Term 2 – Year 2: Mid-year madness

Objectives

You’re getting the hang of Uni life, but how’s the money situation? You need to:

• sort out your grades but keep calm!
• watch that money – get a job?
• keep an eye out, love is in the air… or is it?

Budget for term 2

Even though you’re due the next £1500 instalment of your loan, you’re in the red and seriously need to cut down on spending. It’s time to re-budget.

You decide you need to spend the following per week:

Accommodation

Not a lot you can do about this cost if you want to keep a roof over your head. You’ve signed up for a year anyway. Accommodation remains £60.00 per week in shared halls.

Eating

You cut out the takeaways. Those kebabs weren’t doing your health any favours anyway. Your eating costs are reduced to £42.50. That’ll save you over £150 for the term.

Living

Desperate times mean desperate measures so you cut CDs and DVDs from your budget and decide that you don’t need any more clothes until next term. This leaves you spending £6 per week.

Study

Can’t do much about these costs, but it looks like you’re going to have to get a job. To make time for this, you’re forced to cut down your study hours to five.

Social

Most of your activities have been free, like visiting friends and watching TV. It’s important to you to keep things balanced, so you keep a commitment to doing some sport each week. Your treat is to go to the Union. You decide to keep this up. Your social spend stays at £26.50 per week and takes up 16 hours.

Total spend is £164 a week.

Even though you’ve slashed your budget you’re still planning on spending more than the £129.63 you’ll receive from your virtual loan. You’ve reduced the deficit to £9.37 per week.

Find a job

You decide to try and get your finances back on track with a part-time job. You’ve heard about the work of Student Ambassadors and it sounds right up your street. Students go out into schools to talk about what Uni is all about. It’ll look great on your CV, takes up only one afternoon a week and will earn you £25.00 a week.

Phew! This bumps your income to £154.63 per week. Take away your planned expenditure of £139.00 and you should be left with £15.63 to help pay off your overdraft, that is if you stay on track!

Spring into action

New Year, new you! Never mind all that, you decide to go bargain hunting.

• Mobile message. Happy New Year! Can’t wait to see you. We’ve just got to check out those January Sales! Sanchia.

You can’t beat the January sales for a bargain, but wallet says ‘no’. You window shop for a while, then drag yourself away from the shops and knuckle down to some serious studying.

• Mobile message. Have you spoken to Sarah about RAG and Diversity week? There aren’t enough takers for Mystery Date. Do you want to volunteer? It’ll be worth your while. Darren.

Swot city

You really need to settle down big time. There are deadlines to meet, and that scary Doctor T to get off your case. You need to return some books and spend some time in the library.

Oh, that’s all you need. Three books late and you’ve been clobbered with a giant fine.

• Mobile message. Man. same thing. I just got stitched for £50 library fine, could’ve bought the books for that! What can you do eh? Joe.

You avoid paying by schmoozing the geeky library assistant. Your charm gets you a smile and some tips on managing your schedule. But the main thing on your mind right now is RAG and Diversity week. You hook up with the gang to talk it over.

Raising and giving

Sarah and Darren are organising activities during RAG and Diversity Week. You reckon you’re up for a spot of burger eating.

• Mobile message. Rag and Diversity Week is when students run loads of events for charity. It looks like it’ll be well fun. Sarah.

Turns out you’ve been allocated the mystery date slot anyway. It better be someone hot.

Mystery Date

You cross your fingers when the contestants are revealed. You’re out of luck and it’s only the Student Adviser, geeky librarian and a blow-up sheep behind the screen. It’s a bad bunch, but you choose the geeky librarian.

Well, you’ve made your choice, and you’d STILL rather eat every book in the library than go there – at least you might save on those library fines! Time to catch up on your coursework and visit Doctor T.

T for temper

Doctor T’s come down on you like a ton of kryptonite. He gives you a list of things to do, and wants to see you first thing tomorrow. You go home and study like a maniac.

Crash and burn

Oh no! Just when you were feeling saintly, your PC crashes and you lose the whole evening’s work. You give up and hit the Union.

• Mobile message. Mate, I’m gutted for you. Same thing happened to my sis, she said make a few copies, if it’s late you could lose marks. Get a memory stick, better than loads of disks. Sanchia.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, you bump into Doctor T, AGAIN, in the bar! You know you’ll be in trouble tomorrow morning. You’ll have to get that work done super fast now!

Love is in the air

You’re loopy about love, worried about work and mental about money. You get down to some serious work before your session with Doctor T.

