The best apps to live better on a budget.
Making your student loan stretch to the end of the term is no easy task, especially since loans haven’t yet risen with inflation. You’ve probably seen tons of articles for study apps but here are my recommendations for apps you’ll need for making your budget stretch— for food, bills, travel and even room decor!
TooGoodToGo (Free)
IOS and Android
PROS:
- Great deals
- Restaurant standard food without the cost of a takeaway
CONS:
- Might have to walk a lot for good deals
- Each restaurant releases deals at a different time
TooGoodToGo is an app that aims to reduce food waste and give you access to delicious restaurant-quality food at low prices. If you’re craving a takeaway but you’re on a student budget, try reserving a bag on the app.
Regular TooGoodToGoers have their favourite spots that offer the best deals such as Yo Sushi, Barburrito and Starbucks. To get your favourite, you might have to check what time they release their deals. It’ll also ensure you get a short walk outside every time you use it.
Here’s what I got for £3 from my university’s vegetarian café…
Better Points (Free)
IOS and Android
PROS:
- Get rewards without doing anything extra
- Opportunities to enter prize draws
CONS:
- Confusing interface
- Keeping your location on
Want to earn discounts without lifting a finger? Better Points gives you rewards for how you travel: walking, cycling and going by train all count. At the end of your journey, the app will tell you how much CO2 you saved by not making your journey by car and give you points depending on how far you travelled. Save up these points and you can redeem a discount to a store of your choice! You can also enter prize draws for more points and even bigger discounts.
If you remember to use the app, you could save a lot of money!
Free Prints (Free)
IOS and Android
Pros:
- Very cheap
- Also offers cheap printing onto other objects
- Freedom
Cons:
- Takes a lot of organising
FreePrints is an app that, for me, seemed to good to be true. The app lets you print up to 45 photos a month for free. Just connect your phone’s photo gallery and upload the photos you want and the app will process them into your own personalised photo album.
You do, of course, have to pay for shipping— which comes out at £3.99 . Compared to other photo printing services though, this is an absolute bargain. The app will even let you increase the amount of photos you can print if you refer a friend. My friends referred me in first year and we all now swear by it, it helped us create photo walls in our pokey university flats without paying an arm and a leg.
Railcard (Free- App/£30- Card)
IOS and Android
PROS:
- Access your railcard anywhere
- Saves you up to a third on train travel
CONS:
- Remembering not to delete it
- The app itself is not proof you have a Railcard
A Railcard can come free with opening certain bank accounts or even provided as a perk by your institution. On its own, it is £30 for a year or £70 for three years. If you travel by train regularly, it’s a really good investment. Since I travel from my parent’s house to my university at least once a half term, I save a lot. I also use the train for going to conventions and visiting friends, a lot of the time it’s only marginally more expensive than taking a coach .
The Railcard app lets you access your Railcard anywhere, so that if you lose the physical card or don’t want to scramble for it in your bag it’s ready to go. It’s saved me from getting kicked off the train because I can’t find my card many times.
Splitwise (Free)
IOS and Android
PROS:
- Does the maths for you
- Keeps a record of your money
- Remembers payments for you
CONS:
- Doesn’t organise your payments
- Can’t verify whether someone is lying about paying
Splitwise has been the unsung hero throughout my house’s time living together. It has avoided arguments waiting to happen, kept track of our bills and helped us to live life without elaborate meetings about bills.
If you’re paying some of your house’s bills, all you have to do is enter how much you paid and the app will divide it equally between the remaining members of your group. You can send them reminders to pay their bills on time and the app will keep track of any outstanding payments.
Related Information
For more useful money-saving apps, see The Sprout’s other recommendations here.
For more general tips on how to budget your money and stretch out a student loan, see MoneySavingExpert’s student checklist.
