Planner

Student cost planner

Add up what a year will actually cost you. Every figure is one you supply — U4S pre-fills nothing, because it has no verified cost-of-living data for anywhere.

Most first-year budgets go wrong in the same two places. They count rent and tuition and forget the deposit, the flight, the bedding and the first month before any money arrives. And they quietly leave out the things nobody has an estimate for — insurance, a phone contract, the cost of going out — so the total looks manageable right up until it isn’t.

This planner separates recurring from one-off costs for the first reason, and tells you exactly which boxes you left blank for the second. A blank is never counted as zero: leaving insurance empty does not mean insurance is free, so the summary says your total excludes it rather than silently absorbing the gap.

Where do the figures come from? You. Tuition belongs on the institution’s own fee page. Rent belongs to whoever is letting the room. For everything else, ask students already there — a students’ union, a course forum, the international office. U4S deliberately offers no averages, because an average that is wrong for your city is worse than no number at all: you would budget against it.

Nothing here is filled in for you

Nothing here is pre-filled. U4S holds no verified cost-of-living figures for any city, and a planner that started with plausible-looking averages would be handing you a guess that reads like research. Every number below is yours.

The plan

Months this plan covers

A typical academic year is nine or ten months. A full year is twelve.

Currency

A label only. The planner converts nothing.

Tuition and university fees

For the whole period above, not per month. Take these from the institution’s own fee page — they differ by programme, by year and by where you are applying from.

Tuition

University and mandatory fees

Registration, student union, exam fees.

Monthly living costs

Housing

Rent, plus bills if they are separate.

Food

Groceries and eating out.

Transport

Season ticket, bike, fuel.

Insurance

Health, contents, travel — whatever you will actually pay.

Books and materials

Spread the year’s cost across the months.

Phone and internet

Personal spending

Clothes, going out, everything else.

Other recurring costs

One-off costs

Things you pay once at the start. These are what most first-year budgets miss.

Housing deposit

Often one or two months’ rent, usually returned.

Setting up (furniture, bedding, kitchen)

Travel to get there

Getting there at the start, and home again if you will.

Other one-off costs

Your figures

Monthly living budget: 0
Living costs over the period: 0
Tuition and fees: 0
Recurring subtotal: 0
One-off subtotal: 0
Total for this period: 0

This total does not include:

Housing, Food, Transport, Insurance, Books and materials, Phone and internet, Personal spending, Other recurring costs, Tuition, University and mandatory fees, Housing deposit, Setting up (furniture, bedding, kitchen), Travel to get there, Other one-off costs. A blank box is left out of the arithmetic rather than counted as zero — the total above is smaller than your real one by whatever those come to.

Nothing you type here is sent anywhere. It stays on this device and U4S never sees it.

This planner does no currency conversion. Every figure is in whichever currency you entered them in, and mixing two would give a total that means nothing. If you need to compare across currencies, convert them yourself at a rate you have checked today, and note which rate you used.

This is an arithmetic tool, not financial advice. It adds up what you tell it. It does not know what anything costs where you are going, whether you can afford it, or what you should do about it.

Before you read this page

General information, not financial advice: This page is general information about student budgeting. It is not financial, tax or investment advice. Costs, student support schemes, banking rules and eligibility differ by country and change over time — check current figures with the official source before you make a decision.
U4S is a publisher, not an adviser: U4S publishes independent guides and research. It is not a counselling service, a health service, a legal adviser or a financial adviser, and it cannot act in an individual case. Where this page describes a situation that needs one of those, the route it points to is your university’s support service, the relevant official authority, or a qualified professional where you live.
An orientation page, not a researched profile: This page sets out what to work out about studying here and where the authoritative answer lives. It deliberately contains no costs, fees, entry requirements, rankings or institution names, because U4S does not publish that kind of detail until it has come from a named, checkable source and been reviewed. Anything specific — admission, visa, tuition, housing law, healthcare registration — must be confirmed with the institution concerned and the relevant official authority for that country, both of which can change their requirements without notice.

Student cost planner

Nothing here is filled in for you

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