No More Beans: The Student Money Podcast Save the Student

Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, everyone’s nervous about starting uni. To help you make the most of it, we decided to get in the recording studio (spoiler: it’s just our office) and share our top tips for freshers’ week.

We start by discussing our own freshers’ week experiences (translation: here’s what went wrong for us). We say it a few times during the podcast, but it’s worth repeating once more - freshers’ week doesn’t have to be the insane seven-day party that everyone makes it out to be!

Nonetheless, it’s worth taking some steps to help make your freshers’ week into the amazing experience that you deserve. We run through our top 10 tips for surviving freshers’ week and then take a listen to what you - yes, YOU - said you wish you’d known before starting uni. From getting romantically involved with flatmates to the price of dairy products, you really covered all the bases!

Probably the scariest thing about starting uni is making friends, and no freshers’ podcast would be complete without some hints and tips on how to find some mates. If you’ve listened before you’ll know what Jess and Tom are like, and you’ll know that if they were able to make friends at uni, anyone can!

If you’re moving away for university, then you’ll have to get to grips with your new flatmates too. Worry not, as Jess and Tom share their tips on surviving shared living. Things get a bit heated as they delve into the housemate habits that annoy them the most, but it spawns some great advice on how to behave if you want a harmonious household.

Finally, our resident Student Money Expert, Jake, is back by popular(ish) demand to share some of his pearls of wisdom on budgeting for uni life. He very much seems to have learned from his mistakes, as his story of an extravagant freshers’ purchase can testify.

Access the show notes on www.savethestudent.org/podcast

Don’t forget, you can share your own stories and money problems by sending us a voice message on WhatsApp (just head to savethestudent.org/whatsapp to join the group), tweeting us at @savethestudent or emailing us at podcast@savethestudent.org.

If you have any burning questions about how to save money at university, or have any feedback on the show, we’d love to hear from you!

Hope you enjoy the show!

Nights out are one of the biggest student loan killers, so to end the first series of No More Beans we thought we’d discuss how you can still be a baller on a budget. From pricey end of term balls to messy nights out, we tackle some of the biggest expenses you face as a student, and share our tried and tested methods for saving cash.

We reveal why a pasty pitstop is the night out lifesaver you never knew you needed, and how you can get cheaper entry into clubs. We then try our hand at making some interesting budget cocktails. Ever tried a Jammie Dodger shot before? You probably won’t want to after listening to this. Plus, we rustle up a Cheeky Vimto and Fluffy Duck to get the party going.

Things take a bit of a weird turn when we give drinking game app Picolo a go. Was Jess bitten by a tortoise? Which Justin Bieber song is Jake a secret fan of? All this plus more will be revealed when we give it a whirl.

In our final Money Confessions of the series, we reveal our most expensive nights out. If you’ve ever woken up to realise you’ve spent a bit too much money the night before, you’re definitely not alone. Plus, Jake talks about why running was his choice of transport on a night out, and Jess reveals why she took a blanket to the club.

Access the show notes on https://www.savethestudent.org/podcast


Don’t forget, you can share your own stories and money problems by sending us a voice message on WhatsApp (just head to savethestudent.org/whatsapp to join the group), tweeting us at @savethestudent or emailing us at podcast@savethestudent.org.

If you have any burning questions about how to save money at university, or have any feedback on the show, we’d love to hear from you!

Hope you enjoy the show!

Travelling is what a lot of us live for, but we all know how frustratingly expensive it can be. So this week we’ve dedicated a whole show to saving money on holidays - whether it’s the flights, accommodation or activities, this episode is full to the brim with top tips that you’ll want to make a note of.

We’re joined by the wonderful Chelsea Dickenson (also known as Chelsea Travel), who recently completed a challenge where she went on 10 ( yes, 10!) holidays in a year for half of the average Brit’s holiday spend. She jetted off to Dubai, Miami, Denmark, Spain and more for just £1,700! What’s her secret? Well it turns out there’s lots of them, and they’re all in this week’s show.

Chelsea lets us in on the best methods for finding cheap flights and accommodation - from apps, Facebook groups and pet sitting sites. Tune in to find out how she managed to get two week’s free accommodation in Paris, and a stay in an Emmy-award winner’s multi-million pound apartment in Miami. To say we’re jealous is an understatement.

