Food will probably take the next largest bite out of your budget. The average weekly shop for a student costs £32.20 according to Halifax research and if you’re spending more than about £40 a week on food, you’re probably spending too much. Remember that your food budget isn’t just what’s on your supermarket receipt. Don’t forget to count snacks, teas and coffees in the campus cafeteria and any takeaways. You can ignore eating out when working out the weekly food budget, so long as you remember to count it under your entertainment costs.

What you spend on grub is bound to depend on where you live, what you eat and how much, but set aside a realistic nosh dosh allowance and stick to it.

If you’re lucky, your parents will pack you off to uni with a big box of basics: fruit juice and tinned goodies, coffee, tea, pasta and so on. But students cannot live on basics alone and this lot won’t last long anyway. Just remember that odd little snacks throughout the day do add up, so take the long route home from lectures, the one that avoids the coffee shops, the newsagent and the snack-crammed vending machine.

Some savvy students go veggie (if they’re not already), which, so long as you get a balanced diet, is just as healthy and cheaper. (Even cutting down on the dead flesh makes quite a difference.) There’s also the appeal of it being more sound. In fact, buying politically correct products is often no more expensive, especially if you know where to shop. Many student shops on university campuses stock a decent range of sound groceries from fairtrade choc to biodegradable washing powder that are cheaper and just as good as leading brands.

Organic foods do tend to be more expensive, however – especially at the moment. But even the organic products at the market can be cheaper than the stuff blasted with chemicals at the supermarket.

For packet foods, own brand stuff is almost always cheapest. Supermarkets are upping the range of products in their economy brands too. They’re often not noticeably inferior, they just package it like that to make you feel good about spending more. Don’t be fooled.

Eating healthily

It’s perfectly feasible to eat healthily, sensibly and cheaply all at the same time, but students tend to concentrate on the last of those three - at least until the pub closes and then they’re more worried about eating anything, fast.

As a result, students have a tendency to be junk food junkies. If you can’t order it with fries or bung it in a microwave or a toaster, it’s simply too much hassle for most.

Or, going from the sublime to the sensible: some students think buying sea bass, a good rioja and wild Hungarian rocket is justified because it means they are being sensible and eating well. Sadly even if your fridge contents looks like Nigella's your bank balance certa...

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