As a student, you live on an allowance. This can be a challenge as, more often than not, you find yourself spending the last penny just to pay for those lecture materials. Stretching one’s allowance becomes even more of a challenge for students living away on their own.

If you want to find ways to maximize your allowance, EdgeWise.PH is here to help.

Do some budget allocation

Budget allocation is the most important step in stretching your allowance. This means setting aside a certain amount of money towards an expense. Allocating your budget can be tedious but doing so helps you visualize where your money should go, thus, you learn how to prioritize things.

Only spend on your basic needs as a student. It helps to make a list of what those “basic” needs are. Learn to let go of unnecessary expenses (i.e.shopping), that may leave you broke by the end of the month.

Keep track of your daily expenses

Stretching your allowance does not end in living on your allocated budget. In order for you to fully maximize your allowance, you need to keep track of where every single peso goes. You may find this task boring but, monitoring your day-to-day expenses teaches you how to spend wisely and helps you save yourself from unnecessary spending.

Do advance shopping

During school days you may find yourself swamped with readings and homework that, whenever you run out of supplies, you’d rush to the nearest convenience store to replenish. Although this works for the short term, it does not do any good for your allowance as you tend to spend beyond your budget.

To prevent this from happening, do your grocery/school supply shopping over the weekend. There is a wide variety of goods sold at supermarkets and bookstores that cost lower than the ones sold at convenience stores. not only do you get to purchase goods that best meets your budget, you save yourself from the stress of last minute shopping.

Take down notes during lectures

Fact: A hefty amount of your allowance goes to photocopying. This is because you would rather have your lectures photocopied rather than jotting it down.

Although having photocopied notes may work for you, doing so does not help you save money as you tend to pay for something you can already do for free.

Print it yourself!

How many times have you found yourself paying hundreds, even thousands of pesos, for printed documents and graphics? Isn’t it frustrating that almost half of your allowance goes to photocopying and printing alone? Why not buy a printer instead?

Having your own printer would require you to buy your own cartridge but, this may be a lot cheaper than printing your documents at a computer shop. A good investment would be a printer with 3-in-1 features that includes a printer, scanner and photocopier.

These tips are by no means exclusive to students. With some tweaking, job hunters and new employees — for which keeping a budget is just as important — can come up with their own ways of saving and stretching that weekly allowance.