We’ll also be discussing our best tactics for getting hotel upgrades and sharing some of our funniest holiday stories. Cheap flights and hotels are great, but sometimes it doesn’t always go to plan…

Access the show notes on https://www.savethestudent.org/podcast


Don’t forget, you can share your own stories and money problems by sending us a voice message on WhatsApp (just head to savethestudent.org/whatsapp to join the group), tweeting us at @savethestudent or emailing us at podcast@savethestudent.org.

If you have any burning questions about how to save money at university, or have any feedback on the show, we’d love to hear from you!

Hope you enjoy the show!

We’re always banging on about how the maintenance loan isn’t enough to live on, and as such, well over half of you are forced to look beyond your student loan and your parents for funding. But what are the best ways to make money, and what can you do if a conventional part-time job isn’t a viable option? Fortunately we tackle all this, and more, in episode four of No More Beans.

We kick things off by discussing some of the weirdest ways in which students have made money - and when we say weird, we mean WEIRD. It turns out that you guys have been getting pretty creative when it comes to finding a side hustle! The best of the bunch, by far, was this week’s listener submission - it’s worth listening just to hear the bizarre (and, frankly, disgusting) way in which he made money…

As for ‘normal’ jobs, where are the best places to look for them? Most companies offer their employees some kind of benefits on top of their salaries, so why not try applying to work somewhere that’ll repay you with more than just cash? We run through the companies offering the best employee perks, so you can get the biggest rewards for your time.

Finally, we chat to the founder of Save the Student, Owen Burek, about the ins and outs of setting up a business as a student. Owen launched the site as a fresh-faced student all the way back in 2007, so nobody’s better placed to give advice on the subject than him. He shares some great tips with us, and even reveals some of his failed business ventures!


Don’t forget, you can share your own stories and money problems by sending us a voice message on WhatsApp (just head to savethestudent.org/whatsapp to join the group), tweeting us at @savethestudent or emailing us at podcast@savethestudent.org.

If you have any burning questions about how to save money at university, or have any feedback on the show, we’d love to hear from you!

Hope you enjoy the show!

It’s one of the hardest parts of uni life - those long days in the library revising for an upcoming exam or frantically trying to meet the next deadline. This week Jess and Tom will be giving you some top tips and a dose of inspiration to help you get through the tough times.

To start the show we’re sharing the best inspirational quotes - by which we mean the cringiest ones that don’t make any sense (because they’re way funnier). Then we’ll be chatting to Rachel, a Law student who runs a studygram - she’ll be telling us how you can actually make money from instagramming your revision notes.

We’ll also be sharing your top revision hacks and sharing a couple of our own as well - including a sneaky hack to keep you off your mobile phone that could even make you money. Finally we’ll be revealing our revision break guilty pleasures - where all our money goes on the run up to exams.

You can access the show notes and useful links here: www.savethestudent.org/podcast

Don’t forget, you can share your own stories and money problems by sending us a voice message on WhatsApp (just head to savethestudent.org/whatsapp to join the group), tweeting us at @savethestudent or emailing us at podcast@savethestudent.org.

If you have any burning questions about how to save money at university, or have any feedback on the show, we’d love to hear from you!

Hope you enjoy the show!

In episode two of No More Beans, the brand new podcast from Save the Student, Jess and Tom are talking all about shopping - and, more specifically, how to save money on it.

We start by hearing about some of your worst impulse buys, before Tom and Jess reveal some of their own. It’s fair to say that the phrase ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’ has never been more applicable than in this section. You’ll have to listen to the pod to hear them for yourself, but rest assured - if you’ve ever bought something bizarre or unnecessary in a moment of madness, you are not alone.

Next up, we took a look at the results of our National Student Money Survey to see what students are actually spending their money on. Rent was, unsurprisingly, top of the pops, but how much are you spending on everything else?

Finally, we did what we do best: give some simple, effective, money saving advice. We asked you what you spend the most money on at uni, and you overwhelmingly responded: FOOD.

Nobody’s better at saving money on shopping than our resident Deals Expert, Bronni, so we invited her into the studio to give us her top tips. One of her tips in particular gets Tom waxing lyrical about a lunchtime favourite he discovered through a money saving app, but once he’s done with that, Bronni has just about enough time to share her worst impulse buy too. Yep, even the master money savers are guilty!

You can access the show notes and useful links here: https://www.savethestudent.org/podcast

Don’t forget, you can share your own stories and money problems by sending us a voice message on WhatsApp (just head to savethestudent.org/whatsapp to join the group), tweeting us at @savethestudent or emailing us at podcast@savethestudent.org.

If you have any burning questions about how to save money at university, or have any feedback on the show, we’d love to hear from you!

Hope you enjoy the show!