Budgeting As A College Student

When I moved to college, I found it hard to manage my money. I had a shared account with my parents so they could easily send me a monthly allowance. Since this account was shared, my parents were able to see all of my transactions. How much I spent on textbooks, food, etc. including when and where. Since I’m an only child and moved far from home for college, my parents would worry about how I spent my money and where. It was a sweet gesture when they would question why I went to Waffle House at 3 am, but I decided I didn’t want them to worry about me doing that every week. I ended up opening a new account with a different bank that I could use for my own purchases that didn’t involve school expenses. This made managing my money even harder because I had to use two different apps to look at how much I had.

I am bad at math. I could never keep track of how much money I had left in my accounts combined without spending close to an hour calculating it. An hour that I could have used for more important things such as studying or binging a new Netflix show. I decided to look for apps that could help me keep track of my accounts. Some that I tried I had to manually set up a budget before I could do anything or they didn’t have access to the banks I used. It became frustrating trying to find the right app. Then I found one called Mint. This app actually had access to both banks I was using and didn’t have me set up a manual budget.

In Mint, linking the accounts was easier than a lot of other financial apps. All I had to do was search for it, then log in like I would using that bank’s app. Once I was logged in, Mint was able to show me my transactions and how much I had in total from both accounts. It even categorized all of my transactions for me! The categories can also be changed manually in case it was categorized wrong. For me, I use Venmo to pay for food between friends, but M

Once I got comfortable being able to see all of my accounts in one place, I started to play around with the app a bit. I found that there is a way to create a budget, but it’s a lot easier than how other apps make it. Mint walked me through each step of making a budget and would even suggest how much I should budget for each category based on my income. As someone who had never actually made a budget before, this feature was super helpful! The budget section even breaks down how much I have left to spend in each category for that month.

During my second year of college, I decided to open a credit card account. I figured it was time to start building up my credit score after I heard a bunch of my friends and family discussing how important it is. I had never owned a credit card before, and the concept was new to me. I wasn’t used to the idea that I could buy something now and then pay for it the next month. This made it hard for me to understand how much money I actually had available. I found that Mint also supported credit card accounts and added mine to the app. This made my life so much easier! Mint automatically calculates how much I have after all of my bills, even before I’ve paid them.

There’s many more features of the app that I still haven’t tried out, such as setting savings goals or including all bills into the app (not just credit cards). I personally don’t need all of the features included, but they are nice to have in case I do try them out. The basic features create a very user-friendly interface that has helped me understand how to budget my money better, especially when I began using the app as a college student. Now as an “actual adult” I have a better understanding of how money works and how to create and stick to a budget.