Kings Student Money Mentors

Train and air travel: student tips and tricks

Hey! With the COVID rules loosening up, many of us are looking for a chance to travel somewhere and take a much-needed break, but money-wise, this can often be much easier said than done.

I’m going to share some tips and tricks to save some money when you travel by two popular modes of transportation for travelling students: trains and flights. By the end of this blog post, you’ll be able to say YES to the next holiday your optimistic friend puts in your group chat.

Train travel

Let’s start with trains. To be clear, I’ll be talking about overground trains – not the London Underground (the Tube). First off, consider getting a railcard. Railcards offer discounts on train travel within the UK. There’s the 16-25 railcard and the 26-30 railcard, and they both give you 1/3 off on the price of your train ticket.

A one-year travelcard will cost £30, but there are other ways to get the travelcard at a reduced price. I received a 16-25 railcard when I set up my student bank account with Santander – this is a fantastic option because you can get a four-year travelcard entirely free!

Be flexible with your timings! One of the best tips I can give you is to go for off-peak times – most train operators will have both ‘off-peak’ and ‘super-off-peak’ times, and these can be real money-savers. Journeys outside of rush-hour times are cheaper, and keep in mind, most weekends and bank holidays are also classed as ‘off-peak’ travel. So, choose one of these times if you can!

Something we students are particularly good at is finding discounts on apps, and there are tons of good ones available. The one I’ve used the most is Trainline, which offers regular information about the cheapest available trains, and sends you notifications about journeys with reduced prices. Another benefit of Trainline is that it lets you book up to 180 days in advance, which is longer than any other ticket seller I’ve encountered so far.

Find where trains are cheap. Eastern and central Europe has some fantastic locations that can be accessed easily with trains and may be relatively inexpensive compared to western Europe. Some great places to go to via train, where travel is inexpensive, are Poland, Hungary and Romania.

When we think of train travel as students, interrailing is one of the first things we might think of, and it’s a great way to get around Europe. Technically, interrailing is travelling around Europe using the ‘Interrail Pass’ (or the Eurail Pass for non-European citizens) and can offer you a way to see up to 33 European countries at low prices, with the ability to change the dates of your travel quickly. If you’re under 28, you’re eligible for the even more discounted ‘Youth Fares’. Interrailing is cheap, quick, a classic student activity, and one I’d really recommend.

Shop around! This is classic Money Mentor suggestion that you’ll see on any of our blogs, and it applies to travel too! I know it can be stressful booking travel tickets, and demoralising when you’re repeatedly bombarded with extortionate prices. But don’t be tempted to always book with the most well-known train companies! An example of shopping around is when I found Lumo through social media – a new train operator that’s currently offering a cheap new route from London to Edinburgh.

Air travel

Air travel is a faster way of getting around but can often be even more expensive than trains. Despite that, there are still a bunch of things you can do to reduce your air fare and allow yourself to whizz off to wherever you want to go.

As I mentioned for train travel, there are some great apps that you can use for cheaper flights. One great one that I’ve used is ‘Skyscanner’. From what I’ve seen, it offers cheaper flights than any other app and shows you flights for entire countries rather than just specific airports. It also has a feature called ‘Mashups’ where you can mix and match different flights from different airlines, which can often work out cheaper. Apart from Skyscanner, there are many other apps/sites that you can research, like ‘Kayak’, and ‘Expedia’.

Again, shop around! Comparison sites like Momondo can be very helpful in your toolkit for hunting for the best air travel bargain. I’ve also known people to use apps like Hopper, which can tell you whether prices are likely to rise/fall for your destination over time, or websites like lastminute.com, which give you last-minute deals, and these can both be useful if your timescale for booking is more limited.

Stay incognito. This sounds like a strange one, but I can tell you from experience that if you remain as anonymous as possible when searching for flights, you’re more likely to find cheap ones. This is because airlines can use your data and quickly raise their prices when they know that you’re looking at certain flights and the demand for those flights is rising. To avoid this, delete your search cookies and use an incognito browser when searching. Looking as a guest on websites that offer flights instead of making an account can also help.

Consider booking flights and accommodation together! Not only has this helped me find great package deals, but it also saves the headache of trying to find somewhere to stay separately from your flight booking. These sorts of package deals usually include food/drinks and can be offered at affordable prices by holiday companies. According to Save the Student, with these, you can even sometimes get the whole holiday for cheaper than the cost of a single flight!

