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How to save money as a student

Saving money can be difficult at the best of times, let alone when you’re a student on a tight budget, with bills to pay. Luckily there’s a lot of simple changes you can make, to watch those savings rise!

Reduce your expenses

This is the most obvious but straightforward tip. By reducing your expenses of non-essential things (I’m looking at you, takeaways and nights out), you can put this money straight into your savings instead. This doesn’t mean you need to fully cut out the things that you enjoy; if you typically get a takeaway once a week, reduce it to once a month, or try a fake-away that you can make at home instead. Not only will this massively help your bank balance, it’s also a much healthier alternative!

Start passive savings

If you’ve not heard of passive savings before, it’s a way of automatically saving money without having to think about it – sounds too good to be true, right? But it’s not!

Passive saving initiatives have been introduced by a lot of banks, such as Monzo, where you can opt to ’round up’ your transactions – so if you spent £1.95 it would get rounded up to £2, and the extra 5p would go straight into a savings pot. Or there’s the 1p saving challenge where, by the end of the year, you’d have £671.61! This is a great option if you can’t commit a large amount of money each month to save, as they’re such a small amounts, you don’t notice it leaving your bank! Whilst this isn’t going to make your piggy bank full, it’s certainly a good start and requires little effort on your end.

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Make the most of discounts

As a student, one of the best benefits is getting student discounts! There are loads of companies that help you to make the most of your student discounts, but UNiDAYS is by far the most popular option – and it’s free! Alongside that, making the time to use ‘cash back’ websites such as TopCashback means you can essentially earn money just for making purchases via them. You can then either put this money straight into savings (as if you’d paid the full price originally), or enjoy the extra pounds in your bank to live a bit more comfortably.

So there you have it – my most used, money-saving tips! Hopefully this has helped you, and has given you a few ideas on how you can start building up your savings as a student.

Please note: This content was created prior to Coronavirus, and some things might be different due to current laws and restrictions. Please refer to Government advice and the University of Lincoln for the latest information.

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