A few weeks ago I mentioned we were planning on renting a room to foreign students.  Back then the room was a real mess and we weren’t sure it would ever be tidy, but to spur us on we said yes to one of the agencies and our first student arrived last Sunday.

The room looks so much better now and our student has happily settled in.  We did change the curtains though as they let way too much light in and no-one got much sleep the first couple of nights.  Black out curtains have definitely done the trick though!

We have worked out that we won’t make much money at all from our first student as the money will cover the costs of things like the gas safety check and certificate and home insurance – we have to cancel our current one and buy one which is a lot more expensive unfortunately. Part of the reason our home insurance will cost us more is that previously we weren’t using the room as a bedroom, but now we are counting it as a bedroom and that bumps up the cost.

We did save ourselves money on furniture though.  We reused things that we already had, that we no longer needed for ourselves and we got a bed and a canvas wardrobe from Freecycle/ Freegle, which saved us a bit of money.  The bed with mattress was better quality than any of the ones I had seen in the local charity shops!

I do seem to have spent a lot of money on food this week, but I think that was more on food that was for us than the student.  So far it hasn’t been a problem to make food for one more person at dinner time and hasn’t cost too much more.

So we did it, we took the plunge and got a student – so far all is going well and we are finding it very interesting learning about the massive cultural differences between our country and China where our student has come from.  It is early days yet though, so I will keep you posted!

Have you had students before?  Do you have any tips for me on how to keep the costs down in relation to food, or any tips at all relating to having students – it all helps!

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