A User’s Guide To The TOTUM Cashback Card

Budgeting is one of life’s most useful skills and you can really get to grips with financial management during your university years - but let’s not pretend that it’s going to be easy and, inevitably, uni is a pretty expensive time, with course fees, general living and accommodation costs to consider, not to mention having some fun along the way.

Figures from Save The Student show that average student living costs come to about £1,100 a month, covering rent, groceries, household bills, transport, going out, takeaways/eating out, clothes and shopping, mobile phone, holidays and events, health and wellbeing, course materials and interest payments.

Of course, you’ll likely have your maintenance loan to help you out, the size of which is based on where in the UK you’re from, whether you’ll be living at home or not, your household income and how long your course is.

The average maintenance loan for English students in 2023/2024 was approximately £7,200 - but often this isn’t quite enough to cover all your living expenses, which can put the pressure on. For all the info you need on student finance payments, you can check out our super helpful blog here.

So what can be done to reduce the burden a little and give yourself some breathing room to enjoy yourself at uni without having to constantly worry about boring money?

Get yourself the TOTUM Cashback card, of course!

This is a really handy little card to have in your virtual wallet, helping you to reduce your supermarket bills by hundreds of pounds (amazing!) and earn up to 14% cashback with some of the biggest brands out there.

How does TOTUM Cashback work?

It couldn’t be easier to hit the ground running with our cashback card! All you need to do is activate your free card when you sign up with TOTUM+, top it up (with no minimum or top-up fees associated) and you can start earning tasty cashback rewards. It really is as simple as that.

If you go for a TOTUM+ membership, you’ll enjoy unparalleled access to a full range of benefits to help your money work harder for you every single day.

You can save more than £550 a year on your everyday shopping needs, as well as making incredible savings when you go out to eat, get access to free government-approved 18+ ID cards and take full advantage of hundreds of thousands of discounts in more than 90 countries.

There’s also the option to buy the TOTUM Cashback card on its own for £3.99 without having to join TOTUM+. You can upload the card to your virtual wallet for contactless payments and make top-ups using the app wherever you are, making it easy to track your spending and keep an eye on how much cashback you’ve earned.

There are scores of different retailers participating in our cashback scheme, including American Golf, Argos, Asda, B&Q, Boohoo, Boots, Farm Foods, Foot Locker, Halfords, Ikea, John Lewis, Sainsbury’s, Sephora, Waitrose and many, many more.

Last year, the top 10% of our cashback users received an average £243 cashback - so you can live your life the way you want and earn at the same time!

7 budgeting tips for students

Of course, as wonderful as the TOTUM Cashback scheme is, you will still need to learn a bit about financial management to ensure that your cash stretches as far as you need it to.

Budgeting is boring, there’s no getting around that fact, but once you’ve got a handle on it, it will feel like second nature - and you’ll really thank yourself later on when you’ve got your dream job and are earning the big bucks.

So, to help you start off on the right track, here are a few budgeting tips from the TOTUM team. Let us know if you need any more help or advice!

Know what your income is

Knowing what your monthly income is will let you know what you’ve got to work with. From there, you can estimate your outgoings, using previous bank statements to see where your money is going and to build up a rough estimate of what you’re spending. Check out some of the Best Part-Time Job Opportunities for Students.

Use a budgeting spreadsheet

Keeping track of everything can be tricky but technology has the answer, of course, so use a spreadsheet and set up the formulas to do all the maths for you. No thinking required!

Identify want vs need

If you really want to save, ask yourself when you get the itch to spend whether the prospective purchase is something you want or something you need. You’ll find that simply stopping to ask yourself this question will stop you from making impulse purchases, allowing you to keep your cash for something you want even more.

Use cash

It’s super easy to splash the cash when you use your contactless payments for everything under the sun. Instead of waving your card around, take out how much money you expect to spend each week and use that instead. This will also make it easier for you to see if you’re overspending.

Plan ahead

Knowing what’s happening is a great way to save. Think about what you’ll be doing that week and act accordingly, batch cooking your meals and putting cash aside for nights out so that you’re never caught unawares and are tempted to splurge.

Review your direct debits

It’s really easy to set up direct debits and forget about them, seeing money flying out of your account every now and again. Chances are you don’t even know what some of those direct debits are for, so regularly review your bank account and cancel anything you have no need of. Savings will soon add up!

Look out for student discounts!

There are always amazing discounts running for students, with money off in shops, restaurants, transport and lots more… so make sure you check out all the TOTUM student offers we’ve got available and you’ll be able to save while making the most out of student life. You can’t say fairer than that!