Your brain is aching, and the work keeps piling up. You’re behind on revision. You stomp off to the library.

Darren’s vice

As you leave the library you see Sarah. She reckons smoking is costing Darren over £1200 a year! It’s burning a hole in his pocket and his lungs! You think about getting him some patches.

Nice little earner 2: Speed dating

You’re having a cuppa with Sarah, chatting about how funny Mystery Date was. With Valentine’s coming up she suggests setting up a speed dating night to cash in on all the love in the air. What do you think?

Speed dating is really popular at the moment. With Valentine’s day coming up you and Sarah could make a lot and split it 50/50. You reckon it’s worth a shot.

Not all of the students on your campus will be single, but a lot are. With the right kind of promotion you should be able to fill a pretty decent sized venue. But how many would actually come? And what if only blokes turn up? You realise you’ve got to be careful on how much you charge and how you promote it.

If all goes well you could make up to £15 a head. You could also make a name for yourselves for running events and it’ll look great on your CV too!

You and Sarah select a smart club to hold your event in but have to shell out £100 for it. You then spend £80 on classy flyers to get the word out. To add to the ambience, you include a drink and table snacks for £2.50 a head as part of the ticket price. The final cost is for some extra pairs of hands. The services of two students rack up to £60.

In the Counting House

The night was a success with twenty three people handing over £15 to find love. This earned you an income of £345. Taking away the £297.50 costs leaves £47.50. Divided between you and Sarah, your cut of the profits is £23.75.

You rush off to town and spend your fifty big ones on a pair of trainers. Well, they were in the sale!

• Mobile message. We’ve got to check out Doctor T in quiz mode, might make some cash too. Sanchia.

Universally challenged

At the bar, you see Doctor T is playing Paxman at the Quiz Night. You take part and congratulate the Doctor on his new academic post.

A big cash prize has gone to your team, ‘The Cheating Buzzards’, but sadly the defeated team has skulked off. You go to the bank see how much you have left.

Darren’s in danger

You bump into Joe en route, ‘I think Darren should watch it, he’s spending his loan like water! Not only is he letting the bad beer elves get all his money, he’s got a few credit cards too. He’s running up loads of debt! How’s your cash looking?’

Crikey. Despite your pub quiz winnings, you’re still really short on money, so Kami won’t be getting a birthday present from you, unless you ask Sanchia to make something.

Pub glorious pub

You bump into Sanchia in the pub. She’s made some cool beanie hats and says you can have one. There’s Kami’s birthday present sorted! Now for some well-deserved refreshment.

Shafted, grafted and drafted

It’s the end of the Semester, and you’ve got less bread than a starving pigeon. You reckon you should get a job, but you’ll probably spend the dough on socialising with your mates.

• Mobile message. I’m totally skint, we’ve really got to handle our money better so that we still have some cash left for going out! Joe.

Uni’s no fun when you can’t even afford to hang out with your mates. So you start doing some serious networking.

• Mobile message. Part-time jobs are a part of life for most students today. They give you some extra cash and look good on your CV, but make sure you leave plenty of time for your studies and having fun! Student Adviser.

On the job

Excellent. You get a call from the neighbours back at home. They need office help over the vacation. How cool is that? You reckon you can manage about 15 hours a week.

• Mobile message. I’m definitely working over the vacation. I’ll save money, make contacts and my CV will shine. Sarah.
• Mobile message. Seen the news? 80% of students think about part-time work. Wow! I’m getting a job, but won’t overdo it. I came here to study, that’s not going to suffer. Joe.

You bump into Darren. He’s got some work mowing lawns over the next four-week vacation. They’re paying £6 an hour. Not bad at all. Darren offers to ‘cut you in’ but you turn him down. After all you don’t want your social life to fall apart and well, you’ll need to fit in some study time.

End of term

It all goes so quickly, and that’s just your money! Well done in getting a job for the Spring vacation. See you next term!

How’s it going?

You’ve tried to be better with money. Let’s look at how you’re doing?

• You’ve recovered your form and feel comfortable with an overdraft of £47.25 (against your limit of £1000).
• Your academic performance has suffered even though your CV has had a boost from the Student Ambassador experience, not to mention your bank balance. You’re on course for a 2.2.
• Your social life is still blazing. Even though you’re in the pub less, you’re hanging out at your mates’ houses.
• Health’s not too bad but think about doing more sport next term. There are loads of different activities on offer.
• You’re quids in from the nice little earner with Sarah.