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Student life

Save more, live more: Student budget hacks for Copenhagen

Housing benefits, bike hacks, and a mountain of cheap french fries. You can do many things to get your meagre funds to last that little bit longer. Here are a few University Post life hacks that will get you by until you finally just give up and get that student job.

Student life means long nights, fun parties, fascinating academic programmes and friendships for life. But, yes, there is a downside: Life on a student budget.

And we have to be honest here. With inflation and increasing rents, it has not got easier to get by on a student budget in Copenhagen. Ida Marie Moesby is a consumer economist and expert on personal finances at the Danish bank Nordea – and she is going to help us make ends meet. But we might as well say it as it is: You need to adjust to living differently.

Let’s take it one step at a time.

The hardest step

Set a budget, and keep it

You should start by setting a budget. It may seem scary, but it doesn’t have to be, according to Ida Marie Moesby.

»It’s really just about getting an overview of what goes into the account, and what goes out.«

She recommends that you look at your online bank and get a handle on how much money you spend during a month. There are a number of budget templates online. This  is a Danish-language one, Råd til penge [Affording/advice for money]. But you can also just set your monthly budget starting from this Google Sheet template. Your own bank probably also has a template that you can use.

If you find it unmanageable, ask your own bank advisor for help. They also have an interest in you not having an overdraft every month.

Housing benefits are the best

The home is often the heaviest item in your budget, and it can be difficult to do anything about it. There is (still) a shortage of affordable student housing in Copenhagen, and if you move to the city to start studying, you may need to start with a room which is outside the city centre. Be sure to sign up for all the student residence halls you would like to live in. There can be a long waiting list for these, but the price and the sense of community that they offer are well worth waiting for.

Ida Marie Moesby recommends that you look into whether you are eligible for Danish rent subsidy. There is quite a lot of money to be had there, and there is a guide on housing benefits here.

READ ALSO: Student housing reviews: Dorms and residences in Copenhagen

You like your bike

In Copenhagen, your bike is like your best friend, so you need to buy a good lock for it. Check if your insurance also includes a bicycle insurance. It can pay to shop around a bit and find an insurance that covers your bike.

You can also learn to fix your bike yourself. You will inevitably ride over some broken glass on the bike path on an early Monday morning, and it all adds up if you have to give out DKK 150 at the local bike shop every time you fix a puncture.

You are no longer an ‘impulse purchase’ person

At the University of Copenhagen’s own bicycle workshop, the Pedalarmen, you can learn how to fix your bike for free. Huge win.

If your (uninsured) bike is stolen, you can apply to something called Studiecyklen to rent a bike for a year. It costs DKK 299, and you ride around with an ad for something on the bike.

Following on from this: Invest in some rain pants or put them on your birthday wish list. They are often not the most stylish. But they are better than the alternative: Sitting there soaking wet for three hours of lectures and catching a cold.

What you don’t have in terms of cash, you need to have in terms of planning skills. There are student discounts on both the Danish rail service DSB and the bus service FlixBus. And if you buy a ticket well enough in advance, you can get, for example, a train from Copenhagen to Aarhus for DKK 90.

No, you can’t skimp on the insurance

It is tempting, but it is stupid to cut costs on insurance. Ida Marie Moesby sees a lot of young people opting out of insurance, but it is a really bad (and potentially very expensive) idea. You need a home insurance that covers your belongings (and maybe also your bike), and an accident insurance to cover you if you get hurt.

But I don’t have anything of value! (you might think). However: home insurance can also include a liability insurance that covers if you, for example, bike into someone who crashes and breaks a tooth. Personal injuries can run into hundreds of thousands of kroner, so you don’t want to have to pay that yourself.

The good news is that you can usually get insurance quite cheaply as long as you’re a student. And if you are several people living together, you can share the home insurance.

The fun step: Be a jack-(or-jane)-of-all-trades

Learn to cook

Living on a modest food budget is definitely more fun if you know a little about how to get the most out of the ingredients. So you need to learn how to cook. This doesn’t mean that you have to go through all the recipes in a cookbook. But you have to learn to master some basic techniques that will enable you to look into a refrigerator that has three onions, a lump of parmesan and a pack of pasta and think: Yes! Here is my delicious dinner.

