Imagining that I am away from home doing a course that costs me £9000 a year is a scary concept to any 17 year old who attends a state school, with parents that pay for most things. I will have a loan that’s putting me in £27,000 of debt, just for my tuition fees alone! I then have to manage a maintenance loan and this has to cover all of my expenses.

Managing a student budget

Let’s say that I have a loan and it comes to £400 a month. With that money I have to pay the rent for my university accommodation and all sorts of other things from my phone bill, to making sure that I’m able to consume 3 meals a day.

People my age don’t know how to do a basic budget! This alone is giving us a greater risk of getting into debt. I’d be worried about debt, and there would be two realistic solutions:.

1) Cut expenditure.
2) Increase income.
Or both,

In the latter situation, in which case I may have a bit of money left over for luxuries such as new clothes and a few nights out. As a student, a job can be hard to manage and obtain, especially with no experience. To obtain that experience a lot of planning ahead would be needed. Especially if new qualifications are necessary.

Is my degree worth a huge student debt?

The idea that I may be in my final year of university, knowing that I am in all of this debt, but not knowing whether I have an income to help pay it off or not is somewhat daunting! This, I think, is the reason that the companies that lend students money have a system which means that we don’t pay anything back until we can afford to. Making it easier and less stressful, but who knows about this? If I hadn’t researched it, I wouldn’t.

Personally, I am not worried about the debt that I am going to be in after university, as I think that the debt is worth the opportunity, but I know that loads of teenagers are put off from going to university simply because they are worried about it. Some students are able to dig right in to the ‘bank of mum and dad’ but there are some people who just rely on purely their loans, grants, and a part time job.

Most people of my age wouldn’t know that there is a debt support industry out there. I certainly wouldn’t have, anyway. That is, until I came to ClearDebt to do some work experience for a week. I know, but there are thousands of students in the UK that have no idea.

Imagine being in a new place, with new people, and not being able to enjoy yourself because you’re constantly petrified about not having enough money to keep you going. That would be a scary prospect for anyone, young or old.

Ignoring the fact that there is a possible money problem isn’t going to make that problem go away and it isn’t going to resolve the fact that some more money needs to make its way into a student’s pocket!

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