On saving money as a student...

And in the sense of 'putting some of it away', I mean. Not in the 'I paid less' sense.

It can be really hard to save any money when you have almost none anyway. Tonight though, in what could be seen as a rather optimistic gesture, I made a little saving box (out of the FireBox box that my dad's birthday pressie came in!). It's basic, the only thing I really did was cut a slot in it and shut it... But that still counts, right?

I grabbed my purse and decided to try to follow my mum's rule of anything less than a 50p piece goes in - so 20ps and under (well, it's what she does when she's actively trying to save, everyday stuff often drops to 5ps and less).

So, as of this evening, my little saving box has £2.12 in it. I'm strangely pleased. If I can keep that up, it'll eventually become some real money!

I'm also tempted to sign up for Lloyds Save The Change scheme, where:

Every time you use your Lloyds visa debit card, we'll round up the amount you
spent to the nearest pound and transfer the difference into a Lloyds TSB saving
account.

So yes, I'm not saying that Lloyds savings accounts are good rates or anything, but that's not really the intention - what I'm thinking is that I won't really notice it happening but when my money is getting uber-tight then I'll suddenly realise I have a little extra pot of money there...