£10K in 12 Months: The Big Save Starts Here

spurious_2

I'm going into my third and final year of study, after which I want to spend a year (maybe two) travelling and working abroad. When I come back, I want to relocate. I have budgeted £5K for each (travel/moving), which is do-able because I'll be on a working visa abroad.

However, it does mean that for the next year (well, actually up until September next year) I am on a super-tight budget. I'm starting this thread in the hope that anyone is able to give me any tips on how to do it. At present, my situation looks like this:

INCOME:
£4,600 - student loan
£10,900 - part time work

OUTGOINGS:
£300/m - rent

That's it. If I budget £35 a week for food and bills, I'll be able to save £350 a month, not including my student loan.

I've already calculated that I can do it - the sums add up - what I'm hoping for is some key money saving tips that will further bring down my cost of living....

Thanks in advance for any help!

lellie

hmm.. How on earth are you earning £10,000 while at uni? Surely in your third year you're not gonna have time to work much - I work at the moment, but only have time to earn about £3500 a year.

Is there anywhere cheaper you could live? £300 a month isn't exactly the cheapest option?

As for food.. You can do better than £35 a week. Me and my boyfriend currently pay around £15 a week each for food and bills. (but we eat out quite often using the money we don't spend in our joint account) We shop mainly at lidl, local indian supermarket and a few things from asda (we get milk from there because we can't use a 4 pinter before it goes off and lidl only does it in that size).

I've managed to put away well over £1000 in the past year though.. I'm not sure how, as my tuition fees and rent uses my student loan, so I'm living off my earnings, but I have. We just don't spend much except food, fees and rent really.

spurious_2

I've just landed a really well paid evening job. Got it in February and have been hanging on for a start date since then!! It'll be worth the wait. I work 5-9pm Monday-Friday and 9am-1pm Saturday. Yes, time will be tight but it's not impossible to make it work, and i'm an optomist

s0198362

"I work 5-9pm Monday-Friday"

So, when do you actually study for your course?
Don't forget, that wage is taxable.

spurious_2

s0198362 wrote:

"I work 5-9pm Monday-Friday"

So, when do you actually study for your course?
Don't forget, that wage is taxable.

Er... 9-5pm. I've never studied in the evening, so it makes no difference to that.

And only hald of that wage is taxable and half of what's left is only taxed at 10% over the year.

needstoknow

sell your body ;-)

s0198362

spurious wrote:

Er... 9-5pm. I've never studied in the evening, so it makes no difference to that.

And only hald of that wage is taxable and half of what's left is only taxed at 10% over the year.

Might be easy to do no work in the evening for the first half of the year, but when it comes around to finals time, I can assure you there will be many late nights in the library. Although it does depend on what your course is. From my experience, I was revising till 11.30 each night around finals time, but then again, I had loads of exams. If your subject only involves writing a couple of essays without too much lecturing, then you might get away with it.

patwa_2

1. Depending on your point of view, see about maybe flat-sharing? If your tenancy agreement allows it, you could share with a friend, course-mate or advertise for a roomie. Even better if they're on the same course as you. You can see the benefits of cost-cutting re: bills, food etc.

2. See if you can shift/change the student loan. Depending on where it's borrowed from, the interest rates might be lower elsewhere. Consider maybe https://www.zopa.com which is a lending exchange, where the rates are typically 5.3% and can be spread over whatever time period you want. Also if you pay the loan back in full at any time there's no penalty.

3. You work, but that money is taxable so you're probably only earning 40-50% of your labout. Consider taking a job at the Uni you're studying at,, there are often paid positions available as organisers for external organisations, representatives or departmental staff. I'll skip the tirade about work and grades, lol!

4. Place any funds you have into a high interest bond, those funds that you won't be needing for at least one year. Place the rest into a high interest instant access account, First Direct is good for this, and as you have a salary you can also benefit from their £50 signup bonus. OK, so it's not going to be earth-shattingly millionaire-generatingly useful, but every little helps (and no, I'm not promoting Tesco's here!).

5. Depending on where you shop, make use of voucher schemes, clubcards. and other schemes that can save you money. At your current spend, say £15 a week on food, which is £540 over 9 months of the year. Again using tesco's as an example as that's just the store that's nearest me that is decent, £540 is (I think) 540 points, which adds up to a heck of a lot of vouchers. If you use the vouchers as currency as opposed to face value trade-ins, you can make a big saving on food/electrical appliances.

6. Start a business. oK, so for the level you're at it's probably not practical, but even simple things like selling the stuff you no longer need at home can free up quite a bit of cash. As an example, in the last 2 weeks I've made nearly £450 by getting rid of some of the computer stuff I no longer needed.

There are a lot more tips, but I could go on for ages.

Hope that at least gave you a starting point, cheers and take care.

Hussein.

kar

Patwa - the student loan is from the student loan company at inflation rate same as everybody elses student loan. Please stop advertising Zopa - you need to be earning 25K and no one on the student board is going to be earning that much. And the UK tax system means that they will be taking home at lot more than 50% of the wages. They've already said its a well paid job that they are happy with.

patwa_2

Hello.

I am sorry you feel that way. Yes, I freely admit to being a Zopa member, but I am not affiliated with the company other than being a standard user of the service, I'm not being paid to advertise it and only recommended it as a genuine solution to your problems.

As for the 25k, you do not need to be earning that to have a loan from them, I mean, what would be the point? If you had that much you would not need a loan.

I wish you all the best with getting your affairs in order.

Cheers and take care.

Hussein.