At first we thought that it sounded a little ironic to write articles about finances for students. It is not a secret that students worldwide suffer from problems with budget and often struggle to find side jobs, minimize expenses and cover student loans. However, later we realized that some of the problems students have with money occur because students don’t know exactly how to deal with personal finances, even if those finances are not too scarce. Here, we offer you some personal finance tips for students. Some of them will be rather obvious, some will be related to students who have side jobs, others, to students who don’t have any additional financial support. We tried to make it as “covering” as possible, so we trust you to choose the tips that relate to your situation the most. 

Effective Finance Tips for Students Worldwide 

These tips can really help you improve your financial situation, but only in case you actually follow them. It is the same system as with sports — if you just read about workouts and diet, you won’t get fit, if you actually do some push ups and cut on sweetened drinks, you will do fine. So, it doesn’t count if you just read these tips and say “well, sounds nice”, or “well, boring, i have heard all this before” if you don’t actually use these tips in your daily life.

Become a Master of Budgeting

Budgeting is the key to normalized expenditures. Make your budgeting realistic, write a budget for normal you, not some perfect you, and in the end you will be fine. Try to budget for emergencies and look for some “budget cuts” you can make to economize and save money for big purchases.

Manage Your Subscriptions

Each time you subscribe for something it may seem like the price is very little, especially if it comes with some free trial period, but in the end, if you count all your subscriptions, you will be just shocked how much you pay for useless apps and duplicating streaming services. Please, choose the most relevant ones and unsubscribe from the rest. 

Learn How to Cook. Now!

Take outs are expensive, cooking for a week is a great choice. You can buy a fast cook or multicook and save hundreds of dollars. Of course, it is not as fancy as buying lavender latte with chocolate chip cookies every day, but it is a great option for saving money for something better.

Pay Yourself First and Invest

Put aside at least 10% of any money you get even if it means you will have to dig into credit later. Paying yourself first is a very successful strategy that will definitely pay back soon. Once you have some financial safety account (for 2-3 month of life) full, start thinking about minor investments. Again, we know it will take time.

Pay Your Bills on Time Every Month

Paying your bills is mandatory and you should do anything to achieve this goal. Strict economizing, extra job, selling some of things you will never use again — everything works. Paying bills is also a disciplining process that is important especially in student years.

Don’t Let Social Pressure Take Over Your Budget

There will always be people around you who spend more and care less. You should take into account only your situation and work on being as independent from social and peer pressure as possible in such matters. Don’t allow someone to ruin your budget just because you want to look cool.

Choose Work Over Useless Tasks and Procrastination

They often say that to earn money you need to spend money. We would add that to earn money you need to spend money, time and effort. If you have some good offers for a side job, but also have several irrelevant writing tasks to finish, it may be a good idea to delegate your assignment to a professional writing company, such as SmartWritingService. Paying peanuts for essays written by experts, you spare hours you can spend earning real money. 

See Your Financial Goal Clearly

You need to understand why you are doing this, why you are trying to acquire good financial habits, economize, refuse attending parties sometimes and find a side job. Clear financial goal will motivate you and compensate for all the struggles you have to go through.

Find Free or Cheap Hobbies

There are plenty! Well, we should write an article on free or cheap hobbies, as they can be really helpful when it comes to managing your budget. If you find something free or cheap for entertainment, you will be much less eager to spend money on emotional shopping or similar ‘fun” activities.

Brace Yourself for a bumpy Ride

When writing such articles it is obligatory to make the tips sound fun and easy, but we should warn you that managing personal finances is neither. You will have to make sacrifices, you will have to change your habits and you may even lose several social connections while trying to get your finances in order.

How Not to Get in Financial Trouble Being a Student

We have touched on this topic before, but we would like to extend it in a separate abstract. It often happens this way — you don’t want to spend too much money on things you don’t need, you set a budget and you are happy with it and with your life. You need to economize, but you know exactly why you are doing it, and you are fine with it. It all sounds great, but more often than not it ends the same – your friends, or even some random acquaintances have some party planned, or decide to chip in for some expensive gift or common purchase like a TV screen, etc, and you just cannot refuse, you cannot say no, and you want to look good to your friends and peers. Fight this urge as strong as you can! Follow your plan even if it implies saying no to people, missing some parties or even being labeled as “boring.” If you don’t take care of your budget, no one will, so try your best. It also helps to put your spare money in some place you cannot easily access, pay some debts or credits in advance — this way you will have very little daily cash left. We should not remind you not to go in debt for some useless parties, should we?