As a college student, keeping a budget template for yourself helps you keep track of all your spending. The ideal time to learn proper budgeting is your time in school, and failure to adhere to the budget rules is negligence on your part.
Not only does it leave you clueless, but it leaves you at the mercy of loans. One thing you wouldn’t want to experience is the act of paying back loans while you’re still in school. Therefore, make hay while the sun shines and draw a budget template to track your spending in school.
Want to know how you can stick to that? Read through this article and confirm it to yourself that budgeting is a necessary part of financial health.
If you don’t want to drop out of college in no distant time, kindly go through the table of contents for an overview of how not to burn a hole through your bank account using a budget template.
Table of contents
Why You Need A Budget?
Did you know that students who are keen on savings and tracking their spendings have fewer worries about money and also, find it easy to take their next footing after graduation? So, I would rather you keep your college budget very simple to make it easier for you to stick to it.
Students are better advised to work on their budget with a semester model. Using this, you calculate how much you receive from your parent or guardian during a semester.
It will be very nice you also add up the one you make from your job if you have one as a student. Divide it by how long the semester lasts and get a virtual sense of what you can spend each month.
Check out 7 Practical Tips On How to Pay Off Your Student Loans very fast
Expenses To Expect As A College Student
In order to track your spending, it is pertinent to examine which expenses your parents take care of and take off your monthly expenses. There are fixed and variable expenses a student may account for. They are listed below:
- Fixed Expenses: Utility, books, housing, and transportation.
- Variable Expenses: Health, clothing, laundry, eating out, groceries, and entertainment
Some of the aforementioned expenses are most likely unavoidable, while the entertainment and eating out in the variable section is the case of wants over needs.
Striking a balance between needs and wants avails you the opportunity to have a happy time without having to go overboard with your college student budget template.
There are other significant ways to have fun with friends. Enter all these in a spreadsheet and make sure to stay true to it.
Tips For Saving Money In School
There are a lot of ways you cut costs and still save a lot more asides from penning down your budget. Remember what I said about striking a balance? Hence, the tips below.
- Stay under your parents’ insurance: Due to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, college students are covered by their parents or guardians’ insurance plans till the age of 26. This can go a long way to giving you prescriptions with discounts or no-cost visits at the doctors’
- Be prudent at the grocery store: Truer words have never been said about not going to the grocery store while hungry. Therefore, try to buy things that are most needed, and don’t forget to check the clearance bins.
- Sell things you don’t need: You can sell your old textbooks on recommended sites and websites to make a profit.
- Keep receipts and review your debit and/or credit card statements.
- Resist the urge to spend money whenever possible: If you’re an addicted to ordering things online, you might get a site blocker. Also, while going out with friends, you can go with you a stipulated amount rather than having your credit card on you. This aids you in tracking your spending while maintaining your college student budget.
Use A Simple College Student Budget Template
There are a good number of budgeting applications that keep it simple still. Most of which are free to use online or on your phone. Also, they give you a visual analysis of your spending habits. You can check these out: Toshl, Goodbudget, and Daily Budger Original.
More so, you can walk into your bank to see if they have their app. This can be useful in a way you never imagined especially if you’re far from home. In all of these, creating your budget is the fundamental thing you need to track your spending in school.
Plan For The Future
Maintaining a healthy financial life in school sets you sailing upon graduation. If you work as a college student, set financial goals and create emergency funds bearing in mind loans you might need to clear when you leave school.
If there are no loans to pay off, you can put the money to good use when the job isn’t forthcoming. How about that?
This Will Be Helpful
Conclusion
It may seem challenging at first to learn to track your spending in school with your budget. Once you get used to it, you not only have set up a healthy financial living for yourself, you’ll have yourself to thank for as long as you live.
It takes discipline and consistency to stick to a budget spreadsheet nonetheless.
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