With all your exams out of the way, you might be sitting back a bit waiting for final offers to flood in and having a good time. Thinking about how you're going to pay your way as a student is a job for tomorrow, isn't it? Maybe, but don't leave it too long - when you get your UCAS offer there suddenly seems to be an awful lot to do. Why not use a bit of down time to sort out your personal finances and check out how to save money in the future.

If you're going to need to borrow money, what you should aim to do is pretty straightforward - borrow from the cheapest sources of money first, and completely use up that facility before moving on to expensive sources of money.

Two of the cheapest sources of money should be from the Student Loans Company, and student bank accounts. Use the loan as your bedrock, and an overdraft to top up the cash you need.

A student loan should be the cheapest source of borrowing you'll ever get because the rate of interest is meant to match the rate of inflation. In effect it means that you're not paying an interest rate which you would be charged if you went to a commercial lender. It makes sense to take out a loan to cover any tuition fees you may have. Even if you've been quite good at saving money to pay for the tuition fees, a smart move might be to take out a student loan for the fees, as you should be able to earn as much interest on your savings as you'll eventually be paying to the Student Loans Company, and having an emergency cash reserve is a good idea.

The same applies for any Maintenance Loan that you might be entitled to. As you can spend that Loan on anything you want - we've even heard of students using it to start a business - it's really flexible.

Our suggestion that you make full use of your Student Loan facilities first might seem a bit odd if the banks provide free overdrafts. There might be something in that, but keep three things in mind; firstly by the time you get round to repaying any overdraft you might not be doing so on an interest free basis; secondly if you stray over the free limit you'll pay normal overdraft rates; and thirdly what's available by way of an overdraft is largely at the bank's discretion, so treat any amount the banks advertise as a maximum, not an entitlement.

Anything else will be relatively expensive, and as a parting thought credit cards should only be seen as a very short term way of controlling your cash flow. Only borrow what you can afford to repay when your bill comes in.

Good luck with the results.