Tag Archives: student

Enjoy More, For Less

Cheap TicketsThere’s no point going to uni, if you just go to lectures and then spend the rest of your time staying at ‘home’. Nothing wrong with spending a little time socialising with your flatmates and friends in your new home, but everyone needs to get out and about at sometime.

The problem, well going out costs money. Going out to a club, costs you entry plus drinks to get you in the right ‘state’. Going to the cinema to see the ‘must see film’, all your friends have seen. The list goes on, but how do you get a great night for less money? Well with clubbing it’s worth setting yourself a limit, e.g. only withdraw a set amount of cash before you go out. Also try drinking at home before going to a club, it’s always cheaper (pubs/bars/breweries put a large mark up on pints, remember you’re paying to use there facilities), just don’t go over the top, else you will never get to the club! If you do want to go to pub first always try your student union bar/pub, they generally give the best deals on drinks. But also listen and look out for pubs and clubs doing student deals, and remember drink responsibly!

So you want to go to the cinema? But if you are not on the Orange network or it’s not Wednesday? What’s plan B?

Well try studentbeans.com

As long as you have a student I.D. you can get great offers to print off including my favourite 2 for 1 at Cineworld from Mon – Thur. There are many other offers in a range of categories such as entertainment or eating out. Some offers are better than others. One slight drawback is studentbeans.com is mainly based in and around major university cities in the UK, therefore not everywhere is covered. Although I would say coverage is pretty good.

Plus things just feel better if you get them cheaper than usual!

Cheers,

Martyn.

image: www.freeimages.co.uk

Save Money, Eat Well

pastaOne of the constant hard hitters on the health of my wallet is food, yes we all need it, but can we save money and eat well at the same time? As a student you are constantly tempted by student deals from takeaways and other fast food outlets. The ‘10% off for students’ or ‘ Free [insert food] with this voucher’, offers can be hard to resist, but the bottom line is everyone wants your money and students tend to fall for these marketing tricks. Anyway why not, students like to be lazy, why cook when you can just pop into the nearest chippy?

Cooking does take time and effort, but is a lot more rewarding (if you don’t burn it!). Pasta must be one of the quickest and must be one of the most cost effective meal. Quite easily less than 50p a meal if you buy a large bag of pasta at the start of term. Why not jazz it up adding cooked bacon or grated cheese e.t.c. Cook more pasta than you need, rinse and save what you don’t eat, mix with mayonnaise, tuna and sweetcorn, to make something different for your dinner tomorrow. Certainly by cooking for yourself or others (even more cost effective if everyone pays a bit towards the cost), you have more control over what goes into your food, unlike that fat infested burger you had from the burger bar the other night (yes we’ve all had one!).

My last thought is, buy own brands products, e.g. Tesco Value range or Asda Smart Price. Many consider these products to be inferior when they are sometimes just as good if not better than their more expensive counterparts. In many case the same company that makes the recognised branded product also make the own brand products for supermarkets. On the other hand I’m no so sure about Sainsbury Basics tuna or mayonnaise, not as good as Tesco’s or Asda’s equivalent.

Anyway Happy Eating!

Martyn

image: www.freeimages.co.uk

New term, New challenges

CoinsBeen a while since I last posted on here, I apologise for my absence. Usual excuses, lack of time as well as been a way from a computer with internet access. Well I’m back now and have set myself new challenges for my second year at uni. As many fellow students will know money gets a bit tight whilst at uni, whether this is down to drinking (most likely) or just poor budgeting/spending of money on student ‘essentials’ (less likely to admit to!).

So for this year I have planned to see whether I can earn a decent amount of money just from this blog and purplesunset.co.uk. How I’m going to do this, we will just have to wait and see. At the moment, I have started by using Google’s Adsense, you probably have seen a massive growth in these small adverts appearing on websites everywhere over the last few years. It works by the publisher (me) receives money for every click on an advert. The advertiser pays for the clicks, with google acting as the middle men, sorting which adverts would be best suited to the webpage, and taking their cut of the money.

Another road I am trying is by using banner advertising at the top of the page, with these adverts the publisher usually gets commission on any sales by a customer who originated from the publishers website. This is the aim in theory at least!

Also over the coming months I will try to give tips on getting the most out of student life on a shoestring, as well as discussing the website, which I have just finished converting to php programming! Took a while, but hopefully now it should be easier to modify and add to! Any ideas more than welcome! Time for some food me thinks …

image: www.freeimages.co.uk