Student finance
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Adam Bradley's essential guides to living life as a poor student and surviving the best you can.
The best ways to spend your loan money
The biggest and best party you will ever have, invite your friends, invite your family (no, on second thoughts don’t invite your family), invite that person you’ve been keeping an eye on from the back of the class, invite the sexy teacher, invite everybody! At least you’ll have some memories of where your loan money went, even if most of them are of you puking into a friend’s toilet the next day.
Invest in the stock market. Not actually as stupid as it sounds. The interest you pay on the loan is going to be the lowest interest you will ever have to pay back in your life, the FTSE100 has risen in value roughly ten percent over the past five years. Tracker funds and unit trusts are usually safer than investing in a single company as you’re spreading the risk. Alternatively a good high-interest account guarantees you the money back, but you might only be making a couple of percent a year. (Still, this is money for nothing)
Blow it on lottery tickets. Who knows you might actually win something.
More interesting ways to spend your loan (external link)
How to get out of paying your loans back
Fortunately there are several ways to do this, and most of them are pretty easy. Of course you are expected to pay the loans back eventually and you will be chased and fined if you fail to not pay the loan back properly and within the regulations. Do check before you swan off with the cash.
Currently you do not have to pay the loan back if you don’t earn enough, see, having a crappy job is not so bad. Deferring repayment is easy as the Student Loan Company sends you a form that you fill in an return to them. But they won't proof, so working as managing director of ICI will not get you off of paying it back.
But a crappy job is not necessary, as deferment can also be done if you are unemployed. A friend of mine got out his maximum number of loans, knowing full well that he never had any intention of ever getting a job and therefore would never have to pay back the loans.
More on avoiding paying back your loan (external link)
The Proper Way To Live Like A Student
You must start as you mean to go on, and whilst in the queue for your loan tell everyone within listening distance how poor you are. When you get home tell your parents, and tell your friends, especially the working ones. And start borrowing: from your grandparents, your little sister who dropped out of her A-Levels to get a job, or your young brother who’s got an income from doing a paper round. It doesn’t matter who (steer clear of loan sharks and banks, who might actually want that money back).
If you’ve put in the effort in the first couple of months of uni then you could borrow from all of them for the rest of your three or four-year course. If the groundwork has been put in place and everybody know how poor you are (say things like, ‘ooh meat, I remember when I could afford that’, and ‘Do you remember this shirt, mum? It was the one I wore for my twelfth birthday, it still fits… nearly.’) they're sure to dig you out a couple of quid every now and then. Make sure that you don’t flaunt the money you are borrowing from them (‘this will come in handy for dinner’ is the reply they’re looking for when they ask you what you’ll spend that fifty quid on). There is nothing worse than your sister giving her pocket money to her poor student sibling than finding out your bought the latest playstation game or a pair of shoes to go to a party.
More on living like a student (external link)