With the cost-of-living crisis looming large and life becoming more expensive, we recognise it can be a huge challenge trying to budget as a student.
So, we've come up with a few things that should help make your money stretch a bit further. Remember, if you find yourself stuck or worried, we've got people on hand to support you and offer advice and practical tools to help.
Each of our Schools has a Campus Life Officer who is a member of the National Association of Student Money Advisers (NASMA) and can provide confidential help with budgeting or financial problems, or give advice about bursaries, financial assistance, bank accounts, tax, National Insurance, and student funding. Get in touch with your Campus Life Hub below or find out more by visiting our Financial Support pages.
To get in touch with a Campus Life Officer please email:
Are you on an undergraduate (UG) or postgraduate (PG) course with us? Are you experiencing an unexpected event or incident that has resulted in financial hardship? Are you struggling with your living expenses and is it affecting your studies? If the answer is yes, UCA have extra financial support to offer you.
Visit GOV.UK to find out what other financial support you’re eligible for.
Or apply for a Master’s Loan or Doctoral Loan.
Proper budgeting can help you take control of your finances and give you peace of mind.
Your student loan may seem like a lot of money, but it probably needs to last a whole term, and you'll be surprised by how quickly it can run out if you don't have a spending plan in place.
Major costs like accommodation, travel or bills are often easy to remember, but smaller expenses can really add up.
For example, something as cheap as a cup of coffee on your way into university, four days a week, can cost a lot of money over an academic year.
£2.10 x 4 days x 39 weeks (academic year) = £327.60
Once you have paid for accommodation, bills and other similar expenses, you may find yourself with less than £2,500 to live on for the full academic year, so it's important to think about how these little expenses add up and decide what expenditure is essential, and where you can make savings.
If you're not sure what you’re spending your money on, keep a spending diary for a couple of weeks so that you can see exactly where your money is going. Make a note of every purchase, no matter whether you paid by cash or card, or how little you spent.
When you add these smaller, day-to-day costs to the bigger, monthly or annual costs like rent or bills, you can begin to work out a monthly budget and make decisions about where you can make savings.
Download Save the Student's student budgeting spreadsheet.
Make sure you’ve signed up for Totum, UniDays and Student Beans to get access to hundreds of discounts and deals from eating out and fashion to technology, daily essentials, and travel.
Don’t assume you can’t get discounts elsewhere, either. Many local cafés, shops or hairdressers in university towns have discounted student rates, so be sure to ask!
For more help with your finances, visit our Fees & Finance pages.
Our online careers platform Creative Futures supports your career and personal development while you’re at UCA and after you graduate.
You can use it to:
If you find things are getting too much or you’re becoming anxious or struggling with your budget, you don't have to try to get through it alone. Our Campus Life services are on hand to help:
Our libraries, together with some of our teaching and learning spaces, are now open longer into the evenings on term-time weekdays. Use these spaces to have some time out away from home and catch up on work, socialise, or just enjoy downtime.
Outside of the core hours (9am – 5pm), all low-risk spaces, such as seminar rooms, IT studios, and photography studios are open until 8pm on weekdays. Look for the low-risk identification on the door signage to each space.
Visit the UCASU cost-of-living page to find out more ways you can eat well on a budget.
You said, we did! Your Students’ Union and UCA teamed-up to bring you microwaves across all Schools.
To help save you some money, bring in your own lunch, heat it up in the microwave, and you’re good to go!
These microwaves are accessible to everyone, so please ensure you keep them clean to allow others to enjoy them too.
Find your closest microwave using the below campus maps:
Recent rises in energy prices have hit everyone hard, but as a student on a limited budget, it's even more understandable to be worried about higher bills.
Check out this useful blog with our top tips for tackling rising energy prices.
Printing your work can be an expensive business, especially if you have a lot of pages to produce for your projects.
We’ve cut the costs by as much as 25 per cent across the board – so whether it’s a double-sided black and white essay on A4 or a series of colour A3 prints, there’s savings to be made.
Examples:
You have access to over 200,000 books and electronic books from our collections. Our eBooks can be accessed at any time, on and off campus, wherever you have an internet connection.
PressReader provides you with free access to over 7,000 magazines and newspapers from across the world.
The library subscribes to several streaming services, including BoB (which includes over 75 free-to-air channels and more than 2.2 million recorded TV and radio broadcasts), as well as BFI Player, Kanopy, Digital Theatre Plus and Drama Online.
Adobe Creative Suite is available free of charge with 1TB of cloud storage and downloadable copies of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premier Pro and more for use on personal laptops or home computers on any platform.
All students have free access to Microsoft Office 365 with 1TB of cloud storage (OneDrive), a personal blog page, and downloadable copies of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for use on personal laptops or home computers on any platform.
You will have access to hire, free of charge, course-related industry-standard equipment from the Equipment Hire department such as cameras, lenses, lighting and much more.
To learn more about our library resources, visit myLibrary.
Until March 2027, there is a national £3 single fare cap on many bus services operated by Stagecoach, Arriva and others. For more information visit the government’s guidance page.
Surrey County Council offers young people (aged 20 years and under) half-price single fares.
Apply for the Surrey LINK card here.
Stagecoach South offer annual and term-time StudentRider tickets at a significant discount to normal adult season tickets. Annual tickets work out considerably cheaper than buying term-only tickets for the year. Tickets can be used 7 days a week and at all times when services are in operation.
For example:
For more information on what ticket you can apply for and to download the Stagecoach Bus App click here.
There is a range of railcards available for young adults that offer 1/3 off of train journeys. The 16-25 railcard costs £35 for a year or £80 for three years. It is also available to mature students over the age of 25. Visit the Railcard website to book your discounted railcard.
In London, TfL offers a 30% discount on journeys with Student Oyster.
Waverley Borough Council offer UCA students and staff discounted term-time parking at Riverside 3 car park near the Sports Centre in Farnham – about a 15-minute walk to campus on a paved, lit route through the town centre. Term-time permits are valid Monday to Saturday.
To apply for your discounted term time permit, visit the Waverley Borough Council website.
The Epsom Daily Parker scheme allows you to park all day in Hook Road Car Park for £5, a saving of up to £3.20 per day. To apply for a Regular Parker Card visit the Epsom and Ewell Borough Council website.
New Dover Road Park & Ride is a low-cost option for students. Costing £4 per day, including return bus journey for up to six passengers. The P3 P&R bus, stops every 8 minutes at St Augustine’s Road next to campus. If you register for an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) account you get every fifth P&R journey for free.
To apply for a ANPR account by visiting the Canterbury City Council website.
Each School has ample cycle parking on site and arranges regular visits from organisations like Bikestart to provide free service and repair to bicycles to help encourage safe and greener transport.
Canterbury: CampusLifeCanterbury@uca.ac.uk
Epsom: CampusLifeEpsom@uca.ac.uk
Farnham: CampusLifeFarnham@uca.ac.uk
