Becoming a student brings more obligations than you’ve ever had to deal with before. Of course, you have much more freedom than you had when you were still living at home. It’s imperative for every student to find the right balance between freedom and responsibilities. One of the key prerequisites for reaching that goal is to manage your monthly budget successfully. The following 5 free apps can contribute to student budgeting strategies and help students make some savings.
1. Subscription supervision with Clarity Money
Students are one of the most targeted audiences of many different industries, especially the entertainment industry.
Nowadays most students subscribe to a scope of digital services such as Netflix, Spotify and Google Play Music. As a result, they might spend more money than necessary.
Using the Clarity Money app helps students calculate their total monthly expenses on all digital services they’re subscribed to. It can also cancel a subscription on your behalf.
Moreover, you can launch a new savings account via this app.
The app is free and available for both iOS and Android users.
2. Enjoy smart expenditure with Joy
The point of smart expenditure is that you don’t deprive yourself of anything that you enjoy doing.
What’s important is to reduce how much you spend on trivial things in order to be able to afford the things you enjoy.
The Joy app is a great companion on your path to that objective.
It works in a simple way. You just add all your purchases to it and then you label each of them with the feeling you felt whilst purchasing it.
Once you add the input data, the app will make suggestions on what purchases you should avoid.
It is free of charge but only available to Apple users. So, if you’re planning to join the Apple family, check out some affordable iPhone discount codes at a fraction of the cost.
3. Make the ends meet with YNAB
If you’ve only just become a student, you probably don’t know the feeling of a financial void in the last ten days of the month. With the YNAB app, you can avoid experiencing that feeling.
The app stands for ‘You Need a Budget’ and it simply stops you from spending more money than you have.
It works on two basic principles.
On the one hand, you enter the amount of money you can use within a period of time and it calculates how and when you can spend it.
On the other, it tracks your spending habits and provides recommendations for smarter purchases.
All these features help with student budgeting.
The YNAB is available to both Apple and Android users. The basic package is free of charge but there are in-app purchases for more advanced options.
4. Investing with Acorn
Many students take out a student loan to finance their studies.
When they find a job, they need to pay back the money they spent as a loan.
The Acorns app can help you invest and save your money by taking the change from your purchases.
When you switch on the Round-ups function, the app will take the change from your purchases. Then it will invest those assets into valuable business deals.
Of course, you can adjust the amount of money you want to invest and the assets you’d like to save.
The app is available on both the App Store and Google Play.
5. Separate accounts with Squirrel
For student budgeting, it is important to know the exact costs of their monthly bills.
If you keep all the money for all the bills in one place, you might lose track of your expenses.
For instance, if you want to leave your current apartment and move to a student accommodation building, it’s good to have a backup budget as well.
You can keep all these things in order by using the Squirrel app.
It helps you track your expenses and separate the sums of money for different monthly obligations.
So, when your loan rolls in, you can immediately distribute it to these special sections.
As a result, you can put even more money aside and adhere to a limited student budget.
The app is available for both Android and iOS users, who can use it for free.
Conclusion
These five free apps can help you harness your expenses and learn how to plan your monthly budget.
Nevertheless, they’re not here to think instead of you. It’s important that you spend your money carefully and don’t splurge on unnecessary things.
Use these apps to manage your assets more successfully and also manage to have some savings during your studies.
This article about “Student budgeting – 5 Apps To Help You!” was written for Housing Hand – the Award-Winning UK Rent Guarantor Service byAndrea Boffo. For more information on how you can work with Housing Hand, visit housinghand.co.uk or call 02072052625 and select option 2.
