Have you ever scrolled through your instagram feeds and found out that a friend of yours is going solo travelling and posted neat and legit pictures of him/her. Or maybe they posted mouth-watering photos of foodporn and such, while YOU, constantly checking your wallet, wondering if u might survive the day.
Trust me, I've been there, not once, but almost everyday throughout college. Yeah, money can't buy everything. But, looking in college life. EVERYTHING NEEDS MONEY. Books, assignments, food, water, bills, tuition fees, workshops, mobile topup, internet data, 'batch shirts', and so freaking many more things. And you just can't bring yourself to ask your parents for money.
Well, like I said, I've been there. So here is a few tips on what I did to survive my wallet, throughout the freaking semester.
1. Plan your money
What I did is, I planned on how much I could spend money on food everyday. And when I plan, and budget my money, I pick the average price of a 'full meal'.
What I'm trying to say is, let's say, my full meal for a day is like, a homemade breakfast (because I'm too lazy to look for food early in the morning) which costs nothing, a 'Nasi Kukus + Ayam Goreng Berempah' for lunch that costs RM5 and 'teh ais' for RM 1.50, and random anything for dinner that costs no more than RM5. So my daily budget on food for a day is RM 11.50. Okay, I hope you understood that part.
Theeeen, I keep my budget RM11.50 for each day. But here is the IMPORTANT PART. This budget is the MAXIMUM amount that you can spend on food each day. So what I did is, I always try to find other meals that is cheaper than my budget plan, and then, keep the balance of the budget to what I refer as my 'REWARD POCKET'.
So let's say I managed to spend only RM3 for lunch, and RM4 for dinner. It means that I spent RM7 for the day and have a balance of RM4.50 as my reward ! Most of the time I just use the reward money to extend the lifetime of my monthly pocket money, but sometimes I use it to treat myself for a job well done or a treat for stressfull days that you WILL have to face in college.
Is it complicated? Sorry if it is.
2. Home/Dorm/Room Cooking
Let's face it. Preparing your meals from scratch doesn't only saves money, but it's also good for your health which is very very important !
Although if you stay in a provided accomodation by the college, you may or may not be allowed to cook (which I and my housemates did regardless of the rules). So if you are allowed to, why not cook guys? Share in buying the cooking supplies with your housemates and it saves your money a lot more ! But if you live in a dorm room and still want to cook, please make sure you have your roommate agreement and permission as cooking in a room, may effect the odour of that specific room, and may also effect your roommates' heart.
If you are not allowed to cook, at least maybe you are allowed a rice cooker, and you know what? Rice cookers can cook almost everything. You can deep fry in it, make soup, steam, and many more if you know the trick.
In my college apartment, a must have in our kitchen is EGGS. I mean, why not eggs? It's cheap, doesn't need a refrigerator, easy to cook, and DELICIOUS but..... a bit boring if you constantly have eggs throughout the week. Half-boiled eggs, boiled eggs, fried rice with egg, fried egg, scrambled egg, egg soup, egg curry, egg sambal, bread with egg, poached egg and egg egg egg.
But I survived.
3. Back to basics - share
Yes, share. Share your lunch with your friends. According to the health-google-thing, we only need to eat a portion of our knuckle of rice *cough right? Well. Health-wise, its true. But I myself could never be satisfied with that amount of rice. Personally, rather than have to eat a small amout of rice, I rather not eat rice at all because, I'll end up eating more if I have a tiny bit taste of the rice.
So back to topic, share your meal. And well, there's not much more to talk other than 'share your meal' huh?
4. Start saying NO
Pfft, these days nowdays, there are this certain type of people that would go anywhere regardless of the price just to get a legit photo of food at a certain restaurant, or maybe they just like to hang out at shopping malls or just watch movies etc. That is not really one of our concerns right? But what if, that person is your housemate, your friend or your bestfriend? Yup, you are totally going to be asked to join the team.
