My University Money is proud to offer its own unique original resource with its interactive student budget. We understand that you’re busy and don’t have time to fuss around making excel spreadsheets (all you accounting students out there aside), so we went ahead and set up a colour-coded model that even an humanities guy like me can figure out!
Click Here to Download Our User-Friendly Student Budget
No, sadly the tool isn’t so good that the numbers on the “income” side will magically get larger on their own, but we do think it makes life a lot simpler. It’s relatively easy for most working people out there to set a monthly budget and then rinse and repeat since their income stays relatively consistent, and their expenses are locked in for most months. For most students it’s not so easy. With full-time jobs during the summer, part-time work during the school year, various types of help from parents, and hopefully scholarships to calculate in, it’s often easier to spend now and calculate later (or never).
In a similar way, students don’t pay a set amount of tuition every month, and their textbooks aren’t usually bought in convenient monthly installments either (just two examples). Therefore, we have set up a calculator that allows you to determine the frequency of an expense or income, and quickly see how your overall budget will leave you come May, as well as how you stack up in each category of expenses as well. I hate cutting the entertainment budget back too, but if you have to start drinking drinking discount beer in November, you’re better off acquiring the taste sooner rather than later.
Make sure and check out these articles about budgeting to help you out on your quest to graduate without sinking into a quicksand-like pit of debt:
What is the password that unlocks the excel and allows people to edit the document?