Its not a new thing that to save money money as a student is quite difficult due to day to day expenses on food, transportation, self care, handouts and unplanned expenses.
While I was in school four to fives back, I won’t even lie to save was a bit difficult for me do to because firstly my school didn’t allow us to cook, if I wanted to eat a completely three square meal then I sure had to buy food three times a day and sometimes even snacks to menu in between classes to keep my body, soul and spirit moving.
Back then if I really wanted to eat good food then I was definitely going to spend up to a thousand naira, because that restaurant was by far the neatest place to get food and even at that I still had food poisoning not to talk of the other food bukas. Apart from food, we usually printed handouts but some of our courses were usually handwritten too, So I didn’t really spend much on printing sheets.
When it came to self care and as girl there was so much for me to spend money on like making my hair, getting new clothes and bags, thank God I wasn’t really the fashion type that did spend a fortune on clothes.
I wasn’t the type to keep records of my spending but I was the type to control myself, so what I did back then the idea of eating three times daily was cut short or even if I wanted to eat three times, I did skip buying the expensive food three times in day, although the canteens were not really encouraging but my friends and I had where we bought our different meals, if we wanted rice then the expensive place for sure but if wanted the local food like soup and swallow then we would go the other places, some days in the afternoon we would just drink garri, groundnut and sugar with cold water, afterall our stomach were not showglasses.
Somedays, we don’t even eat the expensive food at all, we go for bread or noodles or fried yam and suya.
I remember there was a time a friend of mine fainted because she was actually saving money wasn’t eating well, she would take conflakes in the morning, afternoon and evening, Lol after she had that experience she started eating.
About self care, on norm I am not the fan to let strangers touch my hair, anytime I go home for holiday I make sure to make hairs that last up to a month at atleast then when I go back home for weekends my elder sister would make me another one, and as for clothes vendors usually come to the hostel and my friends and I usually go for the cheap ones, we don’t go to boutiques, I usually buy my expensive clothes at home because my dad would always pay for it.
Transportation didn’t really hit me hard because I lived almost all my years there inside the school premises, I hardly went out, if we were bored in the hostel, we did just take a stroll or go for evening walk outside the school, except I was going out of town and even at that we hard special bike men that we made friends and would charge lesser than the others.
To be honest, not that I didn’t like to do extravagant things or maybe I didn’t like to eat turkey everyday, being in school was a very different world entirely and every man for himself, excoet maybe you really have good friends that were ready to help in times of need, and thankfully those were the kind of friends I had in school and infact we lived like sisters and supported each other, we shared things together and food too.
PHOTO WAS AI GENERATED