5 smart personal financial planning tips for college students

This is a guest post by Alicia, a specialist in financial blogging from Manchester. Apart from blogging, she does research on payday loans. Follow her on twitter  at @financeport. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

The present breed of youngsters are known for their party oriented and care free lifestyle who are seldom bothered about their future and live in the present.
In order to gain interest of people around them, they spend money casually and fuel their desire of being popular. This ultimately results in low savings and loss of funds for their further education. The impact has to be highlighted for every college student so that they change such attitudes and follow the right path in planning their personal finance.

Here are five smart tips on how to do this,

Create a budget plan: The basic thing that will be followed by every individual irrespective of their age group is designing a budget. Although it is an easy procedure to pen in all the financial considerations, many people fail in executing these plans. This is because the plan is not made in a realistic manner and is difficult to follow. Instead of facing the trouble later, it is better that you plan efficiently now.

Take advantage of student offers: When you want to purchase something that may be stationary, any student related item or even clothes, you will find special offers and discounts that are available for students. Lookouts for these offers and take advantage of them as they will save you cash that can be utilized for some other necessities. And also if you shop in groups that result in bulk purchase then you can get additional discounts.

Adopt sharing culture: One of the best advantages that you can make use of is sharing, that will benefit you in many ways. For example, if you need to purchase books that are necessary for your research and your budget supports in affording only few of them, then you can purchase all the books needed along with your classmates that can be shared both in cost and use. This way you will not only save money but also benefit yourself.

Early savings: This is the right age where you can learn from your economic errors, as they are smaller and can be easily rectified by your parents and well-wishers. But once you become independent you may not be able to recover your loss, so start saving at these early stages. This should be frequent so that you get habituated to this culture that can be followed in future. And also you can utilize this cash in emergency requirements.

Avoid credit cards usage: Some credit card companies offer credit cards for the youngsters who turn 18. This will be beneficial for them as they gain huge profits by fooling them easily, by capitalizing on their naivete in personal finance matters. In order to avoid such issues you have to stop using these credit cards. If you have used one in the past and have a debt on it, then you can clear it either from your savings or through payday loans. As payday loans are instant loans that can be availed even by student who has part time job. That said, as a student, it is advisable to avoid any kind of credit.