How to Survive on a Student Budget

Three girls are sitting on some steps in the middle of the University Union. One takes a brown bag bulging with goodies out of her backpack. The next girl pulls out her plastic bagful of lunch.

The third girl sitting a few feet away on the cold cement step leans over to ignore the hunger pain shooting through her stomach. She didn't have any money for lunch since her phone bill for the month was a little bigger then expected. Now, she has to deal with the consequence until payday. It's not that the two girls with a lunch have any more money then the other. In fact, if their incomes were all compared, they would come to about even. The thing that separates the three is that two of them know how to live on a "student budget."

Living efficiently on a student budget starts with knowing the town. I remember my freshman year when the number of times I went into the actual town part of San Luis Obispo, where I go to school, was only about once a month. By the end of the year this number increased as I got more and more familiar with my surroundings, but for a while, living in the dorms kept me pretty isolated.

I found that getting over the fear of living in a new place is the first and most important step in living efficiently on a student budget. After this fear is mastered, here are eight tips on how to eat cheaply.

Next LESSON 1: Meeting People

Sort Out Your Money:

The Only Personal Finance Book You Need to Read to Get You Through the Recession

By: Langdon, Ken; Middleton, John Published By: Infinite Ideas Edition: 1 PDF for Digital Editions : $15.87 Read Online (what's this?) PDF for Digital Editions For many of us life can feel like a constant financial juggling act at the best of times. And these aren’t the best of times. We probably owe money on our credit cards, our living costs are going up, our children want ever more expensive trainers, and even the modest wish to have a secure income stream to pay for our home and to secure our pension seems pretty ambitious. Now’s the time to get all those issues sorted, and this is the book to help you succeed. Sort out your money contains practical, easy-to-implement advice. There is absolutely no padding, waffle or theory. There are no pictures, stories or case studies, just 100% turn-your-finances-around-now value. Here are the 25 brilliant ideas consumers and investors – all of us – have to implement now to survive the recession.