How a Working Student Survived College | Budget Challenge

That's me with the heart

I would like to participate in #thebudgetchallenge of @smaeunabs who is a financial literacy advocate. In this challenge, she wants to know how people budget their finances. I find this challenge fun and helpful. So, here I am sharing my budgeting allocations during college when I was working as a service crew of Jollibee to finance my studies. I hope this will be helpful and impactful to others especially to the students.

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Literally Poor

My parents are financially poor. In fact, after high school, I worked in a public market in Mandaue since my parents could not afford to send me to college.

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Work to Study

I submitted a job application in Freemont Foods Corporation (Jolibee) and fortunately was hired as a service crew. I worked there from 2009 to 2012. During those times, my basic pay was 33.00 per hour. Basically, the payday is scheduled every 15th and 30th of the month. My average working hours in a 15-day period was only 65 hours. So roughly, my gross pay was around 2,145.00 pesos.

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Study and Work

I took up Bachelor of Secondary Education major in Industrial Technology at Cebu Technological University. I was a regular college student. By saying that, I mean I took all the subjects offered every semester and paid the full tuition of the school. Since it is under SUC or State Universities and Colleges, my tuition was only about 5,600.00 every semester.

Fare Expenses : Home, School, Work

• I live in Canduman, Mandaue City. I needed to ride a tricycle and a jeepney (13C) to reach the school. That's about 20.00 pesos.
• After my class, I traveled directly to Jollibee to work. The fare from Cebu City to Jollibee Banilad was 9.00 pesos.
• After work, at around 1:00 AM, I rode a jeepney and a tricycle towards home. That's around 15.00 pesos.
• So the total daily fare allowance was 44.00 pesos.

Food Allowance

I ate breakfast at home, I did not take snacks during breaktime unless my college friends would share their snacks, and I had free meals in Jollibee. So, my budget for food was only 20.00 pesos for the viand.

Tuition Fees

As said above, my tuition was about 5,600.00 per semester. There were 5 months per semester, which means there are 10 paydays per semester. I divided my tuition fee to ten paydays so thats 5,600.00 divided by 10. Every payday, I pay around 560.00 (Jollibee took care of this directly to CTU) for the tuition.

Let's do the Math:

Cash Flow	Remarks
2,145.00	Average Salary / 15 days
- 560.00	Deduction : Tuition
1,585.00	Net Pay
- 660.00	Fare Allowance/ 15 days
925.00
- 300.00	Food Allowance/ 15 days
625.00	School Expenses, Projects /15 days

Daily Budget

If I would calculate it in a daily basis my daily budget for study and work was 143.00 pesos only.

Daily Budget	Allocations
37.00	Tuition
44.00	Fare
20.00	Food
41.00	Others

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Being a working student was very difficult especially in managing my finances. I admit there were times when I intentionally do not pay for my fare in the jeepney (Mokong Pa More) for shortage of budget and also there were times when I walked from the tricycle terminal to our home. But all those sacrifices paid off when I finished my studies and eventually landed a permanent job as public high school teacher the year after my graduation.

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