WHEN EVERYTHING IS NEW, GIVE YOUR BUDGET SOME REFERENCE POINTS TOO

A new city, a new campus, new schedules, sometimes a new country: when you begin your studies, many things change at the same time.

Meanwhile, your bank account shows you a number.

YOUR ACCOUNT TELLS YOU HOW MUCH MONEY YOU HAVE. IT DOES NOT TELL YOU HOW MUCH YOU CAN SPEND.

This guide will help you separate four things:

• what you have;
• what is already committed;
• what you need for day-to-day living;
• what is yours to choose consciously.

You do not need to become a finance expert or immediately build a perfect budget for a life you do not know yet. Your first goal is to find useful reference points, then adjust them to your reality.

There is no single student budget in Switzerland. Two students at the same school can have completely different rent, insurance, transport costs and family support.

Lausanne and EPFL provide a concrete setting with verifiable figures. The method still works elsewhere: replace the local figures with the prices that apply to your city, your school and your situation.

The principle is always:

REFERENCE POINT -> YOUR FIGURE -> YOUR DIFFERENCE.

And keep one idea in mind:

THEORETICAL MINIMUM BUDGET IS NOT THE SAME AS A BUDGET YOU CAN ACTUALLY LIVE ON.

A good budget does not merely work on paper. It has to be liveable.

Before deciding what you can spend, you need to know what your life actually costs.

EPFL currently recommends allowing about CHF 29,000 per year for living costs — approximately CHF 2,420 per month or CHF 79 per day on average — in addition to tuition fees. This average includes housing and other fixed costs, so CHF 79 per day is not an amount freely available to spend. Its indicative budget includes:

• housing: CHF 900/month;
• food: CHF 600/month, about CHF 20/day;
• study materials and supplies: approximately CHF 100/month on average;
• transport: CHF 60/month;
• personal liability insurance: CHF 10/month;
• other expenses: CHF 250/month.

These are REFERENCE POINTS, not rules.

If your rent is CHF 650, put CHF 650 in your budget. If your parents still pay your health insurance, do not count it as though it came out of your own money. If you do not know your actual figure yet, write '?' instead of inventing false precision.

NEVER KEEP AN AVERAGE FIGURE WHEN YOU KNOW YOUR ACTUAL FIGURE.

Housing deserves particular attention: rent, utilities, transport, equipment and cooking facilities can change several budget lines at once. The cheapest room is not always the best choice if it creates extra costs elsewhere.

EXERCISE — YOUR FIRST ESTIMATE

List: housing, insurance, transport, phone, tuition fees, study materials and supplies, food, subscriptions and any other known costs.

For each line:

POSSIBLE REFERENCE POINT -> YOUR FIGURE -> NEEDS CHECKING?

Your budget becomes useful as soon as you separate what you know from what you still need to observe.

THEORETICAL MINIMUM BUDGET IS NOT THE SAME AS A BUDGET YOU CAN ACTUALLY LIVE ON

The right question is not only 'How little could someone survive on?' It is: what budget allows you to live, study, eat properly, travel and keep a minimum safety margin without improvising at the end of every month?