Top 5 Tips To Manage Your Money As A Student

As a student, money is tight. Literally always tight. I never have money to spend and rely almost entirely on my student loan to live. With a rent of £400 a month and bills that equal to about £66 a month I don't have an awful lot to play around with afterwards. Here are my top 5 tips on how to manage your money on a tight budget. 

1. Get a money saving app - I like to use "Spending" which is a free app for iPhone and it allows you to create a budget and monitor everything you spend. If like me your always popping to Asda for one or two things each day then you can quickly loose track of what you're spending. 
2. Create a budget - When you're living on a set amount of money for a term, it's super easy to create a budget. I work out how much money I have to spend for the term and then divide it by the amount of weeks I have at uni and then I have my weekly budget!
3. Plan what extras you want to buy that month - This is something that I really need to start doing. For instance I budget £15 a week on food and £10 a week on "extras". Extras are clothes, books (for leisure), makeup and skincare. Obviously you don't get much with £10 a week so I attempt to save up a few weeks worth and then spend that on what I need/want. I wanted to do that this term but sadly I got spend happy and spent all 10 weeks worth of extra money at once. oops. I will do this next term though as I don't have anything that I will desperately need. 
4. Put aside a certain % of money as a "rainy day fund"- From my weekly budget I work out the minimum I need to live which is £15 for food and £10 for extras as I explained above. Whatever I have left over I then add to my savings. This makes up my rainy day fund and is used mainly for emergencies or things I desperately need but don't have the money for in my budget - like course books or essentials. 
5. Write everything down - I often write down my money and my budget throughout the terms to make sure I'm on course. If I'm not then I re-budget myself and make sure I'm on track. This is the easiest way to make sure I don't overspend and end up having to beg mum and dad for extra money at the end of the term. 

That's it for today's post! I hope these tips have been even slightly helpful or even just given you some ideas on how to manage your money.