How to save money commuting from london to uni of Essex (Colchester)
is any one commuting from London? is it expensive and how can you lower the cost?
Original post by Unknown14567
is any one commuting from London? is it expensive and how can you lower the cost?
Do you have a 16-25 Railcard? If not, it might be helpful to buy one. As far as I know, it is £30 a year and lowers the cost of train tickets by a third for each trip. You can also try to lower the cost by adjusting the time you leave at (e.g. even if you are done with university at 2 PM, if the train at 4 PM is cheaper, you might be interested in staying on campus for two hours to save a few pounds) and buying ahead of time or last minute. If two singles happen to be cheaper than a return ticket, buy two singles instead. Also, I have heard of a thing named a season pass; not sure how it works, but you might be interested in doing some research on it to see if you can save money with a season pass.
For university, I suggest you get off at the Hythe (Essex) train station. A return ticket from there (the bus stop is parallel to Tesco, which you can find if you take a right turn when you leave the station and walk forward for a few minutes) to the university cost £1.50 last time I checked (in June). However, if getting off at other train stations in Colchester (I think there are two others) is cheaper by at least £3.01, get off at the North Train Station and take the bus since the cost of a return ticket to the university and back is £3.
However, I highly recommend you do not commute. One of my friends commuted from London to Colchester and back every day. It was really expensive and she ended up with an attendance of just 60%, could not participate in societies, was unable to do any work experience and participate in other on-campus activities, only made a friend or two because she could not hang out lest they were in-between classes, destroyed her sleeping schedule, became so exhausted she could hardly study and do anything, and got a 2:2, all because she had a lot of difficulty coming to the university due to her choice to commute.
If you want to lower the cost, live in Colchester and maybe get a job. It is just not worth it to risk your attendance, social life, employability, and degree classification in order to 'save money' by commuting.
I apologise for being so negative, but I do not wish for you to ruin your first year just like my friend did. She now regrets commuting in the first place and has decided to live in Colchester for the rest of her degree because it was so not worth it to commute. Yes, it is late, but you can still find private accommodation. If you stick to your decision to commute, that is fine; I wish you the best.
I hope my tips on how to save money when commuting helped a little. 
Thxs
Well, it's around 1h from Liverpool Street to Colchester at £14 (trainline)
Original post by marnalarn
I do the reverse of this commute (Colchester to UCL) and a railcard is a must!! If you buy your ticket more than 7 days in advance you can get the journey for £6.60 on a lot of trains. You can get the railcard free with Santander student bank account
Do u think its possible to do this 5 times a week?
Original post by Unknown14567
Do u think its possible to do this 5 times a week?
It *is* possible, but I *really* wouldn't recommend it. Although it's only around an hour on the train, door to door it's more like 2-3 hours each way (depending on where in London you live). This becomes sooo exhausting and will affect your attendance in not only lectures etc., but social activities too which are so important to uni life. If it's an option, I'd 100% recommend living in Colchester, it's a lovely town and relatively cheap compared to London- you could even go home every weekend.
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