There are a lot of different things in the news lately about how deep we are in a recession and the scare stories just keep coming. Stop worrying about everyone else and start thinking about you as a student!
This big hiccup in the economy is bad but we can get through it as we did in the 1940s and the 1980s, the money comes and the money goes all we as students got to remember is that we have to be ready when the tide rises again.

So here is a quick and easy guide to what might affect you in this new budget in the meantime.

It’s bad for your health it stinks and it costs you a lot of money! Cigarette tax has been raised by 2% doesn’t sound like a lot but this means an extra £60million in the governments pocket or to the normal person 11p per pack. So you should stop smoking for the good of your health and pocket.

Petrol has been raised by 2p a litre, so start walking to keep healthy save the planet and money of course.

The up side is that the government in its incentive to reduce the bad stuff that your car sends in to the air is offering up to £2000 scrapping fee for your old clapped out car that has seen way better days, towards the cost of a new car. I know this sounds mad like why would you buy another car in this economy BUT there are some car dealers that are offering like Ford to also give up to a further £3000 on top if you buy a Ford car so that’s £5000 for a new car already paid for.

Now on to the one that was causing me as a fellow student the most concern….. Alcohol!! Alcohol duty has gone up by 2% which means about an extra 5p on every pint. This is bad news for the fellow students.

The big hit has come to the future students, it has been predicted a sharp rise in the amount of A Level students applying to higher education. This is presumably because of the lack of opportunity for employment at the moment, but the government has not announced that they will meet this demand in funding and universities are expected to turn away around 30,000 places due to this lack of funding.

All in all the budget could have went a lot worse for the day to day living cost of everyone but we will just have to keep budgeting and shopping in the reduced section of Asda to save or pennies, I think us students could teach Mr Alistair Darling a thing or too when it comes to balancing a budget!!!