Here are ten specific tips on getting the ingredients and the money to last:

Bake stuff
Baking bread is more about technique than about recipe. And you don’t have to struggle to ferment the dough to make good bread. Put aside a portion of bun dough to rise in the evening, and then bake the buns the next morning. All study groups will like eating the buns that you have brought with you.

Cut back on the meat
Rice and beans are just cheaper than meat.

Cabbage, cabbage, cabbage!
Pointed cabbage if you want it to be delicious and crispy, white cabbage if it needs to be fried or has to be made in large quantities. No matter what: You get organic cabbage for next to nothing in most supermarkets. It is both tasty and filling, and it is full of vitamins.

TooGoodToGo
If you’re not already familiar with the food waste app TooGoodToGo, hurry up and download it. Here you can put in a ticket for the day’s surplus goods from restaurants, bakers and supermarkets, and pick them up after closing hours. It costs between DKK 20 and DKK 50 for a large bag of bakery bread or vegetables, and then you are pretty much set for packed lunches and dinner for a week or so.

Make a meal plan
… and do your food shopping once a week. Shopping when you’re hungry is the direct route to impulse shopping and a failed food budget, so make a plan in advance. There are plenty of bloggers who set up meal plans for smaller budgets, so go exploring – this Danish-language one Sund På Budget [Healthy On Budget], is oriented towards the Danish palate and has some great meal plans. Make large portions so you have food for several days. Dhal, pasta salad, chili sin carne, it’s all great food to keep.

Remember your packed lunch every day
No one can resist the canteen after a long lecture, and that’s silly money to spend when you might as well bring food from home.

Make your own coffee
You probably have a thermos somewhere, or else you can find one in your local second-hand market. Takeaway coffee is money out the window, so bring your own on the go. If you do forget your thermos cup one day, we have you covered with this 2019 guide to the best and cheapest coffee at the University of Copenhagen.

Prey on the old folks
If you are lucky enough to have parents or relatives with well-stocked kitchen cabinets, explore them when you are back home. Does your dad really need four glasses of artichoke pesto? Is your mum really going to eat all the almonds she bought on offer at home in Germany? And what about the candy stash in the cabinet: Do they even eat Ritter Sport chocolates in those quantities? Probably not, but you do!

Prepare for a hangover
Shop before your hangover and before you hit the town. Then you won’t be tempted to get the munchies at three o’clock in the morning and spend the next day in bed with your own (cheap) mountain of french fries and a bottle of cocoa milk.

Don’t care about fine wines
Fine wines are for people who have a fixed salary. It is much easier for you to get through student days if you can drink a DKK 35 bottle of red wine. You won’t be able to get this wine down at all when you’ve tasted better: So wait up and don’t start your wine hobby until you get your first full-time salary.

Learn to sew

Modern, climate-conscious students repair their own clothes. That hole in your socks? Sew it. Pants that have worn thin from all your bike rides? Reinforce them. The trousers you love, but which are a bit on the long side, though? Turn up the trousers by hand. YouTube is your friend, and you don’t need anything but a needle and thread. It’s good for your finances and good for the climate – and you’ll enjoy your clothes for much longer.

Organize clothes swaps

Invite all your new classmates to a clothes swap day. Make a large pot of coffee and take out all the clothes you don’t ever use anymore. All your guests bring their clothes also, and then go shopping for free in each other’s stuff. You get to upgrade your wardrobe, clean out the old stuff, and spend time with your friends – all without using a single krone.

The study step

Don’t overspend on books

Wait to buy your books until the semester has started and you have an overview of which books it is that you need to have as physical books. Many of the texts on the syllabus will often be online. You can also buy your books second-hand, usually for less than half of their retail price, and then sell them again when the semester is over. Some of the study programmes have groups on Facebook where students trade used books among themselves.

