Speaker 1: Hello everybody, welcome back to my channel. My name is Naina. I am about to go into second year at the University of Edinburgh. Yeah, this is my YouTube channel. I make like university and fashion content mainly. Today's video is very exciting. I'm really like excited for this video. I don't know why, but I just feel like I have so much to say. But today I'm going to be giving you all of my tips and tricks for budgeting at university. Being a student can be financially difficult. It's the first time you're kind of living away from your parents and you're budgeting everything yourself. It's a lot of work. This video would have been really helpful for me to watch a year ago. And I feel like I haven't really seen many people do this video. So hopefully this is helpful to some of you, whether you're at university already, or you're starting university, or even if you're just like a young person, I feel like this could be helpful. Hopefully this is an informative video. I have written down lots of tips in my little notebook. So a quick disclaimer before I start, I want to say, obviously everybody is in different financial positions. What works for me might not work for somebody else and what works for someone else might not work for me, etc. These are just my general tips and things that I learned along the way. Money can be, I guess, like a sensitive topic and I just want to reinforce this is a very general video. But I think there's definitely tips for everybody in here. My first tip, which I think is probably the most important one, is to start a new bank account. So I went to university with the same bank account I've had literally all my life, like it was the only bank account I've ever had. And I was just like, yeah, it's fine. I'll just work with this. It's so difficult to see what money is your money that you've earned, or money that you've got on your student loan, or if your parents are giving you money to help out, if your student loan doesn't cover everything. You've just got it all mixed together. And it's so difficult to budget when it's all mixed together, because you can't really see where the money's coming from and how much you really have. For me, the money that I earn in my jobs, like to have that separate because I will dip into it if I need it. But I would like to sort of see it and think, okay, I'm trying to keep that aside from money for necessities. And I know, obviously, everybody will have to dip into that in different amounts and you might not have a job or whatever. But I just think it's important to have a new bank account for uni and it's so much easier to budget when you do that. The bank account that I am going to recommend so, so much, like if you do one thing from this video, just do this, like it's free. It's the easiest bank account to set up ever called Monzo. So obviously this is not sponsored or anything, but I'm going to really plug them right now. So basically it is an online banking. So you just download the app, you put in like some information and stuff and then they send you the card in the post for free. Like there's no set up fee at all. So even if you aren't sure if you want to try it, like I'd say give it a go and see. What I love about Monzo is that it separates all your spending into different categories. Like for example, you can go on and see, I spent this much on groceries, this much on shopping, this much on travel, et cetera. And I think it's really good to keep conscious of where you're spending your money at university. It can be easy to be like, Oh my God, where did that all go? Like, you know, but I think it keeps you really on top of it. Another good thing about Monzo is that you can set up pots. So essentially like you can separate money out of your like account that the money comes out of when you tap the card or whatever into separate pots. So this is very useful because at university there can be costs that kind of come up that you know are coming and you might want to start saving for them. Or if you want to save for like Christmas, like to buy people's presents, things like that. Um, it's just really easy. Put that money out of your account and into a different pot. If you keep all your money in one account, it's easy to kind of see the number in the account and think, okay, so that's how much money I have to spend. When really you want to save some of that for other things. I just recommend it to everybody. It's also good if you travel, like they don't have exchange rate fees. So if you're going to uni in a different country. So I have a link down below for Monzo. If you sign up through that link, you'll get £5 for free, which is actually so sick because it's not like £5 voucher or £5, like it's £5 you can spend on anything. So I didn't do this that much, but if you want to, you can do sort of like an Excel spreadsheet planning out how you want to spend your money. So for example, you want to spend X amount on groceries per week, X amount on toiletries, X amount on like drinking, going out, etc. This will help you a lot because I think it just keeps you accountable for the amount of money you're spending and where you're spending it. In first semester, I was definitely kind of just spending and not knowing where I was spending it. I would just go through