Hello! My name is Shahida and I’m a third year medical student at the University of Manchester. I’m from Malaysia and moved to the UK to enter medical school after completing 2 years of an A-Levels (lesser known :’) ) equivalent - International Baccalaureate (IB). I’ll be shedding some light today on how I manage my finances as a medical student in a Q and A format, just because it’s easier to read that way. I hope this helps!
Did you receive any scholarships/bursaries to finance your degree?
Ah yes, the first and most important question: how do you finance a medical degree when the international fees are three times the domestic fees? The answer that I am fortunate enough to give is through a partial scholarship granted to me by the Malaysian governmental body called MARA. Under this scholarship, MARA pays for both my living expenses and my tuition fees in full. MARA is a body in Malaysia that sponsors education for students, and in my case, I first obtained the scholarship at a college level using my national high school leaving exam results (called SPM) which then carried on to a degree level. Straight after high school, I went on the hunt online for scholarships that would sponsor medical students, but out of the two I found, only MARA sponsored medical students overseas. I actually got rejected initially and almost signed a different scholarship to study locally (for the interest of other Malaysians who might be reading this, the other scholarship was under YK) when I was contacted by MARA and told that I had been offered a spot in the same week I was due to sign the second contract. Safe to say it wasn’t exactly a smooth ride and I had to make some big decisions in one short week. I ultimately chose MARA because I wanted to be able to further my studies overseas. Once I signed with MARA, I was enrolled into a MARA college where I took IB, not by choice, but because the college only offered biology under this course (sobs). My college was also paid for in full (including living costs as it was a dorm) by MARA, although unfortunately they don’t compensate us for UCAT, which is probably the only part of the uni application I had to finance myself. After two years of IB, I met the various requirements under my MARA scholarship that allowed me to further my studies overseas, two of which were that my university of choice had to be within the top 50 world rankings and had to be a medical course not lasting more than 5 years. And just because this is probably the only time I’ll be able to flex this, a third requirement was passing the minimum IB score set by MARA which was 36 out of 45 - to which I achieved a score of 44 points. And so here I am today, at the University of Manchester. :)
How do you budget your spendings during medical school?
Monthly budget
Budgeting is definitely key to managing your finances every month. I decide my budget by calculating two categories: my basic living necessities, and my wants. Once I had my living necessities down, I calculated how much money I had left per month, and decided how much of that I wanted to use for my wants and how much I wanted to save. I’ve summarised a pretty detailed breakdown of my living expenses along with a few tips below.
I receive a monthly living allowance from MARA of £880 pounds, which I spread out over all my living expenses. To me, £880 is a pretty livable amount, provided you find accommodation with cheap rent! My rent is 86.67 pounds per week excluding bills, which is considered very affordable. Feel free to contact me on my socials if you need tips on where to find accommodation :) Electricity and gas bills generally vary by the seasons since less gas is used in warmer months for heating while my water bills are fixed per month. My housemates and I split the bill for water, gas and electricity, so I usually end up paying around £50 pounds (maximum) for gas and electricity and £8.5 a month for my share of the bill.
When it comes to groceries and eating out, 2 huge tips are: 1) to cook as much as you can and 2) find house/flatmates who have a similar budget, lifestyle and culture as you. This is because it makes it much easier to share groceries and split the bill when you eat similar food. This is especially true for Muslims, because halal chicken/meat is slightly more expensive than non-halal, so it becomes much more affordable to split the cost. Also, groceries are cheaper at Lidl or Asda compared to other grocery stores!
My housemates and I cook 6 days a week and only eat out one day a week, because eating out is pretty expensive for us (all of us are under the same scholarship, hence the same budget). It also helps that because we have similar food tastes and budgets, we get to split delivery fees when we order from the same restaurant to the house. A friend of mine who is flatmates with people with a much higher budget than hers does face difficulties with her budget because one of her flatmates prefers to buy their own groceries and the other tends to choose higher end restaurants to eat at.
So overall, my basic living budget (rent + utilities + groceries) comes up to about £400 or £500. Aside from this, I give myself a separate budget of £100 - £200 to spend on other things like my wants basically. What has been really helpful with sticking to this budget for me is having 2 separate bank accounts. I have one Lloyds bank account where my allowance gets banked into every month, and I also have a Monzo account (which is an online bank) which I send money to from my Lloyds account every month. I keep most of my money in my Lloyds, and only send how much I need to my Monzo account every month. Monzo is widely used in Manchester while Revolut is the more common bank used in London and Ireland. I also use the ‘saving pots’ feature in Monzo where you can open saving pots which you can easily deposit money into to save up for a goal. For example, I have one pot for travel, one for birthday gifts and one for my plane tickets back home for the summer. It helps that you can see how far along you are to your goal too.
Managing my retail therapy habits
This was one of my challenges especially in first year haha. For those of you who have similar coping mechanisms, try turning to physical and online thrift stores! I personally use the Vinted app a lot, and there are other apps available too. As someone from a tropical country, this has been especially helpful in building an autumn/winter closet from scratch without pinching my wallet too much. I think its especially useful for allowing you to try different styles of winter coats too, and you can search for good quality brands at a cheaper price. Its also pretty simple to sell clothes you no longer wear on there, which helps the finances!
Discounts
Find places that provide good breakfast/meal deals, like Sainsburys and a personal favorite: Tim Hortons breakfast meal before 11am.
Voxi drops - I use Voxi as my telephone provider and they provide freebies every month including discounted movie tickets and free products like makeup from certain brands.
Unidays and student beans are apps that provide student discount codes for many different brands and are definitely worth checking out in case there are any brands you’re a regular patron of.
Railcard - if you travel using the train regularly, consider getting a railcard to get discounts on train fares.
Do you work any part time jobs?
I do work a part time job for an agency that supplies healthcare workers (me) to their clients whenever they are in need of extra staff. Their clients include nursing homes, learning disability centres for adults and even eating disorder wards. When these clients are short of staff due to staff absences, they would request for outside staff to help on those days, and that’s where I come in. I found and applied for this job using my CV on a website called Indeed.com when I was searching for healthcare-related jobs. This was actually my first job experience ever, and fortunately the job didn’t have high requirements because they provide training before you begin. I wanted to get a part-time job in healthcare because I wanted to gain more exposure to the working environment in the healthcare sector as a second year student. I am able to choose when and where I would like to work shifts based on which places require staff on a particular day, so this works perfectly with my schedule as a medical student who is busy on most weekdays. They also don’t have a minimum amount of shifts you need to work per month, so I choose to work once every 2 weeks so that I can prioritise my studies.
The company’s main clients are nursing homes, so I’ve worked in a few of those as well as learning disability centres. What I love about the job is how it gives me insight into the community aspect of medical care. It's also taught me how to communicate with people who have different communication needs, and I’ve also gained kind of a reassurance that the medical field is for me. I also just love being able to take time talking to the patients and learning about them as people, and being able to not view them as just a set of symptoms which sometimes you don’t have the time to do in medicine. It's also given me an appreciation of the importance of other roles in the healthcare sector - it isnt easy nursing patients! On the financial side, it gives me a bit more financial freedom to spend and save up for things that I want. :)
That pretty much sums up how I manage my finances as a medical student. I hope this has been a helpful read!! Much love from me and good luck on your medical journey ahead. ❤️
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