WORDS BY JAMIE LEE CURTIS TAETE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY PADDY JONES

Once your student loan comes through, you have two choices. You can work out a sensible way of stretching it out for as long as possible, with meal plans, money set aside for rent and maybe even a little bit left over for a treat every other month. Or you can blow the entire thing in two days, then spend the rest of the year trying to figure out if there’s a way of buying beer with a Topman store card. If you opt for the latter, then here’s a guide for making it through university with little or no money.

ALCOHOL

The best way to get free booze is to try to make friends with as many people who work in PR as possible. Unfortunately, this will mean being friends with as many people who work in PR as possible. However, it will be totally worth it when you’re at a party to celebrate a collaboration between G-Shock and some graffiti artist you’ve never heard of, fighting off 200 other people for a warm (but free) bottle of Asahi.

BIKES

Do not buy a fixed-gear bike. You’re paying hundreds of pounds extra for something that has been obsolete for over 100 years. Buy a secondhand bike listed in a local newspaper for £20. You’ll be able to enjoy luxuries like “brakes”, “gears”, “riding downhill without pedalling” and “not getting your bike stolen three times a week”.

COMPLAIN

Every time you pay to use a service, it is your duty as a consumer to find (or invent) a fault and complain about it. In the last few weeks, I’ve complained my way to £25 cash, £30 in vouchers and 100 green Clubcard points (whatever they are).

DEPOSIT

Your landlord is going to try as hard as they can to keep your deposit. I was once charged £40 because I left Blu-Tack residue on my wall. You can either spend an entire year not having parties and cleaning up after yourself or you can write off the £400 as a “fun tax” and do whatever the fuck you like. Your choice.

ENERGY BOOST

Within walking distance of my house are two banks, a jobcentre and a recruitment agency that all have free coffee machines in their waiting areas. Sure, it’s going to be embarrassing regularly stealing coffee from a jobcentre, but you’re just going to have to deal with it. Shame is, generally, the only thing standing between you and the freebies of your dreams.

FOOD

OK, firstly, stop eating those 8p noodle things. It takes about ten of them to fill you up and they’re so devoid of nutrients that you're going to end up getting jaundice or rickets or some other disease that children used to get in Victorian novels. Next, start cooking food from scratch in big batches that will get you through the week. I know you “can’t cook” but come on, do you think that’s a skill some people are born with? Here’s an idea: google “simple recipes”, find one that sounds good, follow the instructions and—my God—you can cook!

GAME DEMOS

Lucky for you, you’re the first generation to actually grow up with the internet. This means you have an attention span of exactly ten seconds. Instead of buying new games that you’re going to get bored of after a day, stick to the free downloadable demos. Oh, and while we’re talking about games, can everyone stop pretending they prefer Megadrives to PlayStation 3s? That’s like saying you prefer a wax tablet and stylus to a laptop.

HERB GARDEN

Investing in a herb garden is a really great way of having a pile of dead and rotting plants on your kitchen windowsill for months.

INSURANCE

If you live in a student area, your house is going to get robbed. FACT. You may as well transform your misfortune into an opportunity to upgrade your laptop and any other imaginary electrical equipment you “had”.

JUMBLE SALES

Or, even better, clothing bins. University is one of the only times in your life you can get away with dressing like a refugee.

KETCHUP

If your student house doesn’t have a drawer dedicated to stolen condiment sachets, you’re doing everything wrong and need to take a long hard look at yourself.

LICENCE, TV

I don’t have a TV (because it’s 2010 and there’s this thing called “the internet”), but the TV Licensing people send me a few letters a year telling me that they know I’m watching it and it’s just a matter of time before they come to bust me like I’m some kind of career criminal. This has been going on for about five years now, so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get caught. Oh, and you also don’t have to let the TV Licensing people into your house. You can turn them away until they come back with a search warrant, which should give you more than enough time for you to hide your TV in the attic.

MINERAL WATER

Congratulations, world, you’re the victim of the biggest marketing scam in history. Bottled water is, quite literally, 10,000 times more expensive than tap water. Why don’t you go pay £7,000 for a bag of crisps while you’re at it?

NARCOTICS

There’s no such thing as free drugs, I’m afraid. That’s why the term “crack whore” exists. I guess you could try that thing where you breathe a certain way, then get someone to choke you? That works, right?

OPTIONAL-PAY RESTAURANTS

It’s going to be pretty awkward when, after five courses, you tell the waiter that you’re only going to pay a penny. But like I said earlier: shame is for people who don’t understand the concept of value.

PAPER, TOILET

If something is being handed to you for free in a locked room where no one can see you, then you’re an idiot if you don’t take as much as you can carry.

QUEERS

Despite the fact that women have the vote, it still comes down to the boys to buy the drinks. If you’re male, a good way to even the balance is to go to your nearest gay bar and look as lonely as possible.

RENT

The trick here is to find as many people as you can to live together in a big house. Pretend to be useful and efficient and take charge, making sure you deal with the landlord and sign the contracts and stuff. This means you’re free to lie about how much the rent is, and you can bump everyone else’s up and live there for free.

SHOPLIFTING

I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for me to enourage you to shoplift, but my housemate has been caught stealing in all of the major supermarkets and not one of them has called the police. They just made him sign something saying he wouldn’t do it again. Jus’ sayin’!

TRANSPORT

Every city’s transport system has a flaw in its security. You just have to test it until you find it (like the raptors did to the fence in

Jurassic Park

). Usually the fine is about £25 for getting caught on a mass-transit network without a ticket and about £1 to buy a ticket. You’d have to be a complete moron to get caught more than once out of every 25 trips.

UNION, STUDENT

I know the booze is cheap at the SU, but you know where it’s cheaper? In an off-licence. You’ll be able to drink it wherever you want, and you won’t have to listen to anyone singing “Chelsea Dagger” while you do it either.

VICTIM

A scapegoat is essential in any household. Pick a target (preferably a foreign student with a limited grasp of English) and make them as hated and untrusted as possible. That way, you can steal as much stuff as you want from your other housemates and everyone will just assume it was Mengyao.

WALK

According to a statistic I just made up, 92 percent of all bus journeys are down to laziness. You’re poor—walk. It worked for the first 20,000,000 years of humanity and they didn’t even have shoes.

XENOGENY

A classic mistake freshers make is to go to a supermarket and buy the exact same products that their parents buy. Your parents grew up in a time of excess and wealth, they can afford to “taste the difference”. Conversely, you are paying a squillion pounds to earn a useless degree during a recession, and you cannot.

YOUR PARENTS

Speaking of your parents, they have more money than you think. Be sure to outline how miserable and poor and sad you are every time you speak to them. It’s amazing what pity and guilt can do to a person’s purse strings.

ZINES

With all this extra cash and time you’ll have, you should give something back. Why not make a zine about your favourite bands or photographers or something which you can give to people for free, just to redress the balance? Just kidding! But what the fuck else starts with a Z?