London is an expensive city, and staying on top of your living budget is a good life skill. I’m here to share some top tips of my own to save you money as an international student living in London.
Keep track of your spending
The first step in saving money is knowing your monthly expenses. Do make use of Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel templates so that you can record your monthly spending. Make sure to categorise your spending so that you know how much money you regularly spend (such as food or transportation), and how much you can afford to spend for entertainment (for instance, going out to watch a musical). In this way, you’ll get a sense of the minimum monthly budget you need to live here. Living on a budget does not mean that you should save money to the extent that you must give up what you love to eat or watch. Instead, rank your spending category according to your priority, and see where you can save more money whilst keeping your living standard at the top.
Me, I rarely watch shows or live performances because I prefer YouTube videos. Plus, I barely take buses or tubes because my accommodation is a 10-minute walk from campus. Therefore, the majority of my spending is on groceries. As I take five minutes every day to record my daily spending on a Google Sheets template, I can easily compare my monthly expenditure.
Use student discounts and subscriptions based on your needs
London offers loads of student discounts and subscriptions. I strongly recommend an Amazon Prime subscription with your LSE email. Amazon Prime is a service where you get goods as soon as possible with no delivery fee, and they offer a free six-month trial for students. After that, it costs £4.49 per month. This is useful for first-year students, because trust me, you will always find something you forgot to pack in your first month or two in London.
In my case, I had to buy a coat rack because the closet in my room was too high for me to reach from a wheelchair. I had to organise my clothes as quickly as possible, so Amazon Prime was a relief.
If you’re a caffeine lover, a Pret subscription would be a good idea. You get five drinks a day for £20 a month, and your first month is free. Pret has branches nearby the LSE campus (Kingsway), so you can get a drink in between classes.
How about meals?
Groceries will take a large part of everyone’s monthly spending. There is a range of options you can choose to have meals in London as a student.
If you live in a catered hall, there’s probably no need for you to worry about dinner during term time. For lunch, you can either choose to have a meal at campus canteens in between classes or get a meal deal (mostly less than £5) that offers a main, drink, and a snack at Tesco, Co-op, or Sainsbury’s near campus.
If you’re living in a self-catered hall like me, you’ll have to consider what to do with your supper. If you’ve got a class in the evening, you could probably get an Early Bird supper offered at the Fourth Floor Restaurant on campus between 3.30pm to 5.30pm. Or, you could decide to cook your weekly supper once a week after a grocery haul. This might be the cheapest option because groceries are much cheaper than a ready-to-eat meal. The last option I would recommend is subscribing to a meal kit or a meal prep company (such as HelloFresh or Lion’s Prep). This might be a little bit more expensive, but it’ll save you a lot of time as you won’t need to visit the shops.
Instead of using food delivery services that are super expensive for a single meal, Too Good To Go can be a good alternative where you can enjoy a variety of items at a cheap price. However, you won’t know what you’ll get until you pick up your box, so it’s not recommended for people with food allergies.
