How to budget at university- Penryn Campus

Hey friends it’s SJ here again! Today I’ve got a really important topic to discuss with you all… how to budget at university, especially when studying at the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall. Living on a student budget is hard, while most of you will have a Student Loan coming in, or maybe a part-time job like me, uni is the first time that most of us have to properly start supporting ourselves. From food shopping and bills, to drinks and nights out, it can be hard to prioritise and allocate where you’re spending your money. 

If you haven’t seen one of my blogs or Instagram takeovers before, let me introduce myself before I get into my budgeting tips. I am a second year student studying Renewable Energy BSc on the Penryn Campus at the University of Exeter. I absolutely adore living in Cornwall; my friends and I regularly enjoy cold-water swimming and the hikes around the Cornish coast are breath-taking! I am a part of a couple of societies and my friends and I love a pub trip on our weekends. Whilst I am fortunate enough to receive a Student Loan, like many students I still massively have to plan my budget around all my weekly activities. Let’s see some of my favourite hacks around a range of topics and suggestions… 

Food Shopping

The first, most vital question should be, where should you do your weekly shop? Falmouth actually has a pretty good variety of shops for you to choose between. For everyone living in halls, which is either Glasney Student Village or The Sidings, your main option is Asda. I suggest you download the Asda Rewards app to get weekly discounts and ‘Club Card Points’ so that you can save money in the future. I am a particular fan of the Asda Rewards app- this automatically gives you your own Cashpot that special ‘Star Products’ add real money to that in later weeks can pay for a part of your shop. For my weekly food shop budget, in first year I tended to set aside £30-40, depending on my preferences that week. Buying only supermarket own-brand and items on sale makes it easy to save a lot of money. On occasions, it’s best to set aside a bit more of your budget so that you can stock up on certain items, for example, pasta and rice – it works out much more cost effective to buy the huge bags of these only a couple times a year.  

Shopping with your friends or flatmates can also be really effective for sharing the basics like milk and bread. Being in second year now, we shop and cook most nights together, whilst saving us a huge amount of money it also makes for such a wholesome evening. By sharing so much of our groceries, I only have to set aside maximum £25 a week now! We also find it’s much easier to take it in turns of who is paying for the weekly food shop. We have found that the app Splitwise is absolutely perfect for keeping track of who owes each other money, this app allows you to create different groups and add various expenses to total it up for you. Going back to supermarket choices, when living off campus in the Penryn area, both Lidl and Tesco become a very accessible option. Lidl is by far the cheapest of the supermarkets around, and the Lidl Plus app is also amazing! This gives you offers, leaflets and a look at what they’re currently stocking down the centre aisles. However, one more very important tip from me when it comes to preparing your meals for the week, is to always batch-cook! I especially love a Quorn spaghetti bolognese, by making multiple portions, I can always freeze some and then use them as an easy meal for another night.  

Below I have included an example of one of my classic weekly shopping lists, along with two ingredient lists for one easy, freezable, batch-cook meal and one of our flat favourites we often make together… 

Bills – the scary one!

Bills and rent are by far going to be where nearly all of your money goes. When living in student accommodation, you will most likely pay your rent (with bills included) termly. So for the majority of you, as soon as your Student Finance comes in at the start of term, you can easily go onto the FxPlus ‘Room Service’ website to pay for the term (for students at Penryn Campus). Any money left over from your Student Finance should be used carefully – try not to spend it all in Freshers’ Week!  

However, now I’m in second year and living off-campus, not only do I have to carefully set aside part of my budget for rent, but we also have to carefully chose an energy provider to pay our bills to. When my Student Loan comes in now, I use the app Monzo to help me organise my money. This great banking app allows you to create multiple Saving Pots, and even lock them until a certain date to stop you being tempted to use the money. This is absolutely ideal for budgeting; I honestly don’t know what I would do without it! Living in your rented house for the first time can be daunting, when searching for one you should always have the cost of a month’s rent as one of the top priorities. After a while of searching, it became very obvious that living in Penryn is way cheaper than Falmouth. Penryn is a lot closer to uni, allowing you to walk there in the mornings and save money by not having to get a bus (like you would if you had to live in Falmouth) and is still fairly easier access to town through either the bus links or a 40 minute walk – it sounds long but it comes with some stunning views that make it go by much quicker! Although, one very significant note for you Freshers reading this: you will have to put down a fairly large house deposit for your second/ third year homes. For most, this is a month’s rent worth, which you must be saving up for over your last two terms of first year. And then comes the decision of energy providers, if this doesn’t automatically come with your contract. Being a renewable energy student, we see it only right to go with Octopus Energy, the majority of their supply is straight from solar, wind and tidal energy sources, and only costs about £40 a month each. We also found that the best way to compare energy bill prices with different companies, was to go onto each providers websites and get a quote – this took seconds and is actually really accurate.

Uni life social funds

As well as your degree, a huge part of uni is all about making new friends and having fun in a new city. You have to leave space in your budget for your social life! But let’s start with some of the cheapest ways in Cornwall you can go out without spending money…  

Number one, hikes. The Cornish Coast is beautiful, take advantage of the nature and go for some lovely walks to explore the surrounding area. If you know me, you’ll know how much I also love a sea swim! It costs only a bus fare to get down to the local Gylly beach for a quick swim, or if anyone has a car, it’s only a max 20 minute drive to the stunning Maenporth or Grebe beach.  

Another suggestion of mine would have to be a night in with your flatmates – a simple dinner and movie night, or even just having friends over for a board game night can be just as fun as going out. Although, when it does come to a night out, being quite a small uni town here in Falmouth, can mean they’re pretty cheap if done correctly. There’s no worry of expensive club entries or overpriced drinks, for the most you’ll ever pay to get into a club here is £5 for a Saturday night in the most popular club, Mangos! Or by going out on a student night, you can go to the legendary ‘£1 Wednesday shot night’, they even have free karaoke and only a £3 entry on these days. However, there is definitely more of a pub culture here, and so deals that places such as Five Cyderhouse have, like ‘Pint and a Pizza’ on a Wednesday for £14 or ‘Thank Fives it’s Friday’ for £4.50 pints, can be really useful in more ways to make savings. My friends and I don’t tend to eat out much though – as a student I would only suggest a couple times a month max. Even with lunches to bring into long days at uni, I normally make the most of the microwaves on campus to reheat leftovers from the night before. In total, if you were to go out once or twice a week for a month in Falmouth I would say a budget of £100 should absolutely cover everything.  

The only other main expenses some of you may be looking into is a gym membership. Many of the University students use the campus gym, the Flexsi Sports Centre, this costs only £24 a month and has great facilities! However, when living away from campus more options become available such as St Michaels Health Club. This gym costs £55 a month for student, but has really lovely facilities including a swimming pool, sauna, steam room and classes. This is very up to personal preference though, and by hiking or swimming a lot just in nature, this can absolutely be a sufficient form of exercise too! 

That’s it from me today, I hope this helped- SJ