How much do you spend on train tickets every year? I’d guess for about half of students, it’s more than £70 a year. If it is, and you’re under 25, get a 16-25 railcard. It’s £24 for the whole year and you get 1/3 off all your train travel. So if you spend £72 per year on train tickets, but you spend £24 to save 1/3 of your fares, then you break even. If you spend any more than that, which you very well might do, then you’d be stupid not to get a railcard. Spend money to save money in the long run.

Luckily I get mine free with my Natwest student account. Yay for free perks.

At last – the outrageous charges that banks hit you with are most likely a thing of the past. From The Guardian:

The court of appeal ruled that fees for unauthorised overdrafts and bounced cheques are subject to regulation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) under “unfair contract” rules, clearing the way for the watchdog to set a legal maximum on the fees which currently earn banks around £2.6bn a year. The ruling could result in them being forced to return up to £1bn to consumers.

The Telegraph also has a good article on how to reclaim your bank charges, and at MoneySavingExpert.com, Martin has put up a template letter that you can send to your bank to help recover any charges. The Telegraph article above states that you are legally entitled to make a claim for any charges made for unauthorised overdrafts in the last 6 years. Note that it says you’re entitled to “make a claim”, not “to your money back”, but it’s definitely worth a try if you’ve been charged.

The overwhelming financial problem I faced (and still face) at university is that great thing, that fountain in the sky that is both a blessing and a curse: the student loan payment.

The problem is, those smart fellows at the Student Loans Company decide the best way to handle your loan is to dollop out a huge lump sum at the start of term and then say to you, “There you go. Come back in four months and you can have another one.”

This often leads to a few weeks of luxury at the start of the term, as you enjoy your new-found wealth, followed by two or three weeks of spartan, hermit living at the end of term when you’re broke. Following that, there’s a swift phone call home to get your parents to lend you money so you can afford to get the train home for christmas (that actually happened to me – and I had to borrow a pound off my flatmate so I could afford to get the bus down to the train station).

But have no fear, students of the UK, because I have a solution.

Firstly, I’ve set up a savings account for my student loan payment to go into, which it does automatically at the start of term. I’m with Natwest and do pretty much all of my banking online, so it was really easy for me to set up an e-savings account, which gives me instant access to my money, and I can transfer it across all my accounts online in about 2 seconds

Then I set up regular payments from my e-savings account into my current account every sunday, essentially paying myself a weekly wage. Of this weekly wage, a small amount (say, 10-15% of it) is diverted into a second e-savings account every friday, to give me a cushion for the end of term. I set this up once (it took about 2 minutes) and now it’s a regular thing that I don’t even think about.

This means that I’m paying myself a weekly wage out of my student loan, held in one account (which I call my “holding account” – its only purpose is to hold onto my loan). Then out of that wage I’m putting aside 10% a week, just like I’d try to save if I had a proper job. If needs be, I can dip into these savings at the end of term if I’m struggling for cash.

Simple. This means it’s quite hard to overspend, although it’s still possible, what with my overdraft etc. But this is the best way I’ve found of handling your student loan and trying to even out your consumption over the whole term, rather than living like Elton John for the first 5 weeks of term and living like a crazy homeless guy for the last 5 weeks.

Unless you follow this one rule, you could be Bill Gates and you’d still get into financial trouble. Admittedly it would take Bill a little longer than most of us, but still, eventually he’d run into problems.

The cardinal rule of personal finance: spend less than you earn.

It sounds so simple. But so many of us struggle with it. I definitely do. I get 3 lump sum payments of around £1100 to live on during university (one in September, one in January and one in April). You’d think it would be easy to do this – just divide the total by the number of weeks until the next payment comes in, and boom, there’s your weekly budget. But it’s harder than that. It’s tempting to spend a little more one week, knowing that you can just spend a little less next week. Then of course, the same thing happens the next week, and the week after, and before you know it you’re taking out your third student bank account to tap the overdraft to get you home for christmas.

This rule is so important that Stephanie at Poorer Than You calls it Rule Zero. If you don’t follow this rule, you don’t have a hope in hell of building serious wealth. You’ll live a life plagued by debt, creditors and high interest rates. Don’t do it. Work out how much you earn, and how much that leaves you to spend per week. Then spend less than that.

Sounds simple, but it’s hard in practice. Good luck.

I’ve always struggled with money. My main problem is over-spending. I love being that guy who buys everyone a round of shots, or doesn’t mind paying for it when you eat out. Hey, you can pay me back later. Don’t worry about it. I was spending money that I didn’t have to try and look like a big man in front of people. It was stupid and it got me into serious trouble. It’s a problem I’m going to rectify, and I want to help other people as well.

Also, I’ve noticed a distinct lack of UK-based personal finance blogs. All the big ones (I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar) are all US-based blogs, and while they still provide some awesome advice, sometimes it’s not always as applicable as it could be. So this is my attempt to rectify that.

First things first: my current financial situation. I currently have -£1,090.30 in my accounts, and approximately £10,000 worth of student loan debt so far.

It’s going to be an uphill struggle. At least that means I can string this blog out for at least 10 years. Yay for everyone!

I’m an economics student. I read about the financial crisis every day, I occasionally try and explain it to people, and I take an active interest in what happened and what we’re doing to solve it. I even tried to lay it out for people on my other blog. But this video is the best I’ve ever seen. It does a fantastic job of explaining difficult concepts and their causes and effects. It’s only 10 minutes long, and afterwards you’ll have a much better understanding of how we got into this mess.

Thanks to Charlie for the tip.

Hello, avid reader, and welcome to The Rich Brit, my blog about personal finance for students and young people based in the UK. My name is Andrew Lynch, and I’ll be your guiding hand through the rough and tumble world of personal finance. I’m young, smart and ambitious, just like you, and I have big plans for myself, just like you. That’s why I’m starting this blog. Plans are nothing without action. I want to be rich, and so do you, and we’re going to do it together.

I plan to write about anything personal finance related – saving, investing, debt reduction, getting a job, your first credit card, your first mortgage, all of that. And I’ll be practising what I preach every day, because I, like you am a poor student, who is not rich in practice, just in theory. (In my case economic theory – I’m an economics undergrad.)

Through this blog I want to help others take control of their finances, and join me in the journey to riches and financial freedom. It’s going to be a fun ride. Enjoy.