The most important thing is to put away moneybfornyourneducation to make sure you can finish & make yiurself even more valuable to earn more money.

At this point in your life buying only necessities is all you should be focused on. You will have plenty of time in yiur future after accomplishing our education goal to buy the fun things in life & NEVER go into debt that costs you interest to buy something. Save the money & buy when you have the cash to pay (timed purchases that don't charge interest can possibly be ok but make sure it's paid off within the time specified. Interest charges make things cost more than double the price & is NOT wise.

I'm not sure about your living arrangements. I guess living with parents could be best for now if you set a specified amount to pay your parents room & board based on the fact that if your current contract job ends so would your payments to them until you get another job. If you move out & your contract job ends how would you handle that? Usually apartments require deposits & money that is non-refundable so that money would be basically thrown away.

Most important, make a budget of all known monthly expenses, put away money for emergencies to cover for those just in case times. Yes it's no fun being responsible with money but if one learns when they are young then they have the money to be able to spend when older & have the good paying career. One can have nice presentable cloths to work in without spending a fortune or having closets full of cloths. You can buy the needed tools for your education as part of yiur educational expenses by budgeting & having the cash to pay....don't throw money away on unnecessary or useless things at this point in your life unless it's something you have specifically saved up to buy. Be wise NOW so you can afford to buy things you enjoy later on in life.

If I could do over my life this is one area I would do over & not go along with the stupid spending I allowed my husband to do just because we had a two computer engineering income household. Of course my do over would have been to never marry him in the first place with his financial irresponsible ways. Having to make it on my own after leaving him & be responsible for all my expenses has reinforced the values I gave up when I got married....huge mistake.