Right attitude, drawing up a budget essential for new university students
Thousands of young Canadian men and women are embarking on a huge change to their lives in the next few weeks as they leave home and enter university.
It’s an exciting and demanding time – as students handle their own finances for the first time and make decisions on money and debt that can haunt or help them for years to come.
Hailey Coleman, who just graduated from Ryerson University, remembers that it was “definitely a big change, that’s for sure.”
“I wasn’t living with my parents anymore, so for me it was really learning how to budget and how to be responsible for my money.”
Of course you can’t budget and control expenses unless you know how much money is coming in. That means students should make it their business to find out about any available grants and scholarships – but many don’t.
“They are either unaware, which is scary because high schools are supposed to instruct them in how to try and access money and they probably do but the students are still unaware,” said Alan Kaplan, a finance professor at Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University.
“So yes, some are unaware and some students know that these opportunities are out there but they simply haven’t explored them. Their parents took care of things until this time.”
Coleman said she made the same mistake when she first attended Ryerson, including missing out on an entry scholarship that “would have helped out big time.”
“There are tons of resources available in terms of scholarships that are available for hundreds of students and it’s really just a matter of applying for them.”
Coleman said she was lucky in having a friend who taught her how to budget, “which was huge.”
That meant she could get a handle on what was coming in and going out and once she got in the habit of keeping her receipts and seeing what she was spending, Coleman found it amazing to see how much these things were costing.
“It was more just learning how to distribute my money properly, like how to put enough aside for food and some for rent and just shopping around for different things,” she said.
“I got a bike which saved me a ton of money as opposed to buying Metro passes or tokens (for Toronto transit) every week. It was things like that I kind of learned along the way, even buying a water filter as opposed to buying bottled water. Little things along the way (that really add up).”
One of the biggest challenges that face students is holding down a part time job and Kaplan said this can be a bad situation for most men and women.
“I advise that unless you are a strong student, you have to recognize there is a balance, you cannot simply work 20 hours a week to support your university studies and expect to do sufficiently well,” he said.
Instead of putting your studies in jeopardy, he advises that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t go straight from high school to university.
“Take a year off if you need to. You’re still young, you can get a job a year down the road. It isn’t going to matter in terms of getting a job,” Kaplan said.
“Get money saved up so you don’t have to work too much. Because it is a very tough balance unless you are a very strong student.”
Coleman added that if you have to put in some long hours working, then consider cutting back your courses.
“I did have to have a job and so I cut back on my courses,” she said.
“I think that was the most brilliant thing to do. I took my time. I was able to keep my grades up, earning money so I didn’t have to take out a loan.”
Kaplan added that it is easy to get into debt with credit being readily available to university students and if a student gets into trouble, the smart thing to do is “see someone real quick.”
He knows Ryerson has a free counseling area for students to help them deal with academic and personal issues and is sure other universities have the same facilities.
But in the final analysis, he said that managing finances comes down to the individual.
“It’s mostly attitude,” he said.
“If you have the right attitude, you will figure out how to work ASAP, you will figure out who to speak to regarding grants, and bursaries. So I do think first and foremost it’s attitude and only second is it the actual technical details.”