my bank account like once every like too long and be like, oh my God, I've spent so much on this thing that I don't even really appreciate having. That makes sense. Next tip is to, very simple, but go on your bank account app, your banking app regularly. Just keep yourself accountable for where you're spending your money and how much you're spending. Don't, you know, go two weeks without checking it because you'll go on, you'll be like, oh my God, I've spent too much and there's not that much money coming in because you're a student. So just keep on top of your spending. You obviously get like your student loan, which is quite a lump sum of money. For me, I decide, okay, so I have this much student loan, so I think I'm going to allocate myself this much per week. So I'll put all the student loan money in one pot on the Monzo account and then I will transfer out the money that I am allowing myself for each week on a Monday. And then that way I don't sort of have in my head like, oh, I have like, you know, thousands of pounds, which really needs to last me a long time. Instead, I've got, okay, so I've got like this much money for this week. Then if you like log on on a Friday and you're like, oh, I'm kind of running low. You think, okay, so maybe I won't go out for dinner today. Maybe I won't, you know, go clubbing tonight or whatever, just to keep your money in check. Okay. So out of like sort of like banking stuff, my next tip is for, I'm going to talk about shopping, like supermarket shopping. I loved Lidl last year. I went to Lidl loads. I think Lidl slash Aldi are great options for food shopping, especially for things like fruit, vegetables, bread, kind of like basic produce type stuff, because those are essentially the same wherever you buy them. So I would say try to do your main shop at like Aldi or Lidl or maybe Morrisons or something, a more budget supermarket, because this is going to save you so much money. Like you think like, oh, it can't be that much cheaper, but it really is. And it will save you so much money. If like me, you kind of, I don't know, enjoy fancy foods sometimes, I would say shop at Lidl or Aldi. So I shopped at Lidl and then I'd buy all my food for a week. And then I would go to Sainsbury's or Tesco and buy kind of more like special items. It's very tempting to be like, okay, well, Tesco has everything I could need. So let's just shop there. But you're going to save money if you're shopping at multiple shops, buying the cheaper items where you can. I like to be very healthy. So sometimes you have to go to like more expensive shops to get like healthy options like pizzas and things like that. Obviously, if you can shop all in Aldi or Lidl, that's great. One thing that can be difficult at uni is that you're just cooking for one person and that can produce a lot of waste. For example, I don't know, things like kidney beans, like I wouldn't want like a whole tin of them in one meal. But what really are you can do with the other half of the tin? How long is that going to last? Like you're probably going to be like not in the mood for kidney beans and then they're going to go off. Food goes off very quickly when you're cooking for one. So my tip would be to buy Tupperware, make sort of like two portions of food whenever you cook and you can either freeze the other portion or take it with you to uni. This is such a good idea because taking it with you to uni is going to stop you from buying like a meal at uni, like a meal deal, which you think meal deals are cheap, but they're really not when you think about like how often you would need one. Bring food to uni or freeze it and have it on a different day when you haven't had that meal for a while. You know, waste less food, but also give you meals and also save you time because you're going to be cooking less. Another thing you can do is to basically, if you have a flatmate that I don't know you're like close with, you can cook with them. So for example, you could be like, okay, you could maybe like make food together, which is a lot more fun than cooking on your own and just half the price. And then they have one portion, you have the other portion and that just helps because often it's really difficult to cook for one person because the size of like food as it comes is always a bit too big and things go off really quickly. So if you can cook with a flatmate and like share a meal, that's a good option as well. In terms of how often you shop, I was shopping way too often at the start of the first semester. I would go literally like every other day and just sort of buy stuff for that day and the next day. Firstly, that was very tiring and very boring. I think it also ends up with you spending more because I don't know, you're just going a lot and you every time like you might buy like a little snack or something and then it just racks up quickly. I'd recommend shopping once a week, maybe twice, just because I think that it's better if you can like sort of plan out a few meals for the week, buy a week's worth of food, that kind of, I don't know, be it. Try not to go shopping too much. So moving away from shopping, my next tip would be to share bills slash chores with your flatmates. So obviously if you're living in halls, your bills are normally included in