Imagine $371.40 a fortnight – could you survive?

Imagine waking up in a dirty old share house after a trashy night in with a goon bag; all you can think about is your $3 coffee to get you through the day.  You take your usual one minute shower before the hot water runs out. After getting dressed up in your $5 op shop purchase, you make your way to the kitchen confronted by a pile of dirty dishes. You make a vegemite sandwich, again, to take to uni. Running towards the tram, you arrive not only to realise that you’ve missed the tram by two minutes but there are 20 tram inspectors waiting with their handy booklets. Damn, you say goodbye to that coffee – looks like you’ll have to buy a ticket. Fast forward eight hours, you get home to discover that your laptop isn’t working, conveniently right before final essays are due in…tomorrow!

This is a typical day for many students on Youth Allowance. A student living out of home could receive up to a measly $371.40 a fortnight. For those of you not doing an accounting degree, that’s $185.70 a week, or $26.50 a day and you haven’t even paid your electricity bill, let alone to fix your laptop.

Melbourne University Arts student Moya Richardson understands this all too well. “Income from youth allowance alone is barely sustainable for someone living independently,” says Moya. With out of pocket expenses like books and computer break downs – it isn’t.

In 2006, The Australian University Student Finances Report found one in eight students were living in poverty. That was three years ago when the Australian economy was booming; imagine the statistics now. A vegemite sandwich everyday isn’t sounding that bad after all.

The report also discovered 41.8 per cent of full time undergraduate students had a total yearly income of less than $10,000, which is about $371.40 a fortnight from Centrelink.

Financial and Housing Advisor Susan Barnes says there has been a 30 per cent increase in students seeking advice at the Swinburne Hawthorn office this year. “A good number of students that we do see are on Centrelink or Youth Allowance. But what the majority are then talking to us about is ‘I think I need to get a job.’ Where Centrelink used to cover life; just, they are now saying ‘I have to get something even if it’s 5 – 10 hours a week to keep me above,’” says Barnes.

Moya Richardson is watching her finances more closely. “I am being cautious in my spending and generally more aware of my spending habits…it has made me appreciate the security of my employment a lot more.”

Susan says students are “more worried about how long the recession is going to run. They are on a fixed income. Worried; so wanting to make sure that they plan because they don’t want to go into debt.”

This year’s budget will make it even harder for students to be eligible for Centrelink payments. For students to be classified as independent and receive benefits when they start university, they will now be required to work at least 30 hours per week for 18 months.

This means around 30,000 students will be ineligible for the payments. Hardest hit by the rule changes have been gap year students who decided to work this year because their income made them eligible for Youth Allowance under the old rules.

Moya disagrees with the changes. “I think the process you need to go through in order to qualify for youth allowance is intensive enough, especially when you consider job shortages and some of the conditions that young people must endure to earn the required amount.”

Universities are now offering financial advice to students online. Most have an example of a budget for students to follow. Swinburne University’s website suggests the lower the income, the more need there is to budget. The website is able to tell you where most of your money is going and helps plan for those bigger expenses, such as rent and laptop breaking.

Susan Barnes says students need to plan for the year ahead. “You need to think:  ‘alright worst case scenario if I get sick three times this year I should probably have $200 set aside for medicine.’ So okay that’s $4 a week. That doesn’t sound much.”

Although students admit having a budget would make their life easier, not all of them want to do it. Bronnie Abbott, a Melbourne University Politics student says: “I don’t think I’d like to have the ridiculous amount of money I spend on coffee staring me in the face.”

If you feel you need to enlist the services of a financial expert to ensure you don’t end up drinking goon every weekend, there are friendly Financial Advisors at your University who will sit down with you and work out your yearly budget. All universities should have their own financial advisors and if not Centrelink have their own financial information centre. You don’t have to be receiving Centrelink payments to check it out.

But there are still ways to save money so you don’t miss out on the sweeter things in life. Try and take advantage of student discounts wherever possible, attend cheaper or even free events. Bronnie is an expert at this, “I often go out to Sister Bellas, which is in a laneway off Lonsdale Street, they have cheap drinks; $15 for a carafe of Sangria.” Proof it’s still possible to be classy on a budget – it’s not all about the goon.

If you are going to go out drinking, you should line your stomach in preparation for the night ahead. Veggie Bar on Brunswick Street is great for all the vegetarians out there and Tiamo’s on Lygon Street is famous for its $15 pastas.

You can’t eat out all the time and with food being the one thing that Susan Barnes believes has increased most in price during the recession, she recommends students shop at their local market. “Shop in bulk and cook in bulk. These are really the best ways to save yourself some money.”

Bronnie says: “living close to the Queen Victoria Market is really good for cheap fruit, veg and meat…especially during late afternoons when prices have often been drastically reduced.” She also recommends buying no name brands from the supermarket rather than going to the convenience store, which is often more expensive.

For clothing, go to op shops and factory outlets. Bridge Road in Richmond and the Direct Factory Outlets in Spencer Street and Waterfront City offer discounted brand name clothing.  “If I buy new clothes most of the time they will be on sale or at a reduced price,” says Moya.

If you are serious about saving money, Susan Barnes recommends opening up a second bank account. Do you research to ensure the account has no fees, and doesn’t automatically send you an ATM card or cheque book. “We do say one of the best ways to save is to put money into a secondary account that you can’t touch, because then you can’t see it.”

There are things you can’t change; dirty old share houses, piles of dishes that have been sitting there for weeks on end, broken laptops, lack of hot water, leaky fridges and well, your $371.40 a fortnight.

But imagine waking up in your dirty share house, after a night out at Sister Bellas and you’re not feeling quite as sorry for yourself as you normally do.  You managed to avoid the goon and your cold shower is doing wonders for your hangover.

Your laptop still might be broken – for now – but your secret account is accumulating money and at least the fridge is full of fresh veggies from the market.

As a student, you might not be able to afford the finer things in life all the time but you can still have fun and lots of it. Just try and stay off the goon, there are other options – besides that stuff can’t be good for you.

So imagine a total income of $371.40 a fortnight – could you survive? Yeah, just!

Shakira Silvestri & Kim Zoe Evans

Visit the Centrelink website for information on how to apply and upcoming policy changes for 2010.