Expenses, Working, and Budgeting

You can find all your tuition and academic fees on ACORN; under “Finances”, find “Financial Account” and click on “Invoice & Net Cost”. You should become familiar with your tuition fees and account for them when planning out the rest of your finances. Make sure to visit our Fees and Financial Aid blog post. 

If you’re not commuting from home, you’ll need to find a place to live during your time at U of T. Besides tuition, rent will be your greatest monthly expense.  

If you’re staying at a student residence such as Chestnut, fees will appear on your ACORN invoice. The amount you pay will vary drastically depending on where you’re staying; from personal experience, we’ve seen monthly rates ranging approximately from $850 to $2600. Clarify whether you’ll need to pay utilities and internet fees in addition to your rent, as these would be additional cost considerations. We cannot stress this enough: your budget must allow you to pay rent.

Finding a good place to stay within your budget can be challenging even for those with lots of experience. Staying with friends or roommates can help you save significantly. Make sure to reach out to all possible friends and family inquiring if they or somebody they know might have a vacancy. Take advantage of services such as real estate agents, the U of T Off-Campus Housing Portal (UTORid login required), Facebook Marketplace, and Kijiji. They can be great resources, but as always, be wary of scams and use these external resources at your own risk. For a guide to finding housing and to learn your rights as a tenant in Ontario, make sure to check out U of T’s Housing Resource Library. 

We often take our meals for granted; however, their costs can add up. Groceries and eating out have become more costly, so it’s important to practice smart shopping habits and limit how often you eat out each week.

At student residences with a meal plan, your food costs are included as part of your residence payments. However, you should still budget for the occasional grocery trip (especially for residences such as CampusOne, where your room will have a kitchen) and eating out. Furthermore, if you’re on a declining balance meal plan, you might want to budget your meal plan dollars. Even if you have a prepaid meal plan, you should ensure you’re maintaining proper eating habits; making the right choices at the dining hall can be the determining factor as to whether you’ll be healthy and productive throughout the day.

If you don’t have a meal plan, we recommend cooking at home as much as possible. Cooking is almost always cheaper than eating out, can be much healthier, and is an essential life skill! Plus, the practice of meal prep can help you save time throughout the week. However, cooking requires you to spend money to acquire ingredients and have time to cook and clean up after yourself.  

There are plenty of ways to optimize your money, time, and enjoyment when cooking. You might choose to meal prep with a friend, watch videos while you cook, or do some work while you’re waiting on your pressure cooker. There are tons of websites, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, and more with affordable, healthy, and convenient cooking tutorials. And you can always microwave your food on campus in the Common Room.  

In downtown Toronto, you can’t go wrong with grocery stores such as Loblaws, Metro, T&T Supermarket, Walmart, or Longo’s. There are also plenty of ethnic grocery stores that carry ingredients specific to cultural dishes. If you don’t already, accompany your parents to the grocery store to learn about optimal prices and how to identify and prioritize healthy food/ingredients.  

If all you want is a quick meal, there’s fast food along College Street and Spadina Avenue, but try not to make that a habit; you shouldn’t compromise your health just for some convenience. There are also various food places on campus, but eating out in general can get expensive. 

There are tons of nearby restaurant. For example, Baldwin Street near the Exam Centre has many restaurants with weekly or daily specials. Here you can find local cafés that serve drinks and sandwiches, and a variety of cuisines such as Italian, Thai, and Japanese. Remember that some places offer discounts if you pay with cash. 

Overall, try your best not to compromise your health for the sake of budget. There are endless strategies for healthy eating on a budget. Eating healthy also improves your academic performance, and of course your overall wellbeing.

If you’ll be living relatively close to campus and are physically able, we highly encourage you to walk to school. Walking is great exercise, allows you to relieve stress, and interact with friends – and it’s completely free! Furthermore, walking can be faster than taking public transit (we’re looking at you, TTC)

If you live a little farther away, you might want to consider biking, although this can be challenging in bad weather.

U of T has an on-campus educational bicycle repair space called Bikechain that offers a range of services, from free bike rentals to do-it-yourself maintenance spaces. If you have your own bike and are living in a residence (e.g., Chestnut Residence), bike rooms are available for storing your bike. If you don’t have a bike, Bike Share Toronto is available 24/7, with bikes located across the city. U of T students also receive a Bike Share Toronto discount. For a list of bike shares, bike racks, and bike storage/parking, look at U of T’s Maps. 

