Helping you through the cost-of-living crisis

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 £2500 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 your 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 useful apps with savings and discounts, check out our blog.

For more help with your finances, visit our Fees and Finance page.

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:

• Book one-to-one sessions with a UCA careers adviser
• Search jobs and internship opportunities
• Access careers information and resources
• Access LinkedIn learning – the home of more than 6,000 expert-led courses in business, technology, and creative skills
• Sign up to the newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest opportunities and events for UCA students and graduates.

Our libararies, 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.

UCA Libraries

Canterbury & Farnham Library

• Monday to Friday 9:00am – 8:00pm
• Saturday 10:00am – 5:00pm
• Sunday 1:00pm – 5:00pm

 Epsom Library

• Monday to Friday 9:00am – 10:00pm (piloting an extra late opening)
• Saturday 10:00am – 5:00pm
• Sunday 1:00pm – 5:00pm

Learning and Teaching Spaces

Outside of the core hours (9:00am – 5:00pm), all low-risk spaces, such as seminar rooms, IT studios, and photography studios are open until 8:00pm on weekdays. Look for the low-risk identification on the door signage to each space.

As well as this, UCA Farnham’s John Luard building is currently open until 9:00pm as part of a pilot for later access.

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:

• Double-sided A4 black and white, was 3.75p per page, now 3.5p per page.
• A3 single-sided colour print, was 40p, now 30p.

You have access to over 230,000 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 LinkedIn Learning, an online educational platform that helps you discover and develop business, technology-related, and creative skills.

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 watch the Library Introductory video.

£2 Bus Fare Cap

Until 31 Oct 2023, there is a national £2 single fare cap on many bus services operated by Stagecoach, Arriva and others. From 1 November 2023 to 31 November 2024, the cap will increase to £2.50 for a single fare. For more information visit the government’s guidance page.

Surrey LINK Card

Surrey County Council offers young people aged 20 years and under, half-price single fares.

Apply for the Surrey LINK card here.

Save on student travel with Stagecoach

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:

• StudentRider Blackwater – £650 per year – covers Fleet, Farnborough, Aldershot, Upper Hale, Farnham, Roweldge
• StudentRider Gold – £800 per year – travel on all stagecoach buses in Surrey, Hampshire and West Sussex
• StudentRider Canterbury – £518 per year – Canterbury local area
• StudentRider South East – £861 per year – all Stagecoach services in Kent and East Sussex

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 £30 for a year or £70 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.

UCA’s car-sharing platform is available to all students and staff. It’s a great way to share the journey and costs with other UCA students. Visit the Liftsharing platform.

Parking

Farnham

Park & Stride – 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 and work out at less than £1 a day.

To apply for your discounted term time permit, visit the Waverly Borough Council website.

Epsom

The best rate for regular all-day parking is a Regular Parker Card for Hook Road Car Park costing £15 to run until 31 March 2024. With a regular parker card parking the all-day tariff is reduced to £4.00.

To apply for a Regular Parker Card visit the Epsom and Ewell Borough Council website.

Canterbury

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 campus 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.