How to Adult: Scraping through on Studylink

Buckle up kids, you’re out of halls and paying real rent now. Let’s take a look at that bank account and look into the best way to scrape through on a student budget. You’ve got no job, no savings, and only course costs to dig your ass out of the dirt, if you haven’t already spent it on an ounce or two… 

First: Bitta maths. 

Your max student loan amount per week is currently sitting at $228.81, and let’s be real you’re taking that whole amount out every week. Thankfully, those helpful landlords know we’d go wild with too much pocket money and have kindly taken most of it off your hands. Let me guess, rent is $180 per person, per week, minimum. Flat bills usually crops up around the $20 mark, so of your $228.81, $200 or so goes straight into keeping a roof over your head. So, you’ve now got $28.81 left, 12.6% of what you started with. We can make that work… right? 

Next: The essentials 

Think as hard as you can, what can’t you live without every week? More than anything else, what do you require for your survival? That’s right, a tinnie. Take off another $20, and smoke away the sadness of the measly $8.81 left in your account.  

Then: Food 

Between $1.20 white bread and the $6.60 multipack of noodles you’ll absolutely thrive in the culinary side of your life. Eating hearty and eating good. But now you’ve got everything covered that you could possibly need, how on earth will you figure out what to spend your remaining $1.01 on?  

Finally: Remember 

The smoke cloud dissipates as your heart sinks a little, “Fuck I forgot about the bus fare!” No worries, just email your lecturer and say you’re sick, watch them know they can’t tell you to come in anyway with a pandemic on the loose, sorted.  

If you can’t survive on a student budget, grow up! Enjoy your butter-less bread and unheated mouldy home that’s taking almost 90% of your weekly income. Better yet, get a job lazy! They wouldn’t call it full-time study if you weren’t meant to fit part-time work on top of it… At least that’s what my dad tells me.