Am I overspending at University?

ive spent 500, but £400 of that was on a random purchase of a laptop. I live at home though, which is 5mins away from uni, plus i dont pay fees. £1200 is a LOT to be spendin in such a little amount of time, but then again someone I know has already maxed out his bank account, credit card and spent all his loan
 
Id say to the OP. Set yourself some budget decisions. Dont go out to eat so much. Its nice to eat out occasionally but cooking at home can be just as nice. As for Armani dinner jackets, sale or not.. im not sold! Geddit :p
 
tbh spending like this is not going to help you when you get a job and start to earn a decent wage, you will end up in the "pay for it later" generation, max out your CC and end up with absoulte nothing to show for it.
 
I came to uni with no more income than my student loan and overdraft, my mother and father have gladly offered to pay for my accomodation this year, but have said i should pay the tuition fees which was fine with me to be honest and it seemed right i should take responsibility for some extra part of uni life but i couldnt be more greatful. My family dont get any financial support from the LEA with the fee's and in all honesty we dont really need it, but just because my mum and dad can afford to send me to university and pay for things for me doesnt give me the right to blow my loan and overdraft in the hope that 'mummy and daddy will bail me out' i know if it came to that they essentially would, but id like to think i was mature and wise enough not to get into that situation with them and leave them in the full knowledge that im financially secure at university, (not scraping the barrel, but not overly worried about how much cash i have) whilst having a good time, but also not going silly. Theres a balance with these things and some people just dont know where it is.

There are a lot of people i know in worse situations, couple of my housemates came to uni with £3k + their loan and overdraft, and spent the 3k in the first term with nothing to show for it, and another friend has 2 overdrafts maxed, a full credit card done, and his loan gone.

So it annoys me when people also say mum and dad will bail them out, because it just shows that your not old enough or mature enough to handle money and god forbid if people keep with that mentality past university they'll get a big shock from the real world when parents arent around to bail out.
 
ffs get a job, lazy student dossers.

i remember my student days long time ago, the joys of having 2 part time jobs along with my student loans, bursaries damn i was minted, (ran a brand new punto gt was out most nights and had a nice rig as well as a good life, wish i could do that now with a full time job albeit with a wife and kiddies to strangle my spending sprees. :)
 
i've spent over a grand since the start of january i think, not really sure how which is slightly concerning :s

however as calculated for the weekly expenses thread i'm only spending about £35 a week, and i earn on average £100, so should in theory be going up, damn monthly pay slips :s
 
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I have spent since i been back at uni prob around £900. ~£700 of which rent and the other stuf is food and bills. I think if i spent that much on essentially nothing, id be really worried. I bought a 26" HD LCD as well, and my money situation is still ok. You spend too much on alcohol dude. just my opinion anyway :)

I think you might need to find the right balance whereby you still go out, but dont spend that much on drink. its just not worth it mate.

ffs get a job, lazy student dossers.
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See now comments like that really "get on my nerves" (**** me off.)

Im not the one complaining here, and i accept that some are better with money than others, but what if some dont have time to get a job? I personally dont. simply because im doing a very hard subject, and if i wasted my time working i would fail my degree and render the whole time a complete waste.

Yes you might have had time for a job, but others dont.

leave useless comments out.

I appologise if i seem angry or even rude, perhaps im just tired. but my point still stands.
 
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i used to go out a lot, im gonna try and limit myself to one GOOD night a week if there are any. rather than 3 -4 samey boring nights.
 
That is a fair amount but we've all done it. The worst I did was to spend my loan and overdraft (£2k) in three weeks and live off about £60 for the next six weeks

£10 a week is doable but you really have to cut back. When I was that broke I was on two meals a day, bought in bulk and used the rest for leftovers.

So far this term I've spent about £500 - I've got about 5 weeks left.

