Considering getting a job?
Being an International student is not the most cost
efficient way of living, as you might have already guessed. Some people are
lucky enough to go through the entire university experience without having to
worry about money, but unfortunately I wasn’t one of them, and I am one among
many of us who had to get jobs to supplement our living.
Depending where you are from, your visa agreement might or
might not dictate a limit to how many hours you can work, for the majority of
us, it is now capped at 20 hours per week in term time. This doesn’t sound much
at all (or even nearly enough!) but the majority of people in full time
education usually stick well below this cut of line anyway, international or
not, because believe me, trying to balance university work, employment, a
functional social life and also manage to squeeze sleep into the whole schedule
can and will be difficult for those of you daring enough to try it!
I am currently in my final semester of my undergraduate
degree and working twenty hours a week. I feel like there isn’t enough hours in
the day. The thing about working so much is not just that you have less time
than usual, because that’s the thing that’s obvious. What you might not have
been told is that when you have free time, you are usually exhausted that you
might not be as productive as you want to be doing all the other things you
wanted/ needed to do! Or maybe that’s just me…
And don’t even get me started on taxes! Most of us don’t
really need to worry about this because the government allows for £11,000 of
your annual income to be tax free, and most of us won’t earn that much, save
for some exceptions, of course. But sometimes, some of us will have more than
one job, and HMRC thinks you are earning more than you actually are and as a
standard, they will tax your second job at 20% anyway even though your earnings
combined do not go over the threshold. This is where it gets slightly
complicated.
This will prompt a sequence of calls to HMRC (this is their
number btw: 0300 200 3300) to claim change your tax code, to bridge the two job
incomes or if you waited a bit too long like me, to claim all of the earnings
they have mistakenly taken as tax. All of this information you can easily find
on the HMRC page, obviously.
Working does present some challenges, am I am being quite
harsh and it probably sounds like I am discouraging the practice of working
while at uni, and if it comes across like so, I do apologize but these are
truths about working that I would have wanted to know if I was considering it!
Working, in fact, can be a lot of fun too because you get to meet new people,
learn new things, and get a whole bunch of work experience (and life lessons)
that you wouldn’t otherwise.
At the end of the day, it’s all about time management and only
biting off what you can chew, and I am sure all of you reading this are wise
enough to decide your own limits even if I can’t!
Happy working! (or not)
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