The Most Fun I've Ever Had on a Budget

On Monday my holiday ends and I have to go back to Liverpool. I wonder how much post has built up. I can finally get my Christmas present from mum. I’m lucky because it also happens to be the same day a big uni project is due in and I’d heard it was due by 4:30 – I get back to Liverpool at 3:45 – but now it turns out we can take it in any time before the place closes. I also need at some point to pick up the first assignment I did for one of my uni classes so I can find out how well I did (if I did). Apparently everyone did well…

The Budget
Anyway, now getting to the reason for the title, I thought last semester was budgeted but this is even worse. I found out we need to book accommodation for next year in January and have to pay the deposit at the same time. That’s about £200. Before I started uni I couldn’t afford the deposit for this year so someone – I think from the uni – covered it for me and apparently I had to pay them back in this lot of money too. I’m not sure how to do that though or even who to contact or who it was – my dad dealt with it – so I hope they contact me to tell me how to give them the money. In any case, that’s £400. After rent is taken out of the money I get I have just over £700, taking the 400 away that gives me 300. However, just because this has happened I don’t intend to go back on my plan of buying a TV. I want it too much (just for my PS2). So after buying the TV and paying the TV license (since it comes with freeview and I’m doing the pay quarterly method) I’ll have £178 for food, laundry and anything else until April when I get my next lot of money. My budget for food was £20 for 2 weeks, but that adds up to £160 so I’ve put it down to £15 a week (£105). I don’t think it will actually be that difficult to stick to. Then it’s £5.20 a week to get laundry done, but that should fit easily into the remaining money I’ll have.

What I’m Going to DoSo, on this budget I won’t be able to get a lot of treats or buy any other new things or even go out anywhere properly until April. I think I’ll just have enough so I can still go to the anime society – 50p a week, surely I can afford that.

Other than that, I suppose there’s not much to worry about. I can’t get any new books but I still have some to read which I might do and there’s a lot to read online. A lot of music and films and stuff can be found online too so I’m fine there, I don’t really spend money on CDs anymore, just listen to songs on youtube… I don’t know how I feel about that hehe…
And then of course I’ll have a TV so I can watch stuff and I have all these games to play that I’m sure can last me until April (some of them I know I’ll be playing a hundred more times anyway hehe).
I’m also going to be writing a lot, as I said in the last post at least one story every day, and then I’ll still have assignments and stuff in uni too. Then there are other things I want to work on like my drawing abilities so I’ll have a lot of time for that too. I also want to find some other projects too so there should be plenty to take up my time.
This really is going to be the most fun I’ve ever had on a budget. I guess I’m just lucky I still have all this stuff I can do, and hopefully the lack of money will really make me appreciate it… one would hope.

The Really Bright Side
I thought the deposit for next year’s accommodation would be in April. Since it isn’t, the only big money thing from April’s lot of money is for my storage thing during the summer, since I can’t take everything home, but even that should come to less than £100. Then there are two lots of TV licence money to save (since I won’t get money during the summer) and money for a train or coach to get home to London, and then back to Liverpool again in September. Even those things don’t cost that much! So I’ll have more extra money in those months than any time during the rest of the uni year. Which is great because I can save some for summer, and of course the MCM expo in May.
I am sad that I can’t get my cosplay stuff until April because I was really looking forward to it, but I’m sure I can survive until then.