As for the issue with the whole loan in an ISA I personally don't see this as a brilliant idea. You have to pay interest on your loan - this is compound interest calculated from the day you get the money in your account. You'd need a rather high interest account just to pay off the loan + interest, let alone make any money off it. I'd personally cut your losses and pay it off now before you have to pay any more interest
 
ajgoodfellow said:
As for the issue with the whole loan in an ISA I personally don't see this as a brilliant idea. You have to pay interest on your loan - this is compound interest calculated from the day you get the money in your account. You'd need a rather high interest account just to pay off the loan + interest, let alone make any money off it. I'd personally cut your losses and pay it off now before you have to pay any more interest
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My sister earnt several hundred pounds on her loan over the 3 years as far as i know. Its pretty low risk either way, your not like cutting your losses from stocks or shares that could change dramatically. Although i do know of a man who has invested some of his loan in shares, and impressively is doing pretty good. Hat off i say, just hope it doesnt nip him in the bum.
 
About £400. The only 'luxury' things out of that were a new chair (£45) and some new fans for my PC (£35, necessary because my CPU fan was making a stupid noise and the GPU fan had packed up, sending temps soaring to 100*C). I filled my car up aswell, so that's £50. The rest was spent on food, nights out and other stuff i need to live.
 
gord said:
My sister earnt several hundred pounds on her loan over the 3 years as far as i know. Its pretty low risk either way, your not like cutting your losses from stocks or shares that could change dramatically. Although i do know of a man who has invested some of his loan in shares, and impressively is doing pretty good. Hat off i say, just hope it doesnt nip him in the bum.
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I've just looked it up and the official interest rate is 3.2% which is pretty low. Most saver accounts are 5%+ so there is the potential to earn more in your savings then you have to pay back in interest
 
Hmm, im not entirely following you. I am ill though, so that might be why. My value included the interest of the loan as well if thats what you were considering?
 
I can't remember how much I spent in a week, but TBH if you can afford it you can, if you can't you can't. No one student is the same as a lot get help from their parents and a lot don't.

If you haven't got enough money to spend until you get some more money then all I can say is unlucky, you should have budgeted better. I give you no sympathy for having no money left because you spent all your money on stupid stuff.

When I was student a year-ish ago I bought stupid stuff, but I always made sure I had enough left to eat and go out.
 
gord said:
Hmm, im not entirely following you. I am ill though, so that might be why. My value included the interest of the loan as well if thats what you were considering?
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Yeah

I thought that the interest on the student loan was equal to or higher than the interest that you'll earn by having the money in a savings account. This will mean that when you come to pay off the loan you'll either loose money or not make any money at all

As the interest on the loan is lower than the interest offered by most saving accounts you should make money off it
 
as far as I was aware interest is paid at the same rate as inflation, and the following information confirms that

"The interest rate is always based on inflation (Retail Prices Index). Prior to entering repayment interest is calculated daily at the appropriate rate from the day your loan is paid. The interest is added to your account every month. Once you enter repayment, and if you are either repaying through the PAYE system or Self Assessment, interest stops being applied until details are received from HM Revenue & Customs (previously known as the Inland Revenue). Interest will be applied retrospectively, dependent on your repayment method."

from http://www.slc.co.uk/noframe/lr/sss/repayov.html
 
Just broke the £300 in the black mark on my account, I don't really spend much, few PC bits, few beers from Asda every now and again and the odd meal out.

Had to pay £235 for a deposit any my fees out of my loan, but need a few hundred pounds worth of walking gear and books soonish
 
Brum Man said:
as far as I was aware interest is paid at the same rate as inflation, and the following information confirms that

"The interest rate is always based on inflation (Retail Prices Index). Prior to entering repayment interest is calculated daily at the appropriate rate from the day your loan is paid. The interest is added to your account every month. Once you enter repayment, and if you are either repaying through the PAYE system or Self Assessment, interest stops being applied until details are received from HM Revenue & Customs (previously known as the Inland Revenue). Interest will be applied retrospectively, dependent on your repayment method."

from http://www.slc.co.uk/noframe/lr/sss/repayov.html
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It is linked to inflation but it's slightly higher (IIRC inflation is about 2%)

What is the interest rate?
The interest rate is linked to the rate of inflation. The interest rate from 1st September 2005 to 31st August 2006 will be 3.2%. Interest accrues from the day you receive the first instalment of your loan.
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From http://www.slc.co.uk/noframe/faqs/sssgeneral.html
 
I have a feeling that the SLC uses a different measure of inflation than the headline rate (although I'm too drunk to prove it at a the moment!) But just be aware that there is more than one measure of inflation, headline, underlying etc.......

Also, the headline rate is 1.9% at the moment, below the goverment target of 2%.
 
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