The first month abroad costs more than a normal month
A normal monthly budget hides the arrival spike: the housing deposit, the first rent payment, the first utility month and the one-off setup shopping all land in week one. Pick your city and housing, and this planner adds up the cash you actually need on arrival day, line by line, from recorded student cost data.
Every figure is in US dollars. Recorded lines come from the Study Abroad Advisor city dataset; the deposit size and the setup extras are your own settings, labeled as such on every line. Nothing here is estimated on your behalf.
Build your landing plan
Choose a city and a housing type. Adjust the arrival extras if you like; each one is prefilled transparently and can be changed or zeroed.
You set this; the dataset does not record deposit norms. Typical deposits run 1 to 3 months of rent in many cities. The amount is computed from the recorded rent above.
Your own estimate of the first big shop: staples, spices, cleaning basics.
Your own estimate. There is no dataset figure for this, so it starts at 0.
Two free landing plans per day on this connection; after that, an email unlocks unlimited plans for the rest of the day. Browsing cities and changing inputs is always free, and printing a plan you already made is free too.
Your landing cash plan
Planning the whole move, not just the cash? MoveReady, the paid Study Abroad Advisor pre-departure planner ($4.99 one-time), pairs a monthly budget breakdown with a dated checklist covering forex, insurance, SIM and banking, plus a departure countdown.