The best apps to help manage your finances at university

Starting university can be tough – especially when it comes to managing your bank balance. Whether you’re stuck for ideas for food shopping, need discount codes, or want an app to help you track impulse spending, we’ve tracked down the best apps to help you manage your finances at university.

There are plenty of apps out there to help you reign in spending habits at university; some are specifically and innovatively designed for students. Here is a selection of the best ones to help you become a savvy shopper at university.

Yolt

Yolt is a money management app and it is fairly comprehensive in terms of tracking your everyday spending. With alerts and tracking it gives you daily insights into your spending habits, and you can create budgets for different aspects of your life such as groceries, eating out, shopping and personal care. It will also allow you to analyse more closely what you’re splurging on, and where you could be saving. Another big plus for those of you having to arrange your own utility bills: it can also help you search for better energy prices by suggesting packages or deals.

VoucherCodes

Recommended by Times Higher Education as one of the top five apps for managing student finance, VoucherCodes is a voucher-finding app. It includes a variety of shopping, travel and eating discounts, and the offers are tailored to your current location – so whether you’re at university or visiting home you can access the best discounts around. If your friends want to dine out but are struggling to agree on somewhere to go, what better way to get everyone to decide on somewhere – where they can also benefit from savings by downloading the app!

Pingit

Your first term at university will most likely be a blur of nights out, takeaways and fresher’s flu. When you’re thrown in the deep end with a bunch of people you don’t know – living together and managing expenses as a group is a constant back and forth of IOUs. Pingit can solve all your money-sharing problems: it’s an app for spending and receiving money. If you encourage your friends to download this app, you can share costs of trips out, takeaways and food shops easily. Also, if you’re the first to download and introduce your friends to it, you’ll get 5 pounds per person that downloads the app and makes a transfer. The best part, though? You’ll no longer have awkward conversations with your flatmates about what they owe you; just send them a passive aggressive Pingit money ‘request’ from the safety of your lecture hall!

BigOven

Another recommendation from Times Higher Education Top Five, BigOven is the perfect app those of you who are struggling to know what to cook. If it’s your first time cooking for yourself, the BigOven app has a variety of recipes to help you out. One of the best things about this app is that it has a function which allows you to enter all your leftovers and food in the cupboard – so when you’re a bit low on cash and your cupboard is looking a bit bare, BigOven can suggest a tasty recipe made from a combination of your leftover products!

GrantFairy Scholarship App

Set up by 21 year-old Myles Jardine, this app is designed specifically for students looking to lighten their debt by a grant or bursary. The GrantFairy app lists more than 4000 grants, bursaries and scholarships provided by UK universities, foundations and organisations. Users pay a small monthly fee to access this database of funding options –but the small fee is probably worth it compared to the amount you could receive from one of the funding organisations!