Kings Student Money Mentors

Keeping down energy prices

So, you may have heard a lot about energy prices recently. As the Office of Gas and Electricity Price Markets (Ofgem) raised the cap on energy prices this year, lots of us are worried on how to afford our bills. While students living in halls of residence will often have their energy bills covered in their rent payments, people living in private accommodation may be experiencing some concern at the moment.

But fear not! KCL’s Money Mentors are here to help you understand energy prices and how they can be managed and provide some useful myth-busting tips and tricks.

Saving on energy:

Finding cheaper prices is always excellent, but aside from that, there are some things you can be doing right now to ensure that you’re keeping your own prices down!

Turning your thermostat down

Turning down the thermostat is a fantastic and simple way to keep energy costs down. According to price-comparison site Uswitch, turning your thermostat down by just 1^OC could result in savings of £80 a year! https://www.yourmoney.com/household-bills/save-80-on-your-energy-bill-by-turning-down-the-heating-1c/

From my own personal experience, I know that this can be difficult when sharing a flat, as people often have different preferences for how hot they keep the home. In these situations, having discussions about the benefits of a turning down the thermostat and proposing alternatives such as wearing thicker clothing when cold might prove effective.

Fitting a ‘water-saving shower head’

In terms of saving on water-related costs, one quick and easy way to do this is to reduce the amount of water that you shower with. One way of doing this is by fitting a ‘water-saving’ shower head. These devices can reduce the energy needed.

And brilliantly for us students – you might be able to get one for free! Follow this link on Save the Student, complete the survey, and you may be eligible to receive free water-saving shower products! https://www.savethestudent.org/student-deals/bills-utilities-deals/free-water-saving-shower-head.html

Close doors to rooms you’re not trying to heat

According to the Energy Saving Trust, closing doors to the rooms you’re not using is a brilliant method to improve the heating in your home. Closing doors to these rooms allows the convection currents created by radiators to remain in the designated space you want to heat, meaning you’ll need to spend less time heating those areas as less heat is escaping. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/energy-saving-myths/?utm_source=MSE_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=08-Feb-22-8269f798159406d98fc-6202eaa3d619ba62bc7c0c1ca94ab8a3&source=CRM-MSETIP-8269f798159406d98fc&utm_campaign=nt-hiya&utm_content=21

Use an airer instead of a tumble-dryer

While tumble-dryers are often much more convenient, they use a significant amount of energy and can add to your costs! A cheaper alternative is to purchase an airer (also sometimes known as a drying rack/clothes horse). Airers are best used when you time them so that you put your wet clothes on them during the times you keep the heating on in the household, but try if possible to use an airer outdoors when the weather allows – the National House Building Council says drying your wet clothes on an airer indoors can cause issues with condensation and damp due to the circulation of the moisture in your home, which is particularly a problem if you’re living somewhere older and more poorly-insulated.

Aside from these useful tips, I thought I’d like to share some myths often shared by students on the subject of energy prices, and see whether or not there’s any merit to them:

MYTH: Painting the radiators black helps to reduce energy wastage

ANSWER: This is not true! While it is commonly believed that painting radiators black improves the absorption of heat, the Energy Saving Trust says that the difference compared to keeping them the normal white colour is negligible.

MYTH: If a socket is switched off, there’s no problem keeping your appliances plugged in

ANSWER: False! While not a significant amount, studies have shown that leaving the plugs of appliances in sockets, even when switched off, can use up energy. This is known as ‘vampire energy’ and means that you should definitely unplug all of your appliances when you are finished using them.

Individually, the amounts of energy saved while doing this may not be much, but over time, with the number of appliances you use on a daily basis, the savings can really add up!

MYTH: It’s cheaper to keep the heating on low all day than to only turn it up when you need to heat up a room

ANSWER: False! While this one is still debated, the Energy Saving Trust says that keeping your heating on low all day leaks a significant amount more energy than to raise the temperature when you need it. I’ve found that keeping your heater on a timer is an effective way of managing the temperature in your home throughout the day.

Home

MYTH: Putting clingfilm over your windows is effective in keeping your home heated:

ANSWER: This is technically true! Although putting clingfilm over your windows may help to insulate your home as long as it’s airtight and completely transparent, you’re better off finding a home that has double glazed windows already.

The clingfilm works by trapping a small layer of air, which reduces how much heat can escape, but is much more effective as a second layer on windows that only have single glazing, than as a third layer on windows that are already double-glazed.

