Maybe you’re getting financial aid or taking out student loans. Maybe you’ve worked hard all summer so you don’t have to work during the year. Maybe your job is like mine and your semester’s pay comes in a lump at the beginning of the semester. There are a lot of scenarios where you end up with all or a lot of the money you have for the whole semester at the beginning of the semester. This seems great in September, but if you don’t budget right, it can be disastrous in the later months.

What you need is a budget, but unfortunately most guides to making a budget assume that you have a monthly income. They simply don’t work for the student who has all of the money for the semester upfront.

I’ve got a step by step guide to help you set up your budget so that your money will last you the entire semester. The process seems hard right now, but you only have to do it once, and then you’ll have a budget to keep you on track! It’s worth the effort, I promise!

Step One:

Determine how much you have or expect to have. Add together all of your savings, financial aid, loan money, etc, that you will use to pay for the semester. For this step, only include financial aid you’re getting at the beginning of this semester, not financial aid that you’ll get next semester.

Step Two:

Determine how long you need the money to last you for. If you’re using financial aid, you’re probably going to get about the same amount next semester too, so you only need to budget this money for the semester. If you’re relying on summer earnings or other lump sum you only get once a year, you’ll have to make your budget last over the whole school year.

If your income is mixed between these two sources (e.g. you have summer money and financial aid), separate it out into one-time money and money you’ll get again next semester. Put aside half of the one-time money so you’ll have it for next semester. Add together the two numbers that are left: 1/2 of your one-time money (summer savings, etc) and all of your recurring money (financial aid, etc).

NOTE: I like to set aside a chunk of money for savings before I start making my budget. This money gets subtracted at this step, before I start making my semester budget, and sits untouched unless an emergency comes up. If you’d like to stick a lump in savings at the beginning of the semester, subtract it from the total you just came up with. You can also budget in savings each month. It depends on your personal preference, but I strongly recommend having some sort of emergency savings.

Step Three:

Determine the expenses you need to pay at the beginning of the semester. This includes tuition, books, meal plan, fees, etc. Will you need to pay for the semester’s housing upfront? If so, that goes here too. Subtract all of these expenses from your total. The remaining amount is how much you’ll have to budget during the semester.

Step Four

Determine how much you have per month. To do this, take the amount from the end of the last step, and divide it by how many months you need it to last for. This is usually about 4 months per semester. Be sure to round the number of months up (e.g., if your semester starts halfway through August, count this as a full month). Worst case scenario, you’ll have extra money. Best case scenario, it saves you from running out a few weeks before the school year ends.

The amount you end up with is how much money you have to work with each month. Be sure to write this down.

NOTE: if you want, you can also split this into weeks, not months. This is more exact because you may start the semester the last week of August and end the first week in December, and you might not want to count both of those as full months. I personally find a monthly budget easier to work with because of the nature of my bills, but it’s an option if it works better for you! Just use the number of weeks in the semester instead of months, and use weeks whenever months are mentioned from now on.

Step Four and a Half:

If you have a job during the school year in addition to your financial aid, savings, etc, now is the time to add it in. Determine or estimate how much you will earn per month, and add it to the total from above. Round low on this, so that you don’t budget more money than you end up having.

Step Five:

Estimate your monthly required expenses. How much do you spend a month on groceries? If you don’t know this, ask your parents for a guesstimate. Will you have to pay rent each month instead of at the beginning of the semester? If so, put that in this category. This is also where your monthly bills and any other recurring fees, especially those that automatically charged to your account (think Netflix, etc) go. Be sure to write these down; this is the official start of your budget. Add these up and subtract the total from your monthly budget amount.

Where are you at? If your number is positive, you’re doing good so far. If the number is negative, you need to find a way to cover at least that much every month. This might mean reducing your bills somehow, or getting a part time job during the school year.

Step Six:

If you still have money left for the month, this is where you can have some fun with your budget. What’s important to you? Do you like to spend money on going out with friends, or shopping for new clothes? You can budget your leftover money any way you want, just remember that you cannot go over this amount each month. You’ll probably want to build in some padding in case you overspend.

The way that you budget this money might vary from month to month. For instance, most of this leftover might be budgeted to school supplies and dorm furnishings in august, Christmas presents in December, and shopping for yourself the other months. Think ahead of when you’re likely going to need to send money, and plan that into your budget.

Decide where you want your money to go, and write down the categories and how much you can afford to spend on these.

At the end of all of this, you should have a list of your required and “fun” categories and how much you can spend on them, and these numbers should add up to your total monthly budget amount. It might look something like this (note: these numbers are totally made up, and your budget will look different depending on your needs):

Totally monthly budget amount: $1000

Required expenses:

Rent: $400

Bills: $100

Groceries: $250

“Fun” Expenses:

Hanging out with friends: $100

Beauty: $50

Shopping: $100

NOTE: If you didn’t take out a chunk for savings or emergencies at the beginning, work in a set amount to put aside each month into your monthly budget. Don’t touch this money for anything else. Put it right into your savings account at the beginning of the month.

Step Seven:

Stick to your budget! This is the hardest step. Keep track of your spending each month, and compare it to your budget. Do not go over your budget. If gave yourself $50 for going out and spent it all, you’re going to have to wait until next month to go out. It’s tempting to spend the money now because it’s just sitting in your account now, but you’re only hurting future you if you do that.

At the end of the month, go over your budget. You might have to make adjustments the first couple of months if you find yourself needing more money in some categories and less in others. If you have money leftover in any categories, you can either add it to next month’s budget (this is great if you want to save up for a big purchase) or add it into your savings.

And there you go! You have a budget!

A few parting words before we go:

I know that I’ve talked a lot about emergency savings, but I cannot stress how important it is. Be sure to take emergencies into consideration. You never know when something is going to come up! You do not want to “borrow” money from future months for emergencies! This is just stealing from yourself, and you’ll regret it when you run out of food money in March. Have some kind of a plan for emergencies.

I personally like to not only set aside a large chunk of money at the beginning of the semester for emergency savings, but also add any leftover money from the month. This helps my savings add up. This way, I know that if something were to happen, or even if just a big purchase came up, I have the funds to cover it. This came in handy when the apartment I’m living in nest year required the entire year’s worth of rent upfront. I was able to pay for that with the emergency money that I’ve saved, and now any money that I would normally pay towards rent each month will go back into replenishing my fund instead.

Additionally, I know it’s tempting to spend a lot of money, you’re young and you only do college once. But let’s get real: college is expensive. If you’re taking out loans you want to take out as little as possible. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but graduation will come soon and you’ll have to pay back anything you borrowed. Even if you don’t borrow anything, you’ll want to graduate with as much in your savings as possible.

Because of this, live like you’re broke. I’m not saying not to ever do anything fun, but don’t blow through money like crazy. It takes a little bit to find a balance between saving money and having fun in college, but you can do it. My personal rule is to spend money only on memories, not on things. I hardly ever buy clothes or other nonessentials, but I do always go on the spontaneous ice cream runs at midnight, because those memories are much more valuable to me than material things. You’ll learn soon enough what is important to you. Try to only spend money on those things.

I know that budgeting in college is really overwhelming at first, but I believe in you! You’ve got this!

Do you have any other budget tips? Let me know in the comments!