Staying fashionable when you’re a student can be quite a difficult thing to achieve. In order to buy clothes you need money, and when you’re spending most of your time studying that is something you rarely have a lot of. When there is a bit of cash to spare, this makes it even more important to get the most out of it.
One of the best way’s to avoid overspending is to shop carefully, don’t just buy the first thing you see that you like, it can be tempting, but have a good hunt around in different stores because you might find something similar at a better price somewhere else.
One of the excellent things about being a student today is that many of the clothes shops on the high street and internet today recognise that you’re going to have to shop carefully, and so they offer students a discount when they shop with them. Some of these clothes shops have websites too making it really easy to browse and find a bargain or two before using your student discount to save yourself an extra 5 or 10% making your find an even bigger bargain.
The Arcadia group offers a discount to students on production of a student card – that includes Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Miss Selfridge, Evans, Topshop and Topman – all of which offer a 10% discount when you produce your NUS card or for online shopping put in your NUS number at the checkout.
New Look, Ted Baker, Peacocks, Shoe Zone and French Connection all also offer discounts, some of them do this by letting you use you NUS card/number as above, while others subscribe to systems such as the NUS Extra card, or the SIN (Students In Need) card – these two schemes offer a card which you do pay for – £10 and £5 respectively, – but the card lasts a year at a time, and as well as getting fixed discounts in certain shops on and offline, they also arrange special discounts and offers that last for a week or a few weeks at a time through the year.
Whether you stick just with your NUS card, or sign up to one of the additional cards, don’t forget to ask in every shop you go in, and check on every website you buy at BEFORE you make your payment to see if they will offer you a discount. Remember, if you don’t ask, you may not get, and asking is free after all!
