Expert reveals top tips to help university students maintain healthy Freshers finances

To help Freshers in need of extra financial guidance, Gumtree has partnered with personal finance expert Iona Bains, author of The Young Money Blog to share her top tips to help university students get to grips with their personal finance.

1. Make some extra cash from selling school stuff.

Chances are you don’t need all your old school textbooks – but someone else will! Try selling them on Gumtree, even if they’re not in mint condition. So long as you price them fairly and add a picture, most buyers probably won’t mind a few well-thumbed pages here and there.

2. Get yourself a 16 – 25 railcard.

If you haven’t already got one for free through your student account, you can buy one for £30 to get 1/3 off all fares. It’ll save you a bomb if you’re travelling between places a lot or heading home to visit family and friends.

3. Hunt down Good Finds on second-hand platforms like Gumtree.

You can save hundreds of pounds kitting out your student accommodation by buying second-hand, and it’s better for the environment too. Look out for freebies and pre-loved items that are almost as good as new!

4. Embrace upcycling.
You might write off a plain wooden bookcase because it looks old-fashioned when it’s a bona fide Good Find: just take a small tester paint pot and a bit of Fablon and voila: you have a unique, lovely piece of furniture you could keep for years. Check out TikTok for inspiration and keep an upcycling kit, containing sandpaper, small paint pots and quality sticky back plastic on standby.

5. Keep an open mind about refurbished laptops.

Second-hand tech can be a genuine Good Find because it usually works perfectly well and comes at a massive discount to pricey new models. Just make sure the tech spec is right for your needs

6. Don’t sleep on student discounts!

Your NUS card should be a golden ticket to discounts pretty much everywhere, but you should also load up on other student discount schemes, like UNiDAYS and VIP Backpackers.

7. Try a capsule food cupboard.

Ditch expensive takeaways in favour of classic, cheap ingredients you can use in simple, nutritious meals. Lean on hero items like passata, beans and canned veggies/fish, and look for yellow sticker discounts on fresh food – 4pm is the magic time when the clearance shelf fills up at my local supermarket.

8. Get on top of your regular bills.

It’s tempting to use bill-splitting companies to make life easier, but it’s cheaper to manage your bills yourself. If you’re in a house share, you could save hundreds of pounds by switching your energy and broadband bills.

9. Maximise your student account.

You could use your main student account to pay your bills and piggyback on a generous overdraft but use another account to help you manage your day-to-day spending. Figure out how much you need to pay for rent and utilities (ideally set up on a monthly direct debit to save you money), then transfer the rest into an account with top-notch budgeting tools and instant spending alerts.

10. Rustle up a side hustle.

Working whilst studying is a classic way to make extra cash and stay in the black. But you can find all kinds of ways to make money that go beyond a traditional job. You could try selling homemade or upcycled items, flipping second-hand furniture or clothes on second-hand platforms such as Gumtree.