Hundreds of thousands of students are preparing to head off to university after receiving their A-level or BTEC results last week.

While there will be plenty of lessons to be learned in lecture halls, "one of the most important" things for students to grasp is "how to manage your money", said financial services firm OneFamily. Here are some top tips from experts.

Apply for jobs
Many students get a part-time job, on or off campus, to help cover the cost of tuition fees and living. It's also a good way to "meet new people and develop some transferable skills", said careers advice platform Morrisby. Finding work "relevant for your future career plans" could be an added "bonus".

Find discounts
As a student, "you should be able to save money on almost everything" if you do your research, said the Complete University Guide. Look out for coupons, offers and loyalty cards when shopping, and get yourself a student discount card such as Unidays or Student Beans. 

Set a budget
The best way to manage your finances at university is to break down what you have coming in and going out of your account. "Brace yourself," said Save the Student. Once you've worked out your expenses, you'll need to calculate your weekly budget and stick to it.

Open a student bank account
A major "perk" of studying at university is having access to a student bank account, said Ucas. Many of the accounts on offer "boast fancy extras to catch your eye", such as discount travel, cut-price cinema tickets and gift cards.

Check if you can get help
The cost of tuition – £9,535 for the 2025-26 academic year – is covered by the Student Loans Company and paid back. Maintenance loans, one of the most common forms of support, are designed to "cover your living costs", said MoneyHelper. How much you could be able to borrow depends on where you live and the location of your university. "Other means-tested grants and funding options" may also be available, so it's worth visiting the official student finance websites for England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland for further information.

Launched 45 years ago in October, Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy scheme had effects that "still reverberate through the housing market", said Melissa York in The Times. Allowing council-house tenants to buy the homes they lived in, and forcing local authorities to sell the properties at a discount, transformed the way Britain "viewed housing", from "a right under the social contract between citizen and state to a commodity to be coveted and traded".

But according to a recent report from the Common Wealth think tank, the scheme has cost UK taxpayers an estimated £200 billion, caused massive shortages in social housing and increased inequality.

'Stark divide'
Right to Buy gave many baby boomers a "foothold" on the property ladder and left them "free to make home improvements" that could increase the value of their home, said York in The Times. The over-60s now control more than half of the UK's housing wealth, and the over-75s control almost a quarter, but there is a "stark wealth divide" between the children of people who were able to "jump on to the property ladder" in the 1980s and the "less-fortunate offspring" of those who "missed the boat".

Between 1980 and 2021, 1.8 million households in England purchased a home from their local authority using Right to Buy. The plan "achieved its goal of getting more people on the housing ladder in its former years", said Rachel Mortimer in The Telegraph, but its "popularity has waned since".

Substantial decline
Homes sold through Right to Buy were not replaced, so the programme has "dramatically depleted" Britain's affordable housing stock, said Richard Partington in The Guardian. After "rising for decades", home ownership rates have dropped since 2004, and "collapsed" among young adults.

Right to Buy resulted in a "lack of suitable housing stock" that has left councils increasingly spending their "dwindling income" on helping people who are homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless, said Paul McNamee in the Big Issue. The "overall idea" was "not a bad one", but the "underlying ideology" has "led to the problems we're in now".

A marine iguana sneezes out salt after a foraging dive in the Galapagos. The image, captured by Arturo de Frías, is among the finalists in the 2025 Ocean Photographer of the Year competition, with the winners to be named next month.

Arturo de Frías / Ocean Photographer of the Year

Fruit beer is having a "modern renaissance in the UK", said The Telegraph. Demand for the light, refreshing drink is soaring, with sales up by 250% year-on-year at Tesco. 

The "conventional narrative in the beer world" is that these fruity tipples "cater for younger drinkers who have a sweeter palate than previous generations", said Pete Brown in The Sunday Times. But a growing range of inventive, top-quality fruit beers that also appeal to grown-ups are appearing on supermarket shelves and in pubs.

Any fruit beer worth drinking incorporates "real fruit juice rather than artificial syrups" or is "aged in oak barrels with actual whole pieces of fruit". Some use stone fruits like plum or damson to bring out the "forest-fruit notes" you find in ales and stouts, while others pick out the "tropical fruit aromas" present in New World IPAs.

And they aren't necessarily sweet, either, said Brown. Belgian kriek, for example, is made by adding cherries to lambic and fermenting out the sweetness to leave behind "bright acidity".

Bacchus Kriek gives an "intense cherry hit" with a "mouth-puckering" sourness, said The Telegraph. Ideal for beginners wanting to try Belgian beer, it's "beautifully clean" with a heady aroma that "jumps from the glass". Another great option for those looking for something more acidic is Gravity Well Brewing's Shall I Give You Dis Pear?, which begins with notes of "fresh pear" and a "persistent sourness" and finishes with "tropical tones of guava". It's the perfect match for a simple walnut salad.

And for a crowd-pleaser, said Jane Macquitty in The Times, try Indian Brewery's "easy-swigging", "alphonso mango puree-charged" Juicy Mango.

Prince William's snub of Buckingham Palace is just the start
Jennie Bond in The i Paper
The Prince and Princess of Wales "intend to put down roots in a 'forever' home" in Windsor Great Park, writes former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond. Forest Lodge is "grand" but in choosing not to live "at one of the palaces" and "not having live-in staff", William is "shunning the lifestyle of former monarchs". He is a "strong-willed man" who intends to be "royal with a small 'r'", and this move is "in keeping with that philosophy".

Farage is not selling out, he is just preparing Reform for government
Tim Stanley in The Telegraph
"There's a whisper on t'internet that Nigel Farage has sold out," writes Tim Stanley. But if the Reform UK leader is "moderating his rhetoric", it's "not just because it's necessary to win": he's "being careful not to over-hype expectations" of a future Reform government. And in "seeking to expand child benefit" and "nationalise industries", Farage has "evolved with circumstances – this is an insecure age that demands more babies, more manufacturing – and out of loyalty to constituencies that have been loyal to him".

Learning languages helps us to unlock cultures
Cindy Yu in The Times
"It's unoriginal to point out that language has power," writes Cindy Yu, but the UK's "descent into monolingualism" is "worrying". The "privilege of speaking the lingua franca" makes us "too cloistered". By learning other languages, we "understand and empathise with people across the world in as unadulterated a way as possible". Those who don't "see the value" in learning languages are probably "those who don't see the value of other cultures".