I hope this brief trip (pun intended) into the world of travel savings has helped you and made your next journey a little bit easier. Bon Voyage!

Shivam Chotai
King’s Student Money Mentor
Part of Money & Housing Advice

The King’s Student Money Mentors blog shares our students’ personal experiences and thoughts on money-related topics. Any reference, opinions or recommendations on a particular company/brand are only the views of the student(s) who wrote the blog post. King’s College London, the Money & Housing Advice service and the Money Mentor project do not share the views in the blogs nor endorse any of the companies mentioned. Readers should conduct their own research before using any companies mentioned in our blog posts.

Money and travel: how to save money on travel as a student, one possible solution

Me: Hi, my name is Yahye.

Group: Hello Yahye.

Me: and I am a TFL addict.

I feel like this is the internal dialogue that I have with myself whenever I look at my banking app at the end of every day. Having tried every remedy thus far for trying to reduce my weekly travel costs, I have ended up back to square one every day. However, I knew in the back of my mind there was one thing that I had never bothered to do and that was… wait for it… riding a bike. I was totally dreading trying this idea out with all the different worst-case scenarios running through my head and the biggest excuse being money. Being a student, money is probably our most deficient resource between food, travel, daily essentials, and rainy-day savings. The paycheck from my part time job at the end of the week just seems to run dry. Therefore, it was time to get out the big guns… Excel.

So, I opened a new book and started running through my bank statements trying to figure out how much money per month I spend on TFL: it’s around £100 give or take. Then I looked up how much a second-hand bike would cost – found one for around £180 on Facebook marketplace. Nice, so finances are financing, and technically, I would be able to buy one second hand. This left one problem in my sweaty rush hour hands – how safe was a second-hand bike really?

Those who know me would tell you, the great outdoors isn’t great for me. Plus, being someone who has not ridden a bike in over 10 years, I did not think it would fare well. After speaking to a friend who was going through the same thing, I decided on getting a new bike so that I could have a guarantee on its safety. My next step was just practicing, trying to learn road safety, and making cycling with my new bike as easy as possible to make sure I don’t get myself killed. I found a Google Maps-type app that suggests bike safe paths across London to help further increase my safety – the app is called cycle.travel. Also, I quickly learnt that I got sweaty quickly, and so I decided it would be appropriate to keep a second shirt and a deodorant on hand for the days I was traveling to work or University. This was just one difficulty that I faced when trying out this new lifestyle choice, which aimed to replace my regular commutes on TfL with cycling. But of course, there are other difficulties that you could face depending on the weather, what time of day it is, and where you live.

To conclude, as much as ‘get a bike’ is the common advice you would hear, I can see very clearly why it would not be for everyone – especially if you live in areas with unsafe roads, no bike lanes or have a long commute. It may also not be a safe option for some, as you must take into consideration all kinds of different scenarios that may prevent you from riding a bike to university on certain days. Hence, although riding a bike could be a great alternative to TFL, people should carefully consider the pros and cons of cycling before making any investments into a bike.

Yahye Mohamud
King’s Student Money Mentor
Part of Money & Housing Advice

My personal experience with insurance

Delving into the world of insurance can be overwhelming, it can feel as if here are policies for everything: your home, your phone, your car, travel, your house and even your life!

In this blog entry, I will discuss my personal experience with insurance and why I chose the policies I did, in a way which I hope will be useful to you.

According to Merriam-Webster, an insurance policy is a contract whereby one party (the insurer) agrees to cover the financial price incurred by the second party (the insured) for a “specific contingency or peril”. This can apply to the loss or damage of material property, covering the costs of healthcare, or many other situations. Some are mandatory (such as vehicle insurance if you own a motorised vehicle), but most are optional and taken out as a conscious choice by individuals. Personally, I have home contents insurance, as well as travel and health insurance for medical care abroad. I have been told by friends that it is a waste of money, and that the odds of something bad happening are so low that there is no point in having insurance. I disagree, and will explain why.

