Am I spoilt? £140

Anonymous #1

Uni student here with a budget of £140 a week after bills/ rent and I am really struggling to keep to it.

Reply 1

ageshallnot

Original post by Anonymous

Uni student here with a budget of £140 a week after bills/ rent and I am really struggling to keep to it.

What precisely are you spending it on?

Reply 2

InnateImpunity

£140 from what? Maintenance loans?

Reply 3

Surnia

What are you spending it on? What do you actually need to be spending it on and what are the non-essentials?

Reply 4

Muttley79

Original post by Anonymous

Uni student here with a budget of £140 a week after bills/ rent and I am really struggling to keep to it.

Write down everything you are buying. That's a £20 a day ... some students live on that for a week!

Reply 5

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Anonymous

Uni student here with a budget of £140 a week after bills/ rent and I am really struggling to keep to it.

To put things in perspective, you're spending over 600 a month on average on what should be basically food, transport (which usually shouldn't be that much!), toiletries, and the occasional odd meal out or night out or personal purchase. As above I think you may want to start a little journal for a week and record all your purchases as you go (or get receipts for all your purchases and record them in the evening when you get home if you make sure to do it consistently) to see where that money is going.

If you're spending a lot of money on transport for a commute, consider the feasibility of it and whether living somewhere more expensive but closer next year might actually save you money for example.

If you're spending most of it on food, consider how efficiently you are spending that money - if you're spending £5 a day on a meal deal for lunch, that's quite a bit and you might want to look into buying stuff to make your lunch at home and bring it with you. You can save quite a lot with small changes like that!

If your commute and food/toiletries budgets are reasonable then it probably means you're living a little too large for being a student. In which case you might need to realistically recognise you aren't always going to be able to go out for a meal or a night out every day or even every week, and you might be buying yourself too many cool new things unsustainably :smile:

Reply 6

Sorcerer's Storm

That’s not spoilt, you just have serious money mismanagement issues which you need to sort out now rather than allowing it to continue, because it’ll get worse if you carry this behaviour with you when you’re earning, paying a rent/mortgage, supporting a family and so on.

Reply 7

Zarek

I’d say it’s a pretty reasonable student budget but with the price of food and going out, also dependant on where you live, it would be quite easy to overspend. Maybe work on your meal plans to save some cash for beer

Reply 8

Amb/conf

Original post by Anonymous

Uni student here with a budget of £140 a week after bills/ rent and I am really struggling to keep to it.

Great budgeting tip: Shop in Lidl. I was in there yesterday and was in disbelief of the affordability. A loaf of friend for 44p, a bag of pasta for 28p. Even better, try Aldi, they don't have it where I live but it's the cheapest place in the UK.