Remember that being a student can save you money as well as cost you. Try the following:

• An NUS card entitles you to a whole load of discounts at places such as HMV and Topshop, and the NUS Extra card, launched last year, means the savings keep on coming. You may have to fork out a tenner but the card will bag you money off insurance for your home and possessions, and discounts at Amazon, Subway, Superdrug and JJB Sports, to name a few.
• Buy your newspapers on campus or in the union, where they are subsidised; why fork out 80p when you can get it in most university shops for 25p?
• Check out offers with the university bookshop. Blackwells, for example, buys books back when you’re finished with them, and if you accept vouchers rather than cash you can get half your money back. Buying these secondhand books also means you save a third of the selling price and they have that nice worn-in feel - great if you never get around to reading them!
• If you are lucky enough to still have a savings account intact at university and you are unlikely to earn more than £5,435 (the level of annual earnings when income tax kicks in) from any jobs you have had in the current tax year, ask your bank or building society for form R85, so you can have interest paid without tax taken off.
• Brave souls could actually make money on the free overdraft that most student accounts give, by transferring it into an interest-bearing account. But don’t do this unless you are very organised. Unauthorised borrowing – if you breach your agreed overdraft limit – is extremely expensive, and is likely to far outweigh any gains you would make by putting extra into a savings account.

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