When you’re a student, one of the hardest challenges is learning to budget your money. I’m going to outline some of my favourite discounts that you can use for day to day living to save money whilst living as a student.

Travel

First of all, travel! Whether that’s getting around your local town, commuting from your student accommodation to campus, or travelling back home or across the country to visit friends and family, you can save money on your transport costs. Most students rely upon the means of public transport, as running a car at university can be expensive and unnecessary when most campus life is walking distance to your accommodation. There are multiple discounts you can use, depending which ones fit the best into your life.

For those interested in regular train usage, Student Beans offers 20% off your digital Railcard. It costs £30 for the year, pre-discount, so you’d be saving £6 off this, and the digital card allows you to get 30% off all train journeys you make across the year.

For those students who may be more comfortable on the road than rail, National Express offer a 15% student discount off your coach travel around the UK. You can claim this through UniDays, TOTUM, Student Beans or Prime Student.

A more local discount for travel around the Bournemouth and Poole area comes from the local bus company, More Buses. More Bus offer all students 10% off all AB and ABC zones (further afield travel zones) and for all those within A zone (most of Bournemouth and Poole), all students can claim a child ticket with student ID.

Student Discounts

Amazon Prime offer a great student discount, also. Student Prime offers you a 50% discount across monthly memberships, bringing the total cost down to £4.49 per month. For this price you can access unlimited streaming of TV shows, movies, music and ad-free podcasts, kindle books and unlimited photo storage. Prime members can also access free next day delivery on thousands of items, as well as some postcodes being able to access same-day delivery for free. For me, this one has saved me hundreds across e-books, and postage on items, as well as saved me time on their next day delivery.

Hello Fresh ingredients

If thinking up meals and shopping for the ingredients isn’t your strong suit then look no further, Hello Fresh have a great way for you to save some pennies and time. With Student Beans you can claim 60% off your first box and 25% off the next three boxes. Hello Fresh is a recipe box delivery service that’s fantastic if you’re hoping to eat healthy. You get to keep the recipe cards so you can re-cook your favourite meals over and over. The box comes with all the ingredients needed to make the dish and the recipe information. You can customise the meals for how many portions you’d like it to last and your dietary requirements.

If you enjoy dining out, there’s some great offers for students. You can access a free two-month trial of a Tastecard with your Student Beans account. The tastecard entitles you to 2 for 1 meals out and 50% off food at 6000+ restaurants, many that can be found in Bournemouth! You can also get 40% off cinema tickets with the same card and up to 50% off attractions, days out and theme parks.

My Railcard, Totum card and My Unibus Card. The Totum Card can also be converted into a recognised student ID that also provides proof of age for no added cost

With the cashless society we are becoming, you can still find ways to ‘save those pennies’. There are various ‘saving pots’ you can add to your bank account too. Many where they’ll round your transaction up to the nearest pound and pot the pence change into a savings ‘pot’ for you virtually via your bank account app. This is a great way to put away those spare pennies you forget about and save big.

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More money saving tips from students