What do you do to budget monthly expenses in a graduate program?

[snbrockman]

Current graduate students and also undergrads planning to enter a graduate program:

 

What are some strategies or things you do to afford housing, food, insurance, bills, and entertainment on a monthly stipend? Any advice on how to spend less money, increase savings, stay on top of bills, maintain a social life etc.? Especially when you may already have student debt from an undergraduate degree!

[peachypie]

The ways i like to cut some of my spending is to forego things like cable for just internet.  use gyms at the school or work.  cook almost all my meals at home and bring a lunch.  Find free or cheap entertainment things to do.  Its all about making sacrifices where you can, if you want to live in a nicer place or without roommates you'll have to make cuts somewhere else so pick what you would like and work with that.  plan out your stipend and before you sign a lease figure out what you can afford while allowing for food/gas/emergency funds/entertainment/ etc.  Maybe look at what you spend for the next month and just tally what you spend money on and where it goes and that can serve as a basis.  if entertainment is taking up 40% of your expenses you probably are doing too much pricey stuff.  Look at some budget plans for ideas of what your breakdown for expenditures should be.  Here is a pretty cookie cutter budget guide to get an idea of where to start (adjust as needed).

http://money.msn.com/how-to-budget/how-much-should-you-spend-on-weston.aspx

good financial planning early can really do wonders for your stress and down the road.

[TakeruK]

I agree with the above advice! Cooking your own meals can really save a lot of money--I spend about $2-$2.50 per person per meal when I cook but eating out can easily cost $10-$20 depending on where you go. $2-$2.50 is cooking good "real" food too. It's not worth it to cut it down to $1 and eat crap like ramen etc. though. To reduce cooking time, I cook a large dinner and leftovers are lunch the next day! 

 

The only other thing I can add to the above is to ask every single place if they have some sort of employee or student discount for your school. Usually, most places (e.g. phone companies, insurance company) will accept your stipend paystub as proof of employment. Sometimes it helps if you introduce your position as "Graduate Researcher" instead of just a "student", depending on whether the discount is for employees or for students. Also, your school's website may have a list of where they have agreements with providers, so google for that!

[pears]

I've heard good things about Mint, although I don't use it myself; it's a free app for keeping track of your personal finances.

 

Savings: if you're near a bigger city or a university with a pleasantly plump funding pocket for all things psychology, nutrition, medical, etc., there are almost always paid research studies happening. Also, focus groups are the greatest. When I was an undergrad in Boston, I could make anywhere between fifty and a few hundred dollars extra monthly. Donating plasma is another option that pays nicely.

 

Social life: potlucks. Potlucks are excellent! Tell guests to bring a six-pack of their favorite beer to do a beer exchange. If you're inviting mostly underfunded students, it's nice to add a regional or ingredient theme, so you feel like you're eating fancy food.

[dat_nerd]

I use Mint. I find it extremely useful for tracking my expenses and budgetting. You may want to give it a try.

[yhakak]

if you have the time and decent credit, you can get into credit card points, a good way to travel for free or get points that you can cash in for gift cards, etc. Try http://thepointsguy.com/ for some tips.

 

It takes some time and there's a whole subculture that can get really strange, but if you're willing to switch cards every few months and be smart about optimizing (i.e. using different cards for different things) you can save some money and get yourself nice experiences you wouldn't be able to afford otherwise.

[rising_star]

I know there are past threads on this somewhere so I'll only answer briefly. I actually really suck at budgeting. But, I also charge everything and then pay it off in full at the end of the month. I figure I might as well earn cash back or rewards points on the stuff I need to buy anyway. My BFF is totally into buying discounted retail gift cards online and then using those to purchase needed items, though I haven't done that myself. I probably should though...

 

I never eat lunch out unless it's a special occasion. Never. That is an ironclad rule that I've lived on throughout all of grad school. Lunch out, even if it's fast food, will cost you at least $5. That is $35/week (or more than my typical weekly grocery budget). I don't drink coffee and hot tea in coffee shops is expensive (plus really, it's a tea bag) so I avoid coffee shops. Other friends go for a few hours a day, which is easily another $3-7/day or $15-21/week. Those two habits alone will cost you a few hundred a month so don't get into the habit of either if you can help it. Huge cost savings.

