Only on 38£ a week!

Got my supplementary grant and my student support loan from student finance, that's it. Is there any other way of getting some extra cash on top of this? I do have a part time job ready for when I start.

Any advice would be great thanks.


Posted from TSR Mobile

I guessing after rent, £38 a week is an avergae amount, maybe even a little above average for some.

You can pick up meat from the local butchers quite cheap, a generous serving for a week would be £10, a 1kg bag of frozen veggies is less than £1 a sack of spuds is about £2, store brand cereal can be really cheap and milk is £1 for 4 pint bottles, bread is 50p for a loaf, marge butter can be £1 and fillings for a week can be £1. The rest is money for pissing up the wall.

If you truely love wasting money on beer (as we all do time to time) it is possible to survive on less than £5 a week. store brand noodles 14p a pack, 1kg of veg £1 store brand soup 24p a tin ... still change for cheap tea and milk.

Getting a p/t job is a good idea like others have said - helps quite a lot

Also I find Asda is the best place to shop if you have one near your uni - so much cheaper than Tesco/Sainsbury - although Aldi/Lidl are pretty good too (though personally i think their products aren't as good)

To be fair £38 seems like quite a decent amount - mine is just about £15 a week without any rent/bills taken. Just gotta budget

I would advise looking into very simple recipes, When I was studying abroad I was unemployed and living in a country with a higer cost of living that the UK. So I usually ate very simple meals, such as spagehetti, my Itailan friend showed me a really cheap recipe that was just Pasta, olive oil and garlic. Or even pasta egg and ham boil the pasta then thriw it in a pan with the egg and ham. cheap and tasty.

Another one was potatoes sliced up partially boiled then fryed in a wok with onions and bacon.

If times get really hard, you can simply cook some store brand instant noodles, throw some veggies in there, if you have some spare meat around that too, egg if you want, end up with a big bowl of ramen which can be very tasty.

The key is to prepare your own meals, 500g of chips will cost you about £1 but if you want chips, 3kg of potatoes will be less than £2 and you will still have over 2.5kg of potatoes for other meals. A microwavable spagheti bolognese might be 80p, but there is hardly any meat in there, spaghetti is about 40p for 500g, mince £2/3 for 500g and tin tomatoes and spices can also be aquired cheap, you can make a weeks worth of spaghetti bolognase for about 50p a meal, with larger portions to boot.

I always keep some cheap noodles in my room in case I am peckish, they are cheap and quick to make, also mozarella cheese is usually 50p a ball, and can add flavour and calories to a lot of things, great in omlettes, sanwiches and even on toast.