Whether or not you take out an insurance policy is an inherent bet on your financial future. I like to compare it to Pascal’s Wager on the existence of God. Pascal poses that the reasonable person should believe in God’s existence as they have nothing to lose and all the gain: he balances the sacrifice of faith with the potential of eternal life in heaven or hell. He concludes that one is better off believing in God on the off chance that they will go to paradise, rather than to not believe and maybe end up in hell. While this might be rightly be criticized as a simplistic reason to believe in God (promise I am not trying to convert you to religion), the same logic can be applied to insurance policies. However faint the chance of a bad or even catastrophic event may be, it is more reasonable to make the small sacrifice of a monthly payment rather than the huge price tag associated with replacing stolen objects after a robbery or paying for a medical bill when you’re ill in a foreign country.

On its most basic level, insurance is a simple concept. You agree to contribute to a pot of money along with other people, with the money being redistributed to contributors who need it for exceptional events. This could or could not be you, but if it is, you will often receive a lot more money than what you contributed, making the idea worth it for each participant. Of course, insurers are private for-profit companies, so it is not as simple as just contributing money to a common pot, but the image is still relevant. In my case, I am currently renting an old house in South London with an iffy front door. I own about £2,500 of stuff in that house, including my £800 piano that I received as my 21st birthday present. I feel much safer paying the quoted £5.30 a month rather than facing the risk of being left with nothing if something happened (robbery, fire, flood).

This is a decision each person has to take for themselves, considering their situation and what risks they are willing to take. For example, I don’t have any insurance for my bike, because I never leave it anywhere else than inside my house or the protected campus bike sheds. I felt as if a solid lock was a better investment. You may disagree if you are often parking your bike in the streets in London and are scared of the rampant bike thieves targeting your trusted steed. Conversely, you might not feel as if you need home contents insurance like the one I do as you live in safe and guarded student halls. It is up to you to decide what you think is necessary for your situation, what risks you are willing to take.

Now that we’ve discussed why you should or shouldn’t take out an insurance policy, let’s talk about the different types of insurance you can get:

House (contents) insurance – covers the contents of your household or apartment in case of a robbery, fire, or other incidents. Cover is based on the total value of your possessions, although you may need to add separate clauses for particularly valuable objects such as musical instruments or expensive jewellery. Remember that for your claim to be valid in case of a robbery, you will need a police report proving that someone broke and entered into your property. Insurance is not a reason for leaving your doors unlocked!
Electronics insurance – covers the damage/loss/theft of your phone, computer, or other item. You can personalise these to cover your house, the university campus or anywhere, as well as options for an immediate replacement device if needed.
Bike insurance – covers your bike in case of damage/loss/theft. Resembles electronics insurance in its options.
Car insurance – mandatory if you own a car, will cover you for accidents and damages caused to yourself, your car, or a third party and their car.
Travel insurance – covers unexpected travel expenses linked to cancellations, delays, lost luggage, and can cover medical expenses abroad. Travel insurance can be taken out individually for a trip (you will see the option as you book your travel), or as a long-term policy. You might find that your parents already have travel insurance for you, or maybe you have it as part of a subscription, such as Monzo or Revolut premium.
Health insurance – covers any health and medical related costs. In the UK it is not as widespread as the NHS is free at the point of care, however it may be necessary for international students or if you want to access private care. Again, your parents may already have health protection cover for you.
Life insurance – offers compensation to family or loved ones in the case where the policy taker dies. You will see insurance companies offer you discounted prices to incentivise you to start a life insurance policy as young as possible, however it is not really useful until you have people dependant on you, notably a stable partner or children who would financially suffer from losing you.

Once you have decided what insurance you want to take out, you need to find an insurance broker to take out a policy with. There are many options on the market, all jostling to get your business, so take the time to look around and find the best deal you can. I used websites such as savethestudent.org and uswitch.com to compare different offers and get the best price for my home contents insurance, which ended up being with Endsleigh. I have had it for three years and have never had to claim anything but I’m glad the protection is there if I need it. As for travel and health insurance, I get those through my Revolut premium subscription. Travel insurance has actually come in handy recently with the current mess of international plane travel, I have been able to get compensated for cancelled and delayed flights.

In conclusion, I hope that you have gained some understanding of insurance and what different options are available to you as a student, as well as given you some food for thought about whether you should get insurance. From my experience, I recommend getting your household contents covered, as you never know what could happen and losing everything is a devastating event emotionally, don’t let it be so financially as well. As for other insurance covers, the choice is up to you.

Amon Kenna Ette
King’s Student Money Mentor
Part of Money & Housing Advice