your rent, so you don't really need to worry about that, but things that you might need to buy like cleaning products, bin bags, toilet roll, all of that. At the very start, like when you go to uni, just make it kind of clear that you're all going to be sharing those costs. It's easy when you're moving in with new people to be like, oh let me just buy the toilet roll, I don't need you to pay me back, like don't worry about it. But I think start out as you need to go on and get into good practice. So maybe you'll probably have like a group chat for your flat, so just maybe say like, oh I bought toilet roll, everyone owes me this much, or in my flat we had like a chore chart where you'd write, if you bought toilet roll, you'd draw a little line on it and then it's kind of like that for everyone to see, so if there's no toilet roll and everyone's got like five lines and one person only has four, it's kind of clear it's their turn to buy it. That's probably the best because transferring money is like kind of long and difficult, so I would say to set up like a chore chart and yeah, just don't be too nice about it, it really will rack up over a whole year if you're being you know, a pushover and too nice. So don't let people take advantage of you, all the things that you share in a flat should be equally, the cost should be equally shared between all the flatmates. Next tip is for going out, which I don't know much about but I was talking to my boyfriend about like, when I was making this list I was with him. A good tip, which obviously I agree with, is if you like going clubbing or to bars etc, buy a drink at the supermarket and then pre a bit more. Obviously that's just gonna save you money when you get there so you don't have to buy as many drinks and I think also it's just, it's just a bit easier and definitely drinking out and like clubbing can rack up so much money. I think a lot of people, that's where like the majority of their money goes, so really stay conscious with that and maybe if you set yourself like a limit of money you want to spend in one night and then think okay so if I only want to spend this much I should probably buy this much for pre's and then only get like one or two drinks when I'm out. Especially because most people will be going clubbing or going out like multiple times a week, especially at the beginning. It can rack up so quickly so definitely just keep that one in mind. Next tip is to make the most of student discounts. Being a student is very hard financially but there are you know, things out there to help you out so if you don't already have uni days, set that up. Even if you're in school you can set it up so that's like 10% discount at most. Like Topshop, Asos, all of that sort of thing, you can get discounts on those. Also ask when you're in shops, there's this sushi place that I used to go to all the time last year and I was just like to them oh do you have student discount and they actually did have 10% discount so they might not advertise it very well but just make sure you're asking for student discount. Keep your student card on you all the time because you never know when there'll be a discount to be had. Yeah just make sure you're making the most of that stuff. On the same sort of line, if you are travelling to uni which most people I think are going to uni outside of where they grew up so I think most people would take the train to uni and I would definitely recommend getting a student rail card. I think it's £30 for a year and that gives you 33% off every train journey and you will make that back so quickly. I literally saved so much money by having one so I think it's the £16-25 rail card that you should get I think, I think that's the one I have. If you're worried about not making the £30 back really don't be worried I think you definitely will. It's a good idea. Another thing about trains is obviously you always want to get the fast train but the slower trains are a lot cheaper sometimes so for example if you're travelling home for Christmas or Easter or summer or days where you just don't need to be home at a certain time I would say maybe you could take the slower train for those. It can sometimes be literally half the price of the fast train and especially if you have a good book or some work to do for uni etc you can get stuff done on the train and it doesn't need to be a waste of time and it really can save you money so definitely just every time you're booking your train tickets consider could I get the slower train, could I save a bit of money here because trains are very expensive so carting back where you can is really a good thing. Next thing is when you're actually at uni I would say try to walk pretty much everywhere. I think it's very doable, I only took the bus a couple of times when I was at uni so I literally never took Ubers. Definitely try to just walk everywhere, it's free, it's good exercise, it's nice to get to know when you've moved to a new place it's nice to walk around get to know the city more on foot. So when I was living at home I would always be like oh a 20 minute walk well no I'll just get the bus or something but now having been at uni even like a 40 minute walk I'm like yeah well if I have the time may as well you know save a bit of money. If it's really