How to budget £50 a week living at Kingston University

Hi! I live at Seething Wells Halls of Residence at Kingston University and wanted to tell you how I budget £50 a week including food, travel and going out!

For my weekly food shop, I normally go to Sainsbury’s in Surbiton or Aldi Local in Kingston. I opt for a variety of food for the fridge and freezer. Majority of the time I buy food for the freezer so that I can make a quick and easy meal in the air fryer for lunch or dinner. The food I keep in the freezer could be chicken nuggets, gyozas, pizzas, chips and vegetables such as broccoli, battered fish and paella. Aldi has a great range of easy-to-cook frozen meals which my favourite is the frozen bag of chicken and chorizo paella which I just cook in a frying pan for 10 mins. I like to get bags of frozen vegetables too as they are easy to boil or roast in the oven or air fryer to have to accompany your meal. The difference between frozen veg to fresh is that if I don’t want it that week it won't go off and I won't lose any money. Items I will buy for the fridge will be a small carton of milk as I don’t eat cereal so found I didn’t need a huge carton for a week. Other items I buy are a carton of 6 eggs, a type of bread, some fresh meat which I tend to choose mince to make burritos with, packet rice, some choices of fruit, vegetables like tomatoes or cucumber, cheddar and mozzarella cheese, snacks (crisps or chocolate), pasta pasta sauce, garlic bread, yoghurt, cereal bars (easy to take to Uni for breakfast), potatoes (for jacket potatoes), baked beans. The fridge and freezer items will keep me for a week and possibly longer, I only need to top up on fruit and veg until the next big shop. Overall, these shops tend to total from £20-£30 and never more than that.

After the food shop, this leaves me £20 for travel or activities I want to do. During the week I use the free uni bus to get into town and to uni so I save a lot of money. I tend to go back to my accommodation but sometimes I like to go out for lunch with my friends. I will either get a sandwich from Pret or a meal deal from Sainsbury’s. The maximum I spend for lunch is £4. On Tuesdays, I like to go to the Black Lion for the pub quiz. The quiz is free to join but you do have to buy a drink which is around £5. On the weekends I either will go to London or maybe go out for drinks with my friends. To get to London the train to Waterloo from Surbiton is £5.65 each way with a student railcard. Depending on how much you spent on your food shop, you might have enough money to do some shopping or to have drinks with your friends at Wetherspoon’s on another night.

It is very easy to only spend £50 or even less and still have a good time. Please reply if you have any advice on budgeting!

Yasmin (BA design marketing)