Five ways to live on a budget

Many students around the world live on a budget since studying is not cheap. There are tuition fees, books and other supplies for your study, but you also need to eat, pay rent and/or public transportation costs, and many other things, and not everyone is blessed with rich parents or parents who are willing to pay the college experience for their grown-up children. No matter the cause of your limited budget, here are five simple tips you can follow if your months are longer than your money. 

First, check whether you really need the latest edition of your textbooks or that an earlier edition will suffice. The earlier editions are often offered second-hand on the web, so they are cheaper than the brand-new editions. If you even do not manage money-wise to buy books at all, check at your library whether your course books are available there. In my faculty's library, they have the textbooks at the desk that are not for lending, but for short-term use within the library. You go to the desk, ask whether you can use the book for X hours and bring it back when you're finished. Our library also happens to have the readers of all departments for instant use. Also check whether your faculty has this, because this can also save a significant amount of money. And, now that we're on the topic of books anyway, you might as well check out whether your teacher has written the actual textbook(s) needed for the course. I once had a teacher telling us that she would not mind sending us all other chapters of a book  via e-mail that she had written and published. 

The second advice I can give is to try to print as much as you can with two pages on one sheet of paper. This, of course, depends on the lay-out of the text you're printing, but it has occurred to me a couple of times that I was deceived by the lay-out on the computer screen and therefore printed one page per sheet while I could easily have printed two pages per sheet. If you use the two pages per sheet setting for all your prints (other than official documents, such as papers, essays, and theses, that must be handed in!), your print costs can be reduced by almost 50% !!!

Thirdly, it might be useful to find out whether there are second-hand shops within a reasonable distance from your campus. What is a reasonable distance is different for everyone, but a reasonable price for students is probably not! Second-hand stores are usually closer to reasonable prices for students than the 'normal' stores, unless it comes to collector's items. If you have no objection against using things already used by others, going second-hand is an ideal option for those living on a budget. 

My fourth advice is to keep track of the sales and other special actions of the shops. Since a few years, I am  under the impression that there are more weeks in a year that especially clothing stores have 'sales' racks throughout their shops than that they have not. Also be aware of shops that are about to move, renew the interior of their building, or going bankrupt. These shops usually try to get rid of as much stock as they can by reducing the prices like crazy. This one is for people who do have an objection against used things, but who are also on a budget. Since many fashion trends are also allowed to be worn for a longer period of time, buying during the sales does not necessarily mean that you're dressed old-fashioned next season! 

Last, but not least: think economically! Weigh the costs of an item versus its perceived usefulness or benefits. For example, some biological foods are more expensive than non-biological foods, but biological foods yield a stuffed feeling faster than non-biological foods, so you need less of them. Besides, biological foods really are tastier, so you also weigh the price-quality balance. Also try to find out for which grants and compensation you are eligible as a student. This may cost some time and reading tough paper work, but it might be worth it. Thinking economically is really not that difficult, you just have to make a cost-benefit analysis and be realistic and honest to yourself. If you see a super cute cardigan that does not fit with the rest of your wardrobe and therefore ends up unworn, it might be a waste of money, no matter how cute it is. 

These were my advices for living on a limited budget, but I'm sure that you have your own ways of figuring financial stuff out. How do you manage? Are you the lucky one who get everything from the parents? Or are you okay with taking a loan and having debts for the first years after your graduation?