If you’ll be commuting via public transit, make sure your budget accounts for your transit fares. You can learn more about Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), GO Transit, and other fares on their respective websites. Take some time to calculate the cost of monthly passes versus individual fares. If you’ll be driving to school, you’ll need to account for gas, car insurance, and parking.

Even if you’ll be living close to campus, you should keep some space in your budget for transportation. There’ll be times when the conditions are too harsh for walking, or you might need to travel to meet with your community/stakeholders for Praxis II, or you just want to get out of downtown and explore the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

(Veteran tip: book flight dates to be after the last possible day of exams!) 

For more information, check out our Blog post about Commuting in Toronto. 

You’ll need some basic school supplies such as stationery, but your most expensive supplies will be textbooks and electronics.  

We recommend that you not buy textbooks unless your professor tells you to! Not all professors use the listed textbooks, and some will only use them for problem set questions. Some professors also make their own textbooks, which they may provide you for free.  

Laptops or tablets can be very expensive; make sure to consider the pros and cons to see if buying one is the right choice for you. Do your research to get the most bang for your buck. If you choose not to buy a laptop, the Engineering Computing Facilities (ECF) always have available desktop computers. For first-year courses, you won’t have to worry about the computing power of your device; you can run programs such as C and Python (which are the programs you’ll use in first year) using an SSH (Secure Shell) remote connection.  

To learn more, visit our School Supplies post. 

Your budget should never come at the cost of your health. As a student, you have FREE access to U of T sports and recreational facilities. This access is part of the incidental fees which you pay along with your tuition, so use the athletic facilities to your heart’s content.

You can watch movies for free through the library or get student discounts on many streaming services. If you’d rather watch with others, Innis College also hosts free weekly movie nights. Beyond movies, Hart House offers a wide variety of events, from film technique workshops to guided kayak tours. If you’re looking to show your school spirit, you can also cheer on the Varsity Blues. They compete in almost every sport you can think of, and admission to their games is always free for U of T students.

Regarding entertainment, Toronto is a major entertainment hub and there’s no shortage of budget-friendly fun. Regardless, you should set aside a certain amount for things such as shopping, hobbies, and other fun things.  

As an EngSci, you’ll be able to apply to many summer jobs and paid research opportunities, which will allow you to gain practical work experience while earning some money. Your salary from a summer position can help with your expenses for the upcoming school year, and this is especially the case if you choose to do a PEY Co-op (of course, your jobs after undergrad can massively help with your expenses and debts, but that won’t be for at least four more years). It’s important to consider some factors:  

1. Summer positions have their own expenses associated with them. If your workplace is far from home, you’ll have to once again consider costs such as rent and food. If you’ll be staying at home, transportation will be an expense. Regardless of the position, make sure to do the math and budget appropriately.   

2. Have realistic expectations. The economy is complicated and unpredictable, and the job market will have ups and downs throughout your time as a student. Don’t place unreasonable pressure on yourself to find an extremely high-paying job for every summer and your PEY.  At the same time, it’s important to be ambitious and not sell yourself short. Talk to relatives and upper-years and learn about their experiences with the job market.

3. If your financial situation allows it, try to consider more than just salary when chasing a job. 

The U of T Work-Study program offers paid, on-campus positions where you can strengthen and develop meaningful skills through your work. Students typically work ten hours per week, which is less than what you’ll typically work in a part-time job outside of campus. That said, the engineering workload is the heaviest of all programs; expect 30-35 hours of classes each week, so make sure to evaluate whether the Work -Study program is worthwhile for you. To learn more about the program, check the CLNX website (UTORid login required). 

Some examples of part-time jobs are retail positions, tutoring jobs, and even becoming an EngSci GEARS mentor or teaching assistant after first year. Part-time job experiences in EngSci vary a lot based on your academic abilities, transition to university, and the nature of the job. We’ve seen both extremes where students either really enjoyed their part-time job or found it difficult to juggle the two. 

Monika’s Experience:

I worked throughout my first year at VEMU Estonian Museum Canada. For me, working was a nice break from studying, but it did mean that I had less time for both studying and fun free-time activities. I think it was possible to work because I could choose my own hours and vary them depending on the week.