Is £50 a month enough excess?

You can comfortably halve the food budget. You can probably find cheaper accommodation too.

I don’t really know if £50/month is gonna work or not. Do you normally go out for dinner or go to the cinema?

The only cheaper student accommodation than this, if that's what you mean, is shared, which I don't REALLY mind but I'd rather avoid if I could - I just really like my privacy. The price I have is for a single room with a shared bathroom. I could probably find cheaper rent wise, but I don't want to pluck a figure from a property site now only for it to be wrong when it comes to time to look, especially as the Glaswegian summer prices are likely to be quite high.

It's good to hear that about the food budget, but I nipped round the Sainsbury's a couple days ago and I was struggling to understand how people get it as low as like £20 a week. Do you just buy like a kilo bag of rice and a few chickens and have like a 'rice week', where every meal is a variant of rice and chicken? I've never cooked for myself on a real budget before.

You can't shop at Sainsbury's on that budget, you go for Asda/Tesco or Aldi and Lidl if you re lucky and have one nearby. Try and brush up on some cooking skills before you go it ll make a big difference.

I'd say in an average week I maybe go to a bar once and like a Nando's once. I usually have just two pints at the bar. Obviously I can't do Nando's every week at uni, so I'd probably make it a Nando's or equivalent once a month and start just having one pint at the bar.

I'm open to staying in though. I have literally no shame, so drinking in my dorm is totally something I'm up for if it's all I can afford.

You can't shop at Sainsbury's on that budget, you go for Asda/Tesco or Aldi and Lidl if you re lucky and have one nearby. Try and brush up on some cooking skills before you go it ll make a big difference.

You can comfortably halve the food budget. You can probably find cheaper accommodation too.

One of my friends is German but lives in Falkirk, and he has introduced me to our beautiful German budget stores. I will definitely use them if they're nearby. I'm not such a big fan of Tesco, but there's an Asda a short bus ride from where I live so I might head there and compare prices.

The cooking thing is definitely something I want to get my head around. I can do basic things like burgers, and pasta and things like that, but I'm probably gonna buy one of the student cookbooks so I have a good repertoire before I go.

Oh I've shopped on less. At Sainsbury's too. Once managed to get the food bill down to £10 a week. I'm vegetarian, so I don't ever buy meat. I bought a load of lentils, world food section is cheap, rice, tomatoes, stock, was on powdered milk and basics porridge oats. Got the cheapest frozen veg I could find too. And potatoes and beans. Cheap noodles and a few basic herbs. It wasn't exciting, but it was doable and relatively healthy. I spent £40 a month on food.

I'm not in university, but £20 a week food budget sounds like a poverty diet imo

I typically spend around £50 a week on food if working part time

£90 a week if working full time

and no, i'm not a fat bastard.

I'm not in university, but £20 a week food budget sounds like a poverty diet imo

I typically spend around £50 a week on food if working part time

£90 a week if working full time

and no, i'm not a fat bastard.

The two of us eat on £200 a month and we have meat most days

You should get Unidays and use student discounts for restaurants, it can be up to 40% off for Ask Italian which is quite good. About £6 for a good spaghetti to eat inside. Anyway, back to the point, £50 is tight but you can make it to the restaurant/cinema few times a month.

And no you can’t shop at a Sainsbury’s and hope that it’s gonna be cheap. Strongly recommend Asda/Lidl, plus there will be many reduced price products, take advantage of that. Also the freezer is your friend, you can buy a pack of top rum beef, cut it off, divide it and put it in the freezer.

couldn't live on that personally.
If i'm actively going to the gym I will typically spend £25+ a week purely on chicken...

back when I was living with parents they'd spend around £120 a week on food and this was for 5 people.

I always would end up going out and buying a lot of my own food to top up on this.

yet somehow they were fat ...and I wasn't

I've lived in actual poverty. £232 a month to live on after rent. Had to pay bills out of that. And for my dog. £20 a week was luxury. £10 a week was just about my limit. It was pretty tough. I was never hungry though. I lived off soup, risotto, porridge, other super cheap meals. It was relatively healthy too. Not a lot of fresh fruit and veg, but healthy enough.

You don't need to go to a store to look at prices just go on their online grocery site , the prices are the same. Pasta is a good start there's a lot you can do with that but yes there's a lot of student cookbooks on the market that will help

That's a lot of money on chicken.