Use the libraries

The University of Copenhagen has many libraries and they are great places to study. If you need a change of air, the central Copenhagen public library in Krystalgade also has good study spaces and often free events. Remember to bring your own coffee.

Free joys

The city is full of book launches, record releases, concerts, and more, just waiting for you to come along, have a drink and a snack. Search for ‘reception’ or ‘opening’ on Facebook and see what turns up. A bonus is that you get out into the city and get to experience some art and culture.

There are also many free festivals in the city like Golden Days, Bloom, light festival and Copenhagen Opera Festival, and admission to the Glyptoteket is free on the last Wednesday of the month. The latter is a great place for a date, and a great place for an outing with your parents when they come visit.

In one week in September, young people under 27 can also get into 180 museums around the country for free – read more about this here.

Exchange spaces and recycling stations

Copenhagen has many good recycling stations where people dump their furniture, porcelain, and books that they no longer have a use for, and that others might as well benefit from. If there’s a recycling station close to where you live, there might also be a swap room. You can really find a lot of good stuff. There are also several groups on Facebook (see for example here, or here, where people can get rid of everything from entire kitchen interiors to furniture, utensils and greenhouses – all for free.

The 24-hour rule

You are no longer an ‘impulse purchase’ person. Make the following pledge: A quarantine of 24 hours every time you feel like shopping. You will have forgotten about most of the stuff by the time a day has passed.

The social step

Become a volunteer

Volunteer in the place you want to be. Maybe it’s in one of the student bars on your programme, maybe it is in the climate movement, or in one of the many different associations and clubs at the University of Copenhagen. The Student Council has set up a guide for all of them. There are often good friends, good parties and free coffee to be had.

Don’t say no because you’re poor

The social aspect is the coolest thing about studying and living in the city, so this is not where you should cut back. Say yes to meeting up. But suggest that it takes place in the park or at people’s homes. You’re broke, but so are most of your friends. Say it out loud. That makes it much easier.

From each according to their ability …

It’s okay to scrounge a bit from those who have more money than you while you’re studying. So long as you remember to pay it back when you enter the labour market yourself. As they say: From each according to their ability.

The step where you finally give in

Okay, I couldn’t stretch it any further. You’ve lived off leaf cabbage, biked the length and breadth of the city, and found all your furniture in the recycling centre. But you’re still in the red every month. You just need more money coming in your account. Then we have to go back to Ida Marie Moesby, the personal financing expert who you met at the beginning of this article.

There are broadly speaking, two ways to get more money into your account: A student job, or a student loan. Ida Marie Moesby recommends that you try to find a student job, as it gets you both the money and the labour market experience that you can use when you graduate. Here you can also think about getting a job where you will be happy with the employee benefits – like the canteen, for example. She emphasizes however, that the student job should not take up so much time that it affects your studies. It’s about finding the right balance.

When you start your study programme, you should not have finances that are dependent on loans

Ida Marie Moesgaard, consumer economist

What about student loans? Danish students and some international students [see who here and here] are eligible for the generous Danish student grants and loans. According to Ida Marie Moesby, the Danish supplementary state loans are pretty good loans. The interest rate is relatively low, and you don’t have to start paying off right when you are finished.

»But it is still a loan that has interest on it, and you will be left with debt. And this matters if, say, you have to borrow money for a house or apartment in the future. When you start a study programme, you should not have finances that are dependent on loans, because then you end up having a lot of debt when you graduate,« she says.

Instead of seeing student loans as an either-or situation, she recommends viewing it as an option you can resort to if you are suddenly hit by unexpected bills. Maybe you need to buy a lot of books, maybe you have a wisdom tooth removed (ouch!), or maybe you are going on a study trip by night train through Europe – then it may make sense to take out a student loans for a period of time.

No matter what: Keep hanging in there – and look forward to your first full-time salary. The next few years will go faster than you expect!

Need more tips? Our earlier versions of student budget guides for Copenhagen have more ideas! Here is one.

READ ALSO: How to live on a student budget in Copenhagen

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