Being a student often means three years of finical difficulty, due to paying expensive tuition fees, and ridiculous rent prices. Today I am going to share with you my tips to saving money as a student.
1) Be a savvy shopper- Food and household items can be really expensive, well depending on where you get them from. My top advice tip is to shop around, don't stick to one supermarket or shop. I recommend buying things such as shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, toilet roll, cereal, sweet treats and drinks from pound shops such as PoundLand, Pound World and Home Bargains. These shops sell popular brands just like supermarkets but for a fraction of the price.
My other tip for being a savvy shopper is to shop at supermarkets an hour or two before closing time when items are reduced. You can't miss the bright Yellow reduction stickers which are put on reduced items. The best places to look for these reduced items are in the bakery, hot food, meat and fish, and fresh food sections. You could also check out the reduced section which most supermarkets have at any part of the day. The reduced section usually has stock which either has damaged packaging or is short dated.
2) Freebies- Who doesn't love a freebie? well there is enough to go around. If you are starting as a fresher this year or going back for your 2nd or 3rd yr, I hope you have arranged to go to your universities fresher fair. The Freshers Fair is a great place to bag some freebies. Local companies will be there handing out free food, drinks, stationary and vouchers. I highly recommend visiting as many stalls as you can and seeing what you can get for free.
Using websites to get freebie is such a great idea. Over the last month I have had a perfume sample, some coconut oil and free facemarks from The Body Shop. These sites have many different types of freebies from cosmetics, to food. My favourite sites to find freebies on are magicfreebiesuk.co.uk, latestfreestuff.co.uk, and wowfreestuff.co.uk. Sites such as Money Saving Expert and Student Money Saver are also great for finding freebies.
3) Cash Back Sites- Cash back websites are only just becoming popular, with most people still not sure how they work. I recently joined two after seeing some offers on the Student Money Saver website which I couldn't resist. The first offer I saw was for new members on the Quidco website. If you spent £10 or more on the New Look website you got £10 cash back. I decided to try it out and bought a bomber jacket in the online sale. I also saved money on delivery costs by having it sent to my local store. My purchase didn't track straight away and I had to put in a claim for the money but Quidco worked swiftly and I got my £10 cash back after around 2 weeks. In the end my new jacket cost me £4 which is a great money save. I also recently joined topcashback.co.uk after seeing that if you bought a W7 makeup kit from Fragrance Direct for £12.99 you get the full cash back. Once I get the £12.99 cash back I will have only paid £1.49. Both Quidco and TopCashBack are partnered with many popular retail brands which you probably already use, so I recommend going through the links on there websites so that you can get money back on your purchases. My only issue with cash back sites is how long it takes you to get the money back, If you don't mind waiting a few weeks for it to go through it isn't too bad.
4) Vouchers- Vouchers and coupons are great for getting you money of products and sometimes you can even get items for free when using them. My favourite places to look for coupons are on the sites Money Saving Expert and SuperSavvyMe. The are updated regularly with easy to print coupons to use on a variety of products. I recommend reading the coupons carefully as you probably can only use them in selected stores. Sometimes you may come across coupons which you can use multiple times however often its one per transaction. Another great way to find coupons is just Google search 'Coupons, then the month, year, and country you are in'. The apps VoucherCodes and VoucherCloud are a great download as they have money off restaurants, bars and shops. As a student you can pretty much get money off most places and there is many ways to do it. I recommend purchasing a NUS card which gets you discount on things such as travel and gig tickets. Another website I recommend joining is myunidays.com which you have to link up to your university username and password to get verified. I recently purchased a 6 month gym membership for Pure Gym through myunidays.com which saved me £30 and a £10 joining fee.
Don't be afraid to complain, if something wasn't right with a purchase or you felt you received bad customer service, then make a complaint. A complaint often leads you to getting a voucher or refund. Also if you received a great product or you got fantastic customer service, then drop the company a thank you email. They may just award you with a voucher or free product.
5) Competitions- I love entering competitions as a hobby and I have won things such as £150 worth of No7 makeup, theatre tickets, a dressing gown and slippers from New Look, £100 worth of household items and a game. Entering competitions is a great way to get your hands on free things. You can win stuff such as holidays, clothes, vouchers, hampers, and technology. Honestly the list is endless of the different prizes you could win. My favourite sites for entering competitions are competition time forum on Money Saving Expert, theprizefinder.com, and the competition database. I also like to use Twitter as a way to enter competitions, just use the search 'RT to win or #win' in the search bar and it will bring you up lots of competitions. To higher your chances of winning you need to entering around 100 day. This may seem like a lot but it isn't once you get into it.
So thats my top 5 tips for saving money as a student. I hope these tips help you and let me know in the comments below how you save money as a student.
Kayleigh
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