Budgeting without a regular income

NickiM

Hi,

I was wondering whether you could help.

I need to start budgeting for my second year of university, where I will be self-catered and living in a house. I've looked at the budget tool on this site, but it relies on a regular income. I won't have a regular income but I will have injections of money (i.e. from loan) but these will come randomly, so I can't predict how much I can spend a week. I don't know exactly how much my loan will be as I haven't had any confirmation yet.

Any ideas?

Thanks

CLAPTON

well, it depends upon what sources of income you have but taking the student loan as an example..

the 1st installement normally arrives in Oct.... so deduct all the initial costs that you have ... deposits, up front amounts etc...
now assuming your next installment of the loan is in January, then you have to live 4 months so divide whats left by 4 and spend that per month

for each source of income do the equivalent.


spreadsheets are good here as you can do a month by month cash flow that suit your specific circumstances

NickiM

I'll only have the student loan...I think it'll be about £1500ish, but not sure. I also don't know any costs until I get there probably and I don't even know approximately how much bills are.

I should be fine with the amount, but I'd rather know what I ahve to spend, or save some of it.

mrposhman

I'm assuming you were in student halls then last year and didn't have bills?

Have you a house ready to move in to as that will give you your majority of your costs in rent. You won't pay an council tax so thats good. Depending on the size of your house (ie. how many bedrooms) your electricity, gas and water will fluctuate but to be sure put around £40-50 in.

I doubt it will be anywhere as high as that, but when budgeting its best to be prudent in my opinion.

Other than that, did you have catered halls or was it self-catering? If it was self catering then you should be able to set a budget for yourself from last year but if not I would set about £20 per week for food. You might not be able to go out and get everything you WANT but if you choose where to shop and when to shop at the cheaper shops (if close) then you should be able to achieve this and possibly better it.

Are you taking a car? If so, you should have an idea how much you will be using it, how much tax / insurance it will be.

Also, factor in your contents insurance.

If you set up a spreadsheet (I use one each month) and set however many categories you want down the side, then you can have months along the top and enter budgets and actuals in there. It should give you an idea of what your spending will be.

Hope this helps.

NickiM

Yes, I didn't have bills for gas/electricity but did have to pay for a couple of things.

I have a house already to move into, and all the utilities are installed and up and running. There will be 6 in the house.

I had catered halls, although I will be cooking everything for myself and doing things as OS as possible.

No Lidls etc near where I'll be but will be near to a market and a greengrocers.

Nope, no car, can walk everywhere.

That was really helpful. I might use the categories from Martin's budget planner. Time to dust off my Excel skills :S

TrickyDicky

As a student, I found the best way to budget was just to try and do everything as cheaply as possible.

Is there any chance you could do a food rota with others in the house? when at uni I shared with 3 others and we took it in turns to cook for the 4 of us. It made food shopping easier, costing around £60 a week for 4 people (this was 4/5 years ago now). If you have someone in the house with a car, sharing cooking with them would make life easiest (especially if you can find an aldi/lidl)

Always bulk buy BOGOFs on non perishables like tined and most jarred sauces.

NickiM

We can't do a food rota as we have some VERY fussy eaters and a vegetarian and we all will come in in different times.

I will look where the nearest Lidl/Aldi is.