10 Ways to Save Money as a Student

Being tight on your budget, it is necessary that you know how to save money as a student and act accordingly. By cutting down your expenses and saving for the future, you can build up a fund for higher studies. In fact, you can leverage the money to meet all big-ticket expenses and fulfil your dreams. Following are some of the most useful strategies you need to follow for saving money.

Here are some of the 10 best strategies that will help you reduce your expenses and save money:

1. Purchase Used Books

Textbooks recommended in your syllabus are essential for your study, so you must purchase them. However, since you want to save money as a student, you can go for purchasing used books. You can easily find them in stores that sell second-hand books at much lower prices. This can help you cut down half of your expenditure on book purchases.

2. Go for Renting Reference Books

While preparing for examinations, you may have to go through reference books for conceptual clarity. However, since you need those books for a short duration only, you can rent those from your nearby library. In this regard, you also need to keep in mind the stipulated time within which you need to return those books. If you delay returning those, you may have to pay penalties for them.

3. Access the Free Library of the Institution

Generally, every educational institution has a library to help needy students with resources like books. You can explore the catalogue of your institutional or departmental library to know if these contain the books you require. If it does, you need to apply to take the book up to the allowed period without paying a single penny. You can find plenty of reference books there. By using the library facilities, you can avoid buying books and save money.

Besides reducing your expenditures on books, you also should know how to save money as a student by other means.

4. Cook Food Yourself

If you stay near the institution’s vicinity, away from your home, you should prepare your own food to save money. Regularly eating out from hotels and restaurants will increase your expenses. To cook your own food, you need to manage your time efficiently for studying, marketing and cooking. You can make a proper schedule for study and leave a few hours for cooking. The expenses you need to incur will be limited to the cost of groceries, vegetables and gas/electricity.

5. Cut Out Bad Habits

Bad habits like smoking and drinking can exhaust your pocket money pretty quickly. You should abstain from it, especially when you are on a tight budget. If you are already addicted to these vices, you can take medical guidance to help you sail through the initial days of quitting your indulgences.

6. Use Public Transportation

Private vehicles like cars and motorbikes let you travel conveniently and comfortably, but you need to pay a sizable amount for fuel. Public transportation is significantly cheaper and can help you reduce your cost of commuting. You can also commute on a bicycle or cross small distances on foot to cut down your expenses on transportation entirely.

7. Look for Discounts

Another way to save money as a student will be to purchase essential items at discounts. There may also be stores that offer concessions to students on their purchases. You can buy from those shops. Otherwise, you can also go shopping from e-commerce platforms that facilitate special offers more or less on almost every item.

8. Abstain from Borrowing

You should refrain from borrowing money that can engage you in financial obligations. The interest component in your EMIs can put significant stress on your monthly budget. However, even if you borrow from your friends at zero interest, you will encounter financial challenges in repaying them later.

You should always try to spend according to your budget, utilising your own savings or pocket money. Else, the practice of borrowing may become a habit. You may become inclined to continue this practice to meet your necessary expenses and even unnecessary ones.

9. Look for Earning Opportunities

One of the most effective pieces of advice on how to save money as a student would be to start earning. You can get several income opportunities both online and offline. For example, you can get freelance work, like writing, data entry, coaching, graphic design, etc., from gig websites. Simply by leveraging your laptop/desktop, you can start your journey to earn. You can also alternatively give online and offline tuition or engage in a part-time job.

10. Look for Free/Discounted Services

You can also save money by using free services available on the internet for educational purposes. There are plenty of websites that contain a large repository of easy-to-understand course materials in video or written format. You can also leverage the vast educational video content available on YouTube to refrain from spending huge amounts on online crash courses or coaching.

Following the tips on how to save money as a student, you can significantly reduce your day-to-day expenses. Nevertheless, only saving money should not be your end goal; you also need to develop strategies to build and grow your funds with time. You need to ensure that wherever you keep your money, it helps you get an interest rate higher than the average inflation rate. Otherwise, the relative value of your money will decrease, making it difficult to fulfil your financial goals.