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| I went to this place one time and they could not answer my question but they did have nice ivy |
1. Go grocery shopping at 7 PM, the magical time when 75% markdowns on going-out-of-date-but-still-OK food appear. You can get everything from premade salads to microwave meals to raw fruits and veg and meat for up to 90% off at Tesco, Asda, M&S, the Co-op, and more. Sometimes I come out emptyhanded, and sometimes I come out with more than I can carry, so this works best if you can swing by a store on the way home after work/class a few times a week. Throw everything in the freezer! Things never go bad in the freezer, right?
2. Cashback for delivery. Quidco and TopCashback both have some great deals on cashback for new customers shopping online at Asda, Tesco, Iceland, and more; the best one I saw was £15 off a £25 spend at Iceland, which is pretty magnificent. (Those links above are my referral links, so if you sign up, please use those links specifically! We can have a pizza party with the referral bonus or something.) Ocado also offers 30% off your first shop.
3. NUS/TOTUM student card has 10% off at the Co-op, even if your items are already discounted. It costs £12, so you decide whether you shop at the Co-op enough to make it worth it.
4. The Community Fridge at the Edge Cafe has free going-out-of-date food, seemingly the stuff that nobody bought for 75% off at Tesco. The selection when I went was pretty limited, just oranges and bread, but if you live nearby, it would be worth checking out if you are really strapped for cash. It is not only for the homeless or desperately poor, and it will expire if nobody eats it, so take what you want, and leave a donation or ask them about other ways you can help.
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| The Edge cafe. Free food in the fridge; cheap food at the cafe. |
5. If you're a student at Cambridge, Formal Hall is a good way to get all your fancy going-out-to-eat cravings out of your system for a cheap, subsidized price.
Eating out on the cheap
1. TooGoodToGo anti-food-waste app. Fantastic restaurants, bakeries, and market stalls get rid of leftover food for takeaway just before they close up for the day, anywhere from 50-90% off, with 75% off being standard. Cambridge has a lot of these places, and they tend to be generous - I once spent £3.50 and got literally as much as I could carry from a local bakery. London has about a million gazillion TooGoodToGo restaurants, and it is very popular in Europe, too! The app is fun and easy to use, you can't overspend, they may well give you way more than you expected, and you are doing a good thing for the planet. Hooray! This is my new favorite app. Examples in Cambridge for £3.75 or less: sushi from a restaurant, Indian, African, or Venezuelan food from the market, more bread and croissants than you could ever imagine from a number of bakeries, etc.
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| This cost £3.50 with TooGoodToGo. It is two layers deep. It was not good though; I don't recommend Yo!Sushi. But I bet the sushi in London is good. |
2. Tastecard always has either free or £1 trials that last for a couple months, where you can get half off movie tickets and 50% off or two-for-one at loads of restaurants, both chains and independent places. Cambridge has a number of Tastecard restaurants, but London is the true Tastecard smorgasbord, with amazing independent restaurants seemingly every block. Highly recommended if you eat out a lot, or even sometimes.
3. NUS/TOTUM for students card, depending. The NUS/TOTUM card costs £12 and is only available to students. It has OK offers, and offers 40% off at Las Iguanas, which is a pretty OK Latin American restaurant by the river (and a chain), but that is really the only restaurant bonus I have gotten from it, as NUS/TOTUM places tend to also have Groupons for the same price anyway. I think I have made my money back by combining the savings at Las Iguanas with my savings at the Co-op, but I'm not exactly rolling in dough from this.
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| A terribly handsome and well-dressed chap at Las Iguanas |
Entertainment on the cheap
1. Stay home and do your homework.
2. LivingSocial currently has a deal for 2-for-£9 movie tickets! Otherwise, movies are expensive here. You can see movies at the Picturehouse for £7.50 on Mondays, but other than that, I'm stumped. We have a projector and good speakers, so just come to our place for free movies.
3. Go listen to Evensong at one of the chapels.
4. Bike or walk along the river at night and in your head, wish goodnight to all the narrowboaters snug in their li'l boats, with their li'l wood-burning stoves chug-chug-chugging away to keep them all snug 'n' toasty.
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| Punting costs money, but appreciating boats is always free |
5. ??? Are there student-priced tickets for things in town???
6. Free museums! The Fitzwilliam and Polar museums are free, and the Botanic Gardens are free for students.
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| I am all about botanic gardens |
Transportation on the cheap
1. Buy a weekly bus pass. The buses are crazy expensive per ride, but a week pass is only £15, so if you ride a few days a week, it pays for itself.
2. Bike or walk, really.
3. 16-25/mature student railcard/two-together railcard! If you are 16-25 OR a student, you can get 1/3 off all train journeys; you can also get a two-together railcard if you always travel with the same person (my husband and I got one). It only costs around £30 for a railcard, and you can get cashback at Quidco and Topcashback (links above), so it really pays for itself. I even got both a student railcard and a two-together, because the savings are so huge and I like to travel by train.
4. Look for Megabus and National Express coach sales. You can sometimes get tickets for £5 each way throughout the UK. Megabus used to have £1 tickets all the time, but that seems to be no more.
Rent
idk just cry I guess
Tuition
lol
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