Flights and tuition get all the planning attention. The money nobody plans is the cash you need in the first days after landing: a deposit, the first month of rent and the first utilities bill, all before any part-time job pays anything. The free First-Month Landing Cash Planner adds up exactly that pile.
It is deliberately narrow. The planner is a rent and utilities estimator, not a full budget: it works from recorded figures for 200 student cities, and where the dataset records nothing, the line stays yours to enter instead of being filled with a guess. Groceries, transit and insurance are recorded for 0 of the 200 cities, so the planner never pretends to know them. For the wider monthly picture it pairs with our monthly budget breakdown for international students.
How a plan works
- Type your city. Start typing and pick from the 200 cities in the dataset.
- Choose shared room or studio. The recorded average rent for your pick is shown before you commit to it.
- Set the deposit. One month by default; typical deposits run one to three months, and the line is computed from the recorded rent.
- Add your own two lines. A first grocery stock-up figure and a setup estimate for bedding and kitchen basics.
- Read the total. One landing figure, line by line, plus what a normal month costs after month one.
Two plans a day are free. After that, an email unlocks unlimited plans for the rest of the day, while browsing cities and changing inputs stays free, and printing a plan you already made is free too.
Who it is for
Students a few months out from departure, and the parents funding the landing. Run your city in the First-Month Landing Cash Planner before you sign a lease: the deposit line is usually the surprise. The companion post runs a full example: six checks to run in the planner before you fly, built on a London plan totalling $3,236. If the total is bigger than the savings, the funding hunt starts earlier: the ScholarshipMatch tool on our sister site matches scholarships by country and field.