Well, no harm done right? I'm not saying that you cannot go out with them, but, give it a thought. Is your budget enough for the month? Do you rather have a week worth of money spent in a day? If you have a backup money or savings, then yes. Be my guest but please, take a deep look down your wallet and give it a few thoughts.
If you can't, you must learn to reject politely their offers to bring you out of the house. It may be hard, but it is way more harder strugling with money to eat.
Fun fact : I survived with RM5 for a week once.
5. Fasting
Well, you get to kill many birds with one stone with this. Dear readers, fasting is so beneficial for everyone, Muslim or not. You can try googling it to be sure. So for Muslims, well clearly it saves up money because you just need like two meals a day. (Unless you are a binge eater that eats for ten person at iftar) Keep your sahur simple and your iftar moderate and that should do it !
Besides getting to save money, for girls, you can qada' for the Ramadhan fast that you missed, and you can also make a niat for sunnah fasting, and even more pahala if you do it on a certain specific times etc Mondays and Thursdays. AND ALSO, you can help improve your digestion system in some sort of way.
6. Befriend your seniors
Well up to now, most things I talked about involves food right? Well that's because food play a big role in our life! So now, let's get back to college life, where you need money for books and lectures.
Well, you need to befriend your seniors to be able to borrow their books that hey used in your semester, so it saves up a lot. You might get lucky that they just give it all to you! So be more sociable and get to know others aside of friends from your class and course and housemates because it helps. Also if you have problems regarding subjects or assignments, you may also ask for their help and opinion!
The other alternative is, buy the books from seniors. They will be students who also struggle for money and sell their unused books for a cheaper price. So it's a win-win situation. If you finished with your semester and don't need them books no more, sell it to your juniors, because, why not?
ps; well this tip doesn't apply to myself because I like to keep my books for myself, and if I have juniors that wants to borrow my books, I'll just let them borrow it, and give it back at the end of the semester.
6. Earn Money
Money ain't gonna come rolling to your doorstep right? You can't only just hope for your parents to give you money at the end of the month. So why not try to earn money on your own?
Be it as big as being an insta-famous kid that receives payment for doing reviews or just offering a typical simple printing services to other students. It's your choice. You can also do part-time jobs if you are able to, because it doesn't just add up money in your wallet but it also gives you a set of work-skills and experience and give you more to put ot your resume later on.
The only thing is, NEVER forget that you still are a student, and not a worker. You are a FULLTIME STUDENT and a PART TIME WORKER. So keep in mind which is more important to focus on. Never let your work affect you study.
So I say, earning money isn't such a bad idea if you manage your time well and sort out your priorities.
7. Give back (sedekah)
Sooooo generally, giving back is a great deed in Islam, and I am also convinced that it is the same as in other religion to because the act of giving back to others makes us realise that there are others that needs more than us, that also deserves to be happy! It also allows us to reflect on ourselves that we need to spread happiness and kindness to others.
In Islam, we are told that we are NEVER going to be poor by giving back to others. We giving back to others doesn't have to be just to the poor or orphans, or hundreds and thousand ringgits. It may be as small as giving food to stray cats, spending a bit lunch for your friend, donate a ringgit every Jumaat at the mosque, or EVEN, if you don't have any money, do you know that SMILING TO OTHERS is an act of sedekah in Islam? It's great isn't it?
So maybee by giving a few ringgitz or donating here and there wouldn't make you rich with golden rings and everything, but trust me, if you are really devoted in doing this and give your trust in Allah, everything will be enough.
And guess what? That's the end of it. Phew! You have no idea how long I took to write this down. Am having a hard time managing my time for assignments and mental breakdowns. Please do pray for me and I hope that some of my tips would somehow help you in any sort of way.
I am still finding out my rhythm on how to present this blog as in what of its contents and all. But I guess this is just going to be a multi-purpose blog that has tips, my writings, and soon college notes for Diploma Qiraat students, and maybe entries of my current life. Well, who knows?
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