 

I cook for myself. I love my slow cooker (CrockPot or whatever) and use it a lot. I live alone so making one recipe in my 4qt pot usually means 6-8 meals of food, which I divvy up between lunch, dinner, and the freezer. Yes, sometimes I get sick of it but, whatever. I also mostly eat vegetarian food at home, rarely purchasing meat, which saves on the money. When I go out to eat, I do eat meat but I find the price of buying it for home consumption to be a bit much. I shop the grocery sales and discount grocery stores (Aldi, Grocery Outlet, etc.) to look for deals/bargains on the things I like that are normally very expensive.

 

Oh and drinking out can get expensive. Set a budget and stick to it. Pay cash if you can so that you know how much each drink costs.

[rising_star]

This is a great site for affordable recipes: http://www.budgetbytes.com/

[dstock]

I don't have cable

Keep our heat at 65 and wear layers

I cook meals at home.  I only make 1 meat dish a week, otherwise use cheaper options like beans.

Bring lunches... at most once per week I will buy lunch out.  Buying lunch is more expensive and less healthy than a packed lunch.

Never buy coffees etc.  I bring a thermos of coffee w/me each morning and a large bottle of tap water for the afternoon.

I always go out for drinks w/people - don't want to miss out on socializing- but only get one drink if I'm paying.

 

My school has events/speakers where they provide coffee/snacks, occasionally a dinner etc.  I take advantage of that

[snbrockman]

All of these responses are great advice! Thank you all so much. I am planning on entering a grad program in the fall and have been really worried about making ends meet on such low income. These are really good things to consider.

[dat_nerd]

For what it's worth, I've been buying a week's worth of (healthy!) groceries for just $40/week. It's more doable than I'd thought, especially if you can make good use of the grocery store's weekly ad.

[seeingeyeduck]

Yeah, for the two of us, groceries come out to about $60-70/wk. my partner eating lunch out several times at work and us eating out once a week almost doubles that amount. So eating out definitely adds costs fast. We don't really drink alcohol or coffee either so that helps. I usually make a giant batch of chicken soup from drumsticks and do soup noodle lunches throughout the week. It's still cheap compared to broth or eating out but not as sad and artificially flavored as ramen packets since I throw in all kinds of vegetables. It tastes like real food!

We also don't have central heat so we usually only heat the room we're in with a space heater instead of the whole house/apt in winter.

Otherwise, it helps that we don't drive a lot or have expensive hobbies.

[Maziana]

I'm not in grad school yet, but recently I have been printing out customized excel sheets for each month, and writing down how much I spend in each category. For me, this works better than Mint. I like using Mint to get an idea of how much I spend, but it doesn't track things bought with cash, so I find keeping my monthly sheet by my desk and writing down what I bought at the end of every day to be really useful. I like the visual format too - it's better than a simple list of expenses, because of the categories and the ability to feel rewarded when I don't spend any money over a period of several days.

 

I've only been doing this since January, but I plan on adding up all I spent on food and trying to decrease it monthly. I don't shop much unless it's necessary, but snacks are my weakness. 

 

Also, I keep a daily/monthly planner, so I write down when bills/utilities are due. Google Calendar would be good for people who don't like writing on paper, because you can get it to send reminders.

[seeingeyeduck]

I use Clear Checkbook. It's not automatic but I like it cuz I hate the idea of connecting my bank account to an app, esp with so many huge companies getting hacked these days. The free version only shows a year but I find that's enough. It can be good to manually enter things anyway since it keeps you very aware of your spending.

They have a simple charts feature if you categorize your spending so you can see easily at the end of the month what you've spent on what.

[legan]

I love Mint. I really recommend getting the app and setting up an account. It's a great way to track where your money goes.

[zipykido]

Budgeting is really based a few considerations. The number one thing you should doing is cooking your own meals regardless of your financial situation as other people have mentioned. I spend maybe 90-150 a month on groceries and I eat well balanced meals which boils down to 3-4 dollars a day for food. Eating out would typically cost me 10-15 per meal so that's a huge amount of savings. Housing costs typically will eat up a lot of your paycheck, if you can try to keep it at 1/4-1/3rd of your paycheck after taxes. Depending on the region it might be a better idea to get a place with slightly higher rent but with heat included (especially for cold states). Honestly, I'm paying off some student loans right now and I am still able to save $200+ a month after necessary expenses an some luxuries so I don't think it it's that bad. Of course if I had more expensive hobbies it would probably be harder to keep a good budget.