long or you need to get there at a certain time or it's like late and you don't want to walk look into the bus system wherever you're going to be going to uni. So I know in Edinburgh you can just pay like contactless on your card. Look into it before you get there because you might need to remember to have cash on you or something. Uber is just literally a luxury that you don't need I don't think. Okay and then the very last tip that I have is to get a part time job. This one is very dependent on where you go to uni and what you're studying and your financial position. I know if you're at Oxbridge you're technically not meant to have a job. It really depends on the amount of time that you feel like you have. I had a job in first semester of uni so from like September to December and a bit of my time, I did feel like stretched for time. I felt like I was very busy. The job and it was hard to keep up with it because I was just very tired and like doing uni and doing sport and I don't know I just kind of dreaded the shifts and although the money was helpful I just felt like I would rather cut back on things and spend less than you know do the job because it was just taking away from like my studies and like my enjoyment of uni. Obviously not everybody is in a position where they can't have a job. For me it was just kind of difficult so instead I work pretty much all the time. When I'm at home I just finish doing two weeks of 9-5 work and I did two weeks of 9-5 work in Easter as well. So I would say if you find like time management of having a job at uni really difficult definitely like start looking for summer jobs, Easter jobs, Christmas jobs because they are out there. It's good to earn a bit of money and have it saved up for the year. Going into this year I have money saved from like all my work I've done this summer so I feel like I'm going into a much better position than last year where I kind of just didn't really have anything. If you do want to get a job actually at uni and you feel like you can fit it in with your studies and everything, I would say maybe look for zero hours contract because being contracted to a certain time every week can be really difficult to uphold when you have like your studies and like socialising and stuff as well. It's also difficult if you're contracted because obviously I go to university in Edinburgh and I'm from London so when I go home for like three weeks that's like kind of difficult with having a job which is another reason I don't have one because I just can't really work through holidays. I would say if you're a student you really should have a part time job at some point in the year. Summer for me was four months long and I can't imagine just sitting there and earning no money that whole time, like I don't know how I would have coped. So definitely start thinking about jobs for next summer, like you can probably start applying soon. And the very last tip is to remember there are going to be a lot of start up costs when you first go to university or at the beginning of the year. I didn't really think about this last year and I kind of had to like borrow money from my parents and then pay it back which it would have been easier if I just saved it up before. So for example if you want to join a sports team that's going to cost money at the beginning of the year, if you want to join the gym that's going to cost money, if you need to buy textbooks which you probably will, I've spent so much money on textbooks so that's another thing to consider. When you do your first food shop there's going to be a lot of things that you kind of, things that you won't buy that much but at first, like for example I don't know like olive oil, ketchup, you know what I mean like things that last a really long time that you won't be buying every week but that first food shop is definitely more expensive than all the others. So it's coming to the end of summer so if you have some money saved up I would keep it saved for those start up fees. If you don't have any money maybe ask your parents if you can borrow some or see if you can get like a loan or just when you get your student loan money in remember that you're going to need more right at the start of university than throughout the rest of the year, like the first week or so will be like the most expensive week. Also remember freshers can be expensive if you're planning on going out a lot that will rack up some money so maybe try and take some extra money to the first week because there's going to be a lot of costs there. Okay so I think that's pretty much everything that I have to say, I hope this video was helpful and informative, I wish wish wish I had something like this to watch when I was in first year, like this would have helped me so much. Yeah please comment down below if you have any other tips that could help other people out, I would love to hear them, I'm sure you guys would love to hear them. Also use my link for Monzo if you want the £5 off, it's not sponsored or anything like I'm just genuinely trying to give you £5 out here. So I'm going back to uni soon so there'll be lots of university content coming very soon so if you're interested

Speaker 2: in that you know what to do. And yeah, I post every Sunday so I will see you next week. Bye.