Home › Example budgets by situation
If you were a grad student on a stipend, your month probably looks like this
Illustrative example. This is an illustrative example, not a real student. Nothing here is a testimonial. The stipend amount and every envelope were invented to show the arithmetic.
An illustrative grad student on a $2,100 monthly stipend splits it into 12 envelopes: $850 shared rent, $320 groceries, $100 for conference travel that gets reimbursed eventually, $190 savings, and $130 of deliberate buffer.
The breakdown
| Envelope | Amount |
|---|---|
| 🏠 Rent (shared apartment) | $850 |
| 💡 Utilities and internet | $90 |
| 🛒 Groceries | $320 |
| ☕ Campus coffee and lunches | $90 |
| 🚌 Transit | $70 |
| 📱 Phone | $40 |
| 🩺 Health and dental copays | $50 |
| ✈️ Conference and research travel float | $100 |
| 📚 Books and software | $40 |
| 🎉 Fun | $130 |
| 🧷 Buffer | $130 |
| 💰 Savings | $190 |
Total assigned: $2,100 of $2,100 monthly take-home — every dollar has a job.
The setup
Your income is fixed, known a year in advance, and small. That combination is unusual and it is actually an advantage: there is no raise to plan around and no commission to guess at, so the budget only has to be built once. $2,100 a month, twelve envelopes, done. The catch is that a fixed income leaves no room for a surprise, which is why two of these envelopes exist purely to absorb surprises.
Where the money actually goes
Shared rent $850 and utilities $90, so housing is 45 percent. Groceries $320, campus coffee and lunches $90, transit $70, phone $40, copays $50, books and software $40. Fun gets $130, because a stipend budget with no fun in it lasts about six weeks. Then the two shock absorbers: $130 buffer and $100 for conference travel. Savings takes $190. Total is exactly $2,100.
The envelope that always blows up
Conference travel, and it is a special kind of painful because you will get reimbursed. Eventually. In eleven weeks. Meanwhile you fronted $600 for a flight and a hotel out of an envelope holding $100, and your grocery money is now in a university accounting queue. Reimbursement is not income, it is a loan you made to your institution at zero percent interest.
How to fix it
Fund the travel envelope every single month, including the ten months you are not traveling. By conference season it holds $800 or $900 and the flight is boring instead of destabilizing. When the reimbursement finally lands, put it straight back into the same envelope. Do not let it show up in checking looking like a bonus, because it is not one.
Common questions
Is saving $190 a month realistic on a stipend?
It is deliberately ambitious in this example. If it does not survive contact with your actual month, shrink it to $75 and protect the buffer instead. A buffer that works beats a savings goal that fails on the 20th.
What about summer funding gaps?
If your stipend pauses over summer, treat it like the conference envelope: add a dedicated summer-gap envelope funded across the paid months. It is the same trick applied to a bigger, more predictable hole.
Is this a real grad student?
No. The persona is fictional and every number is illustrative. We did not survey students or use anyone's real stipend.
Run this budget on your phone
Envelope Budget puts these envelopes in your pocket. Assign every dollar, log spending as it happens, and see what is actually left.
Get Envelope BudgetiPhone · manual entry, no bank connection · 7-day free trial