Money management is an important skill for navigating adult life, from understanding how to apply for a student loan to understanding rental deposits, mortgages and interest rates. The good news is, this is a skill you can learn and develop throughout your time as a student. Our Money, Accommodation and International Advice Manager Steve shares his top tips below on how you can begin building your financial knowledge.
By Elsa Tatam. Published 10 November 2023. Last updated 3 March 2025.
When first starting to build your financial knowledge, there's a lot of terminology and this can make it all seem a bit overwhelming. To make this easier, we've split our tips into three simple segments: budgeting, planning and building.
BUDGETING
Make a budget plan
The best way to feel more in control of your money – and therefore improve your mental health and wellbeing – is to draw up a budget listing your income and expenditure.
The priority for a student budget is making sure you have enough set aside from your student loan or other funds to ensure you can cover the essentials. After that, you can more clearly see where your gaps are and where you might be overspending. You can then review your financial position, create realistic goals and implement ways to financially thrive moving forward.
You can draw up your own tracker using a trusty spreadsheet or a specifically designed notebook, or use one of the many existing (and free) tools such as the MSE Student Budget Planner, the Which? Student Budget Calculator or the MoneyHelper Budget Planner.
Look to increase your income
According to Blackbullion’s Student Money & Wellbeing Report 2025, the average gap between what students have versus what they need is £365 per month.
Working part-time is common practice for students and, depending on your course, you’re permitted to work up to 20 hours per week alongside your studies. Obviously, don’t pressure yourself to work more hours than you can cope with alongside your other commitments or you will be at serious risk of burnout.
From hospitality to retail, lots of companies hire students in the local area - Save The Student have a range of tips for securing part-time employment on their website. There are also a range of paid opportunities at the University you could apply for, from Money Mentors to Student Ambassadors.
Outside of part-time work, you can also boost your income by selling unwanted items on places like eBay and Vinted, participate in surveys to earn rewards or apply for additional bursaries and funds from external providers. Have a look on our Cost of Living hub for more information about this.
Find ways to lower your expenditure
You will have outgoing costs, this is unavoidable – but you can save money on a range of essentials, from your weekly food shop to your mobile phone bill, with your student discount.
All of our students can get a free TOTUM+ card on enrolment, giving you access to thousands of discounts a variety of brands from day one – and saving you £14.99 for the annual cost. You can also get a free membership to UniDAYS and StudentBeans (although most of the discounts are the same).
Not all outgoings are essential, which is the next step in decreasing your spending. If you have subscriptions to services such as Spotify and Amazon, either cancel these if you’re able to or change your membership on to their discounted Student plans. If you have multiple memberships to streaming services, such as Disney+ and Netflix, pick one to have each month and rotate them, rather than paying for all of them. Or cancel them all and only pay for one month at a time, as and when there’s something you want to see.
PLANNING
Save an emergency fund
If possible, put some money aside in your budget plan as an emergency fund. Try to add to this if you have a particularly good month and spend less than usual. Having this money pot can help relieve the pressure in case of unexpected costs, such as car problems or increased travel costs, or if your income is lower than expected, perhaps where you’ve had to drop some shifts because you’ve caught Freshers’ Flu.
Should any of these situations occur, your emergency fund is your safety net and means you can still pay for your essentials like rent and food.
Be adaptable
Adapt your budget plan according to your circumstances and don’t be hard on yourself if things don’t always go to plan. One way to prevent feeling disappointed is to adjust your budget for those months where you expect to have more outgoings.
Staying flexible and open-minded will help you to meet your goals and not to let small setbacks reduce your confidence. Another way to remain agile is to keep all of your financial documents and your budget plan in one place so you can easily look ahead and prepare for any adjustments.
Allow yourself a treat
Managing our financial life requires us to be disciplined, or self-regulating. This may mean holding back on engaging in enjoyable activities. So, when we achieve our financial milestones and reflect on our success, rewarding ourselves may spur us to maintain our effort towards this self-regulated saving activity. In this spirit, treating yourself to a nice snack, meeting up with a friend or whatever most inspires you could be useful ways to recognise your success. It is helpful to obtain a balance of discipline and leisure, to reduce the chance of tasks becoming too overwhelming and draining.
BUILDING
Build financial management in your daily schedule
It’s helpful to have various saving strategies in place so you’re not depending on one method. Mind UK suggests building money tasks into your daily schedule as effective way to develop better overall financial habits; for example, having a set day for paying bills if you don’t use direct debits or checking your account balance at the same time daily to stay on top of what’s going in and out.
The main priority is to ensure you put enough aside to cover your main bills and other essentials such as food. Consider having a separate bank account for these expenses, or using a bank that gives you separate “pots” to spend from, so you don’t accidentally overspend and end up in your overdraft.
BlackBullion
Our partnership with BlackBullion gives our students access to a range of resources centred around building financial education and independence.
All students can create a free account and start learning about different areas of money management through the prebuilt pathways. The information is short and digestible, making it easy to build your confidence around your finances every week. You can also earn rewards (called Bullions) from completing tasks, which you can swap for vouchers and rewards.
They also have a free Money Manager app, which give you guidance on the money in your bank account and how you can make the most of what you’ve got. Download it free from your app store.
Additional resources for financial wellbeing
Our Cost of Living hub has a wealth of information to help guide you through your time as a student. We’ve linked external references above too, so you can take a look at all the different resources available to you outside of the University (we’d recommend adding Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert student hub to your favourites).
Whilst this blog should help direct you to making smarter money choices, it shouldn’t be used in place of official financial advice. If you have any financial concerns whilst at the University, please get in touch with our friendly Money & Housing Advice team who will be able to support you further, or reach out to specialised support such as Citizen’s Advice or MoneyHelper.
