

Housing – Whether you live on campus in a dormitory, in a flat shared with other students, or back at home with Mum and Dad, there will be costs that must be considered, and which vary widely from campus to campus. Those costs might not be in pounds if you live at home, but there will likely be other costs involved that are equally challenging. Same applies, sadly, to many on-campus dormitories, where dormitory proctors frequently share their quarters with their legion of flying monkeys. If only for practicality’s sake, being homeless whilst attending university is not really a viable option.

Food – Unless your meals are covered as part of on-campus residency or eaten at home, food costs are going to be somewhat high, at least for your first year. By your second year, you will likely have learned to subsist quite nicely on cheap ramen noodles and your friends’ leftover chips. By the time you are into your final year, you will likely weigh considerably less than you did in grade school, and will consider any full meal to be a glorious culinary treat.

Tuition, books, and laboratory fees – You will probably pay your tuition at the last possible moment, and will scour used bookstores and websites for necessary textbooks, as stealing books from the uni library is frowned upon, and all available copies will probably be stolen by other students before you become desperate enough to consider doing so. Lab fees, like grades, are rarely negotiable, but you might be granted a bit of slack as to when those fees absolutely, positively must be paid.

Entertainment – You will have already been subjected to the Standard Parental Lecture, in which you will be reminded that you are at university to learn, and are expected to minimise any social activities that might distract you from your studies. You will nod approvingly as the SPL is delivered by your parents, and again by your academic counselor. But in your heart of hearts, where nobody can see, you will be laughing maniacally and plotting the distractions that make university life worthwhile. Be advised that even displaying a smile, much less a snicker, during the SPLs will result in them being delivered in full, from the beginning, and repeated until you have mastered the concerned look that the lecture is supposed to elicit.

Sundry expenses – These items vary widely, both in description and in their standing on your priorities list.

If you smoke cigarettes, you will consider them to be essential, worth their ever-increasing cost as well as the lectures you get from parents, physicians, chemists, and pious non-smoking friends.

Cosmetics for women (and increasingly, men) will have a priority assigned by your self-esteem and narcissism, rendering their place in the hierarchy of expenditures non-negotiable. Transportation can be quite expensive, which is the real reason so many university students ride bicycles. They will tell you they do so out of concern for their physical well-being or to reduce their carbon footprint. Rubbish. They are just poor and too proud to admit it. Clothing expenses are minimal for trust fund-deficient university students. That is why tattered jeans are constantly in style on campus. See Rubbish, above.

If all other efforts to meet your expenses fail, including begging, fibbing about when checques are sent, and reports to parents about the expenses you’ve incurred, you might need to sit down and develop an actual budget, which is, of course, terribly boring, but which can be made less so by using one of the many budget apps or online budget calculators available, such as this one. Then, you will need to actually discipline yourself sufficiently to live within that budget, which should really be listed under the Geneva Convention as a form of torture.

You might think that living under a budget is as exciting as watching paint dry, but once you get accustomed to the sense of order and lack of worry it brings to your life, you might find that a budget is really your best friend. Okay, quit laughing. And have fun while you are at university, because it will probably stand as the best years of your life. Or not.