The Aspire Guide - Flipbook - Page 25
To work out whether you have enough of an income to get through the year, just follow the
following equation:
TOTAL INCOME minus TOTAL OUTGOINGS =
If your remaining funds were to be a negative number, that would mean you would either need to cut back
on spending, or find some additional sources of income. You can work this out on a weekly, monthly or
yearly basis. In the case above, you would have £2,081.52 left over per year to save or spend, but if you
hadn’t applied for the bursary you would be £2,268.48 short on what you needed to pay all your bills
and responsibilities.
Clearly, bursaries can have a big impact. This is important because the budget above only accounts for
the 39 weeks spent at university, and doesn’t include the other 13 weeks of the year outside of term
time. The bursary provides a financial buffer which you may use for travel or in future years. Without the
bursary, you may have to get a job over the holidays. This is a good opportunity to build great skills, like
teamwork, which will help to make you more employable in the future. You may consider applying for a
job even if you don’t need to financially in order to develop these key skills.
Try to complete your own budgeting plan using the example table below. You may have some fixed bills
(such as rent and your mobile phone bill) that you are already aware of, so start by adding these in. Then,
calculate how many weeks you will spend at university during the year. Once you’ve worked this out,
you can multiply the number of weeks by each weekly cost to find out how much each bill will cost you
throughout your time at university.
INCOME
Yearly (39 weeks)
Monthly
Weekly
Yearly (39 weeks)
Monthly
Weekly
Maintenance Loan
Grant/bursary/scholarship
Job
Family/gifts
TOTAL:
OUTGOINGS
Rent
Groceries
Takeaways & eating out
Going out
Transport
Household bills
Mobile phone
Clothes & shopping
Health & wellbeing
Holidays & events
Gifts & charity
Savings/Emergency fund
Other
TOTAL:
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