Budgeting Tips
Studying abroad is a great opportunity to practice the budgeting and planning skills you’ll use even beyond college. Below are resources to help you prepare to practice good money management abroad.
Budgeting
Consider using a budgeting worksheet to help you plan potential expenses. The key to successful budgeting is making a plan and sticking to it!
Use Vertex 42’s worksheet to determine your budget and expected expenses for your trip abroad. This budget worksheets features a pie chart and expense breakdown to help you visualize where your money will go.
Budgeting by Country
This resource includes overall daily, weekly, and monthly budgets by country, as well as the general costs of certain expenses in those countries.
The Points Guy’s How to Budget for Expenses Studying Abroad
The Points Guy offers four tips for budgeting abroad, such as selecting a budget-friendly country, and planning excursions and spending ahead of time.
Go Abroad’s 6 Tips to Create (& Stick to) Your Study Abroad Budget
Go Abroad offers six things to consider for budgeting abroad, such as understanding whether cash or card is preferred in your host country, understanding cost of living, recording all purchases, and using the same resources as the local population.
Currency Conversion
Depending on where you travel, you may not be making transactions in USD. Use the currency converter below to better calculate exactly how much you’ll be spending in your host country.
XE.com’s Currency Converter Calculator
Use an online currency converter to know the latest exchange rates between currencies. In addition to knowing how much you’re spending abroad, this is a great tool to compare the rates from banks and other institutions against the real exchange rate. XE also offers an app so you can do quick conversions on your phone.
We hope these initial resources help you begin considering how you’ll navigate expenses abroad. Other items that will eventually factor into your budget are currency conversion costs and bank fees; credit and debit cards abroad; cell phones and plans; and transportation. After you choose a program, these resources will be provided in our pre-departure guide as they are nuanced to the location of your program.