Top 5 Ways To Earn Money As A University Student
Living as a university student can require you to be careful with your money considering student loans are fixed. With them, you are given a set amount each year based on your household income and there isn’t any way to get more aside from taking things into your own hands. Living through a cost-of-living crisis where these loans have remained stagnant is tough, and many students are struggling to stay financially afloat. It is estimated that 69% of university students work part-time alongside their studies.
Of course, some jobs are better than others, and this article explores a few of the ways you can earn some extra cash. We have chosen the jobs on the following list because they are realistic; although they won’t get you rich quick, they will get you paid.
Retail/Service Worker
Most universities are based in large towns or cities, with a multitude of businesses operating everywhere you go. Therefore, finding a job in a local supermarket, café, retail store or restaurant is usually quite easy, and if you apply to enough, it’s just a matter of time before you land a job. Many smaller businesses put up window adverts looking to hire whilst larger enterprises may have applications posted online. Check out the Scottish government website here that links to some great sites for finding jobs in your area.
The biggest advantage of this type of job has to be the hours you can put in; if you find somewhere that is busy, usually there are plenty of shifts up for the taking. This can work especially well with the typical university schedule, where you may fluctuate between busy and quiet periods within a semester. Working more hours during holidays and quieter periods can allow you to take it easier when the academic workload increases.
Moreover, the opportunity to make friends and connections should not be overlooked in these jobs; they tend to have a rich social aspect considering you are working in a team with other colleagues. Whilst university is considered a very social place, a recent study by the National Institute of Health found 26% of students report themselves as feeling lonely. Having a job that involves you being around other people, whether that be customers or colleagues, is a great platform for developing new relationships.
Finally, providing there is a healthy workplace environment, these jobs can offer a great work-life separation. When you leave at the end of your shift you don’t need to take the work home with you unlike university. Moreover, for all the benefits that come with working from home, travelling to a different location to work has been shown to help people compartmentalize their lives and provide a clear separation between work and rest.
The downside is that these jobs often have a poor hourly wage compared to the others listed, and some may require you to sign a contract to work a certain number of hours per week. Whilst an 8-hour contract may not sound like much at the time, it ties you to the city during the long university holidays as you still must come in for that shift once a week. For this reason, we would recommend finding a casual, zero-hour contract job if you plan to either visit home or travel during university breaks.
We put this job type on the list because it is by far the easiest one to get started in. But for those want to be a bit more creative, continue reading our other suggestions below.
Summer Internship
Summer internships are great and are often expected of university students by future employers, at least in some fields. If you are not familiar with the concept, an internship is a 2-3 month working placement over the summer holidays in an industry related to your degree.
Financially, they can be amazing opportunities, with the average hourly rate in the UK being £15.38. When you consider that you would be working full-time during this 2–3-month period, it’s obvious that you can earn a few thousand and as a result you may not need to work throughout the following academic year.
Internships contribute to your professional development in university, allow you to gain valuable CV skills in a relevant field as well as build a relationship with professionals in the industry (many interns are offered a post-graduation job through these programmes). Some placements may fund accommodation, travel and even food for the duration of your stay, massively reducing your expenditures and preventing placement location becoming a limiting factor as to whether you can attend or not.
The biggest flaw with an internship is the lost time, as many do not offer any holidays considering the placement period is relatively short. University summers are probably the longest holiday you’ll ever get until you retire, therefore you may not want to spend all of them working.
Finally, earning a big chunk of money from an internship requires a lot of self-control and planning if you want to make it last over the year. If you want to work as an intern over summer to remove the need to work whilst studying the rest of the year, then we would recommend you set yourself a strict monthly limit. Most mobile banking apps allow you to put a monthly spend cap in place, so a good idea could be to put all the money you earn that summer into a sperate account then put a spend-cap on it.
Matched Betting
Matched betting is a process by which you take advantage of bookmakers “free bet” promotions to make a guaranteed profit. There are many sites that explain it clearly as well as guide you through how to do it. We would recommend checking out OddsMonkey where you can try their free trial to make some guaranteed profit.
The nice thing about matched betting is it is completely up to you how much you do on a day-to-day basis. Evidently the more you put in the more you get out, and most people who do it will use it as a supplemental income, although there are reports of people who do it full time. Once you’ve gained some efficiency in the process, you can earn £300-£500 per month working around 5 hours per week. We’ve put matched betting on here because it’s so incredibly easy to squeeze into your daily routine. The NIH published a study that estimated students spend on average 3.18 hours per day on social media alone. If you’re guilty of doing this then perhaps matched betting is something you can do to replace this bad habit with; unlike doom-scrolling, you’ll at least be making money from it.
If you are meticulous, careful and follow the instructions set out by guide sites, you will never lose money. However, human error can occur and lead to losses if you are not careful, therefore we recommend you start of slowly whilst learning the ropes.
Another downside of matched betting is the speed of which you can ear profit. The more money you put in at the beginning, the quicker you can start earning larger amounts. You can start with as little as £50, but this will make the process of progressing to earning hundreds a lot slower. As it is a skill you must learn though, being forced to start slowly in the beginning can help you better understand the process and avoid unnecessary losses due to mistakes
Paid Society Position
Universities have an abundance of societies, and it pays to be a part of some. Whilst this doesn’t tend to be the case with most sports clubs, many academic societies will offer a one-off payment to be on the committee. This, of course, requires work and commitment throughout the year, however it doesn’t tend to be too strenuous. More importantly, if you were planning on participating anyways, why not get paid for it? Aside from the money, societies are a great was to socially connect with like-minded people during your studies, and it goes without saying that being on the committee itself puts you in the centre of the club.
There are a few limitations: most societies don’t allow you to be on committee unless you’ve already been a member with them before. In addition to this, the money you get is just a one-off payment and not something that will support you for a long period, we’re talking a few hundred at most. For these reasons, we only recommend doing it if you have a genuine interest in the society itself, treating the money as a nice little bonus.
Tutoring
