Saving Money For Freshers Week
(source: Pinterest)
Did you know that first year university students spend just over £200 on alcohol alone on fresher’s week? If you take tickets for events, groceries and society money into account, you’re looking at spending just under £500, and that’s before lectures have even started! This amount sounds ridiculous to me, especially when I used to get student finance that didn’t even cover my rent. When you’re living in a place like London that seems to charge you for just breathing, you need to learn a few things that will help you save a bit of money for all your educational needs (or whatever else you like to spend your money on):
Always look for deals
There are hundreds of websites that offer deals on all your favourite clothing websites, supermarkets and restaurant. There are the obvious websites like Unidays and here are more that you should subscribe to, Save the Student, My Voucher Codes and Student Money Saver just to name a few.
Shop on private browsing
When you shop on all your favourite websites, they store all of your browsing sessions and cookies and can sometimes make prices a little bit higher. Shopping on private avoids this! It keeps prices down and keeps impromptu shopping sprees as cheap as possible!
Go for name brands
Name brands at the supermarkets are always so much cheaper and taste just as good. Especially for things that you can buy in bulk like pasta, biscuits, cleaning products, water etc. Not only do they taste the same (or almost exactly), but they’re usually waaaay cheaper than all the other brands.
Rail card
If you know you’re going to be travelling a lot, maybe you’ll be going back home regularly or you have a part time job, get a rail card! It’s only £30 and over the course of a year, you can save around £190 and it gives you a 1/3 off of a range of things which you can see here: https://www.16-25railcard.co.uk/using-your-railcard/travel-times-tickets/
Travel mug
If you’re like me and you love hot chocolate or you’re a big coffee drinker, instead of wasting all your money at Costa or Starbucks, why not get a travel mug and make your own drinks at home? You can make it exactly to your tastes and travel mug is so easy to take around with you!
Buy in bulk
It can be a bit difficult to buy in bulk, it’s not easy to store a lot of things in a university room, sometimes buying in bulk can trick you into spending more than you wanted to. However, buying things like water, toilet roll, toiletries, frozen vegetables, frozen meat etc not only saves you a lot of money in the long run, but it saves you going on shopping trips every other day.
If all else fails, you can always beg your parents to do your first few food shopping trips or just wear the same outfit for a few months but these tips will definitely help to save you a bit of change!