In today’s blog post I share what I spend in a week as a college student. Every week my spending varies so I am going to explain my background, income, and reoccurring expenses first.
Background:
I am a 21-year-old college student that lives and goes to school in Massachusetts. I am a history major and an educational studies minor going into my junior year of college. My goal is to become a history teacher or work with teens after college. My hobbies include reading, cosplay, crafting, and blogging. Although I hope to turn the blog from a hobby to a source of income one day.
Some examples of how I save money
- I dont own a car: I carpool, walk or use public transportation because it is saves me money. I am lucky to live within walking distance to several things when at school. The only downside now that I live in an apartment is I will have to use public transportation, or carpool in order to do grocery shopping. Luckily one of my roommates has a car and they are okay with driving my apartment to the grocery store.
- I shop secondhand: The past few years I have started to buy more of my clothes secondhand. I have found a lot of nice clothes for great deals. You can check out my Instagram @theliztalk if you want to see what I wear.
- I track my spending: I use a spreadsheet where I have a column for each month. Then under each monthly column I write down all of my expenses. I do this to track all of my spending except for college.
- I budget: I set a monthly budget for myself for groceries, entertainment, philanthropy, clothes, gifts and more. I need to make this last the entire month but I occasionally go over a little. Any money left over I use for savings, emergency fund and my travel fund. I hope to open a Roth IRA to start saving for retirement soon.
Income
During the school year, I work as an office assistant on campus. Then during school breaks, I work at an afterschool program and summer camp. In total, I made approximately 10,800 after taxes.
Monthly expenses
College: For the purpose of this blog post, I broke down my college bill and monthly expenses into a weekly amount. I did not include the federal student loans that I take out which is 5,500 dollars each year. These are the only loans/debts that I currently have.
College tuition, fees, room, and board (mandatory meal plan) after financial aid are 153 a week. My family gives me around 5,000 each year to pay for school and I pay the rest myself.
Savings: I do have a savings account where all of my money goes after I pay for colleges and my other expenses. I also use my savings to help pay for college, so I am only taking out more loans than necessary.
Roth IRA: I do have a Roth IRA that I make small contributions to. After I graduate college, I hope to increase the amount of money I put inside of my Roth IRA.
Emergency Fund: I have a checking and savings account at a separate credit union that I use as my emergency fund. I chose to open an account at a different credit union so I would be less likely to touch it unless there was necessary.
But Liz what about x, y and z?
- I am fortunate to be on my family’s health insurance plan
- I am also very privileged to have my family pay for my cellphone bill while I am in college.
Sunday
On Sunday I went to Michaels to look for the 5-dollar mystery grab bags and cosplay materials. I did end up buying a grab bag and a set of Wilton cake pans set for 13.68. I got thanksgiving/falls items that I can use next year in the grab bag. Then I bought the Wilton cake pans set because I have been wanting cake pans in order to make a rainbow layer cake. Since it was in clearance for 8 dollars and retail it cost 18-20 dollars.
Next, I went to Target to grab some groceries and I spent 6.68 out of my 50-dollar weekly grocery budget.
Monday
Today I went to Starbucks, and I spent 4.45. I used my dining dollars that I paid for upfront as a part of my mandatory meal plan even though I live on an on-campus apartment.
Tuesday
I did not spend any money
Wednesday
I did not spend any money
Thursday
I spent 39.90 on groceries for next week
Friday
I did not spend any money
Saturday
I did not spend any money
The total amount that I spent this week was 211.03 including college expenses. This is just one week in my life and every week the amount that I spend could vary. Let me know if you want me to do another blog post like this in a few months to compare.
