Student blogs

Budgeting often goes hand in hand with being a student. During my time at KI, I have gathered a few tips that have helped me throughout the last two years. 

Mecenat

My first tip is to take advantage of the Mecenat card. This is a card provided to students in Sweden, and gives you access to countless student discounts. Within the Mecenat app, you will find all the student discounts that are available at the moment plus the digital card itself, which is your ‘proof’of your student status. You can use Mecenat for restaurants and coffeeshops like Max, Sushiyama and Espresso House and for shopping in various stores like H&M, zalando, Adilibris and Weekday. 

Fritidsbiblioteket

Fritidsbiblioteket is a type of library that has free sports and camping equipment that you can borrow. You need a Swedish personnummer, but as soon as you register, equipment can be borrowed for free! I personally have borrowed ice skates from here, to go skating at the ice skating rinks scattered throughout the city, as I talk about in my last blog here!

Shopping at cheaper grocery stores

The average grocery shop in Stockholm can be quite expensive. Grocery shops like ICA and Coop are quite pricey, so on my student budget I prefer to go to cheaper grocery shops like Willy’s and LIDL! When I’m at these stores I always take advantage of the discounts and the membership discounts (that you get when you register). The LIDL membership also has a student discount option, which is quite nice. 

Free activities

One of the best ways I save money in Stockholm is doing free activities. This includes walks around Stockholm, swimming in the ocean (during the summer), going on hikes and going to free museum evenings. There are various museums that offer free museum evenings, such as Moderna Museet on Fridays, the Nationalmuseum on Thursdays, Stadsmuseet (city museum) everyday of the week and a few more you can find here. 

Living in Stockholm as  a student can be quite pricey. But there are various ways to make it affordable and do a lot of fun things (without breaking the bank)!