MYTH: It’s cheaper to use one main thermostat in the home than to use multiple thermostats on individual radiators:

ANSWER: FALSE! You can be more in charge of the way your home is heated by having thermostatic radiator valves on your radiators. These valves can be used with the main thermostat to better control the temperature in each room as you desire. One way of doing this is to use the thermostat to heat your main living space (e.g. the living room) and to use valves attached to radiators in other rooms to keep the temperature low in the rooms you use less.

According to the Energy Saving Trust, managing the temperature in this way would enable you to save approximately £75 a year!

I hope these tips and tricks have gotten you on your way to becoming a super saver with your energy bills in the future. If you still find yourself struggling at any point, please don’t hesitate to contact the Money & Housing Advice Team, who’ll be more than happy to confidentially discuss your situation with you.

Aside from this, Ofgem have also released a helpful guide on Getting help if you can’t afford your energy bills.

Other helpful resources on this topic can be found below: 

Money Saving Expert: Energy Saving Tips 

The Uni Guide – Student Survival Guide: Electricity and Gas bills  

This is Money.co.uk – 20 Energy Saving Tips to help reduce bills 

UK Power – Gas and Elctricity for students  

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.

Planning your budget!

With the cost-of-living crisis and inflation, I know many of us are concerned about budgeting and ensuring we stay on top of our finances, which can be quite a feat considering it all can be a challenge to maintain.

I’m going to share some tips on planning your budget, including managing your maintenance loan, purchasing household goods, and working through your expenses. Hopefully, after reading this blog post, you will feel a lot more confident when thinking about your finances and will come to realise that budgeting isn’t as daunting as you might think!

First of all – the maintenance loan. For those of you who aren’t 100% sure of what it is, it is funding provided by the government for day-to-day expenses and is paid directly into your bank account in 3 instalments (September, January, and April). It is easy to get super excited when your funding first comes in but it is very important to set up a budgeting system so that you can stay on top of everything and that you don’t end up running out of money by the end of the semester!

Next up – purchasing household goods. From my personal experience, when doing my weekly shop, it is exceptionally easy to spend a lot more than what is initially intended. I therefore made a set of tips and tricks to avoid over-spending and I’ve noticed a significant decrease in my overall expenditure.

Compare and save – to find the least expensive option, I would recommend using comparison apps to compare prices across online retailers and supermarkets. Quite a lot of the time, you will be able to find a cheaper alternative elsewhere and it really does save a lot of money in the long run! It would be handy to keep an eye out for the price per kg when purchasing goods as that would give you a more accurate idea on what the best deal is.

Choose bargain basics – you should try your best to go for cheaper, own-brand alternatives when shopping. I found that buying supermarket branded items instead of well-known brands saved up to one third of my weekly spend on groceries!

Be a savvy shopper – oftentimes, supermarkets and other stores will put goods up for discounted prices. Therefore, it is always handy to keep a special eye out for offers and discounts when shopping to ensure you make the most of them all.

Plan and prep – buying food last minute tends to be super expensive. Usually, if you know there’s nothing at home, one would either go for a takeaway or buy a ready meal. Both options can be murderous to your budget as the prices really add up. I therefore found that planning my weekly meals ahead of time allowed me to know in advance what I needed to buy from the supermarket and to only buy those items – nothing extra.

When I first started thinking about setting a budget and working through my income and expenditure, it seemed like a very intimidating task. However, when I actually started doing it, I realised that it was a lot easier than it seemed and it really helped to have everything clearly written out. There are numerous different budgeting tools and apps you can use but I think the most common option would be to use Excel.

To get started, just input all your income, whether it is from maintenance loans or from a job, and then start adding all your expenses. There are a few essential expenses that everyone needs to have, such as rent, groceries, bills (student insurance, gas/electricity, water, phone) and transport. Most of these are set prices but you could look into finding cheaper alternatives for things such as groceries and transport. Non-essential expenditure covers things such as nights out, eating out, hobbies, new clothes, and memberships/subscriptions. These are all things that you could technically live without but are things you may want from time to time. I would recommend thinking through each of these and seeing if you could reduce some of them or look for less expensive options.

To figure out what you can allow yourself to spend weekly, you could subtract your expenditure from your income and divide the amount by the number of weeks until the next maintenance loan instalment. I would suggest setting a weekly budget instead of a monthly budget as it can sometimes be easy to just spend all the monthly budget at the beginning of the month and not have anything left over at the end.

I hope this post has been useful to some of you and that you have a slightly better understanding of budgeting and how to save money through the little things!

Amani Parvaiz
King’s Student Money Mentor
Part of Money & Housing Advice

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