Back To School Tips: Student Budget Planner
It’s hard being a student, apart from studying many are living on there own. Apart from being university students are expected to be student budget planner pros. Although this is difficult, becoming a student budget planner will not only make your student life easier but life in general. Therefore here are some back to school tips for becoming a student budget planner pro.
1. Prioritize
This one is highly important to have in mind. Here you need to make a list numbering the most to least important things you need to spend on. For example, your list could go, food, hygiene products, cleaning products, etc. By doing this, you being to realize the things you need to crucially spend on and what items are luxury. This will help you reduce a lot of costs and have the basics.
2. Resist Temptation
Yes, this advice is easier said than done, yet if you can manage to avoid you will see a huge difference. The temptation is like a snowball effect, in the beginning, it seems harmless, yet with the passing of time it becomes a huge snowball (of cash in this case). For example, calculate how much you spend on your morning coffee from Starbucks, then multiply that amount by days month. The amount is most likely to shock you, especially by the fact knowing that amount can be in your savings account. Now, this doesn’t mean you will never be able to eat at a restaurant. Yet you should try to limit this to at least once a month.
3. Reduce Efficiently
Now, this doesn’t mean to be super radical and jeopardize your hygiene just to make your ends make. Here you should take advantages of discounts or compare prices on one product. What I mean by this is let’s say you are in the supermarket and you need toothpaste. Now you see Crest is five dollars and Colgate is three. You obviously go with Colgate. This may also mean either having to have to go to a different place, as they all have varying prices. Sometimes your supermarket right next to you may sell toothpaste at 5 dollars, yet one a bit further may sell this at 3. You could bulk up on multiple tubes of toothpaste with the place further away yet end up saving. Although it seems ridiculous these small swaps can help you save big bucks further on.
4. Save Money
Now, this may sound like a very obvious one, yet this one is extremely important. Consider this the golden rule of student budget planning. Having good saving habits will make your student and adult life easier. When you are working and get paid, try placing twenty percent of your salary in your savings account. This constant percentage will highly benefit your savings account.
5. Get help from apps
Nowadays they are many apps for everything, even ones that can either help you get great deals and save money. When focusing on student budgeting making usage of these helpful apps can help you save good money. Some good apps to have for saving money on flights are kayak, hooper, and cheapflights.com. Ones amazing for online shopping is honey, it helps to find coupons to give you the best deal. When saving it’s good to have a visual on your spendings. One app great to help you visualize is mint. This app has been known as the ” Beyoncé” of. personal finance due to all the financial activity you can track. Definitely worth downloading all these apps.
We get how hard it is to budget, yet with these tips, you will become a pro at no time, and budgeting will become like a sixth sense. Just because you are budgeting doesn’t mean you have to go through extreme lengths to make ends meet.
