To think £60 a week to live on will be a struggle for DD at uni?

Some good apps that might help
Too good to go
Olio
Uni days
Also copy and paste your question into ChatGPT it will give you some good ideas and a sample weekly budget xx

Yes, this is what DS did.

It is for
cover course materials, food, clothes, travel, socialising

some places £60/week would barely cover transportation let alone anything else.

@Lex345 which uni are you looking at? That rent is pretty high. Could she look at less expensive room or city choices? Which subject? I don't remember if you said already.

Not sure if I’ve missed something, but can you give her money each month? This is really common among uni students (their parents giving them extra top ups)

It’s not just for food,
cover course materials, food, clothes, travel, socialising

course materials alone can easily run into several hundred £/$ a term.

Agree, not true of all halls.
Perhaps OP and DD should have a talk with the student acc folks to find out what her hall has and allows?

I agree OP that £60/week for everything other than rent and utilities will be a real struggle. Getting a job is by no means realistic. Usually the local uni students will have locked down student type flexible jobs over the summer so students coming in from out of town won’t have much of a chance.

As you are on a low income, would your DD be able to get any bursaries/scholarships? Even if she got a few small ones, 500 here 250 there can add up.

https://www.ucas.com/money-and-student-life/money/managing-money/scholarship-guidance-uk-students

https://www.thescholarshiphub.org.uk/

https://www.ukscholarships.uk/scholarships-for/united-kingdom

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/applying-for-university/getting-into-university/university-scholarships-and-bursaries

here is a US website but I am sure your DD’s Uni web page might be more useful? https://search-study-uk.britishcouncil.org/scholarship/search-results.html?qualificationid=2&nationalityid=210

another
https://scholarshipstostudyabroad.com/scholarships-for-british-students/

They are not allowed to use toasters, kettles, or hot pots even in the kitchen.

that's not true of all halls.

Mine had full size kitchens albeit with not much shelf or fridge space.

She needs a job next summer. DS didn't work in termtime but did work in holidays and was able to save a lot. If she could save just £1000 from holiday earnings that would be another £27 to spend each week over 36 weeks. Train her in looking for yellow stickered things she would buy eg fruit. DS also found the Chinese supermarket good for noodles etc.

It doesn't work like that @Smeegall
Everyone knows that eating as a single person can be more expensive than for 2 or more because you have to buy smaller portions (or they go off.)

As a student in halls, she won't have much space in a fridge and there may not be a freezer. She can't bulk buy 1kg of mince and make spag bol for a fortnight.

Even when my DCs were out of halls and sharing houses, they had ONE shelf each in the fridge and one small drawer in the fridge freezer.

@boys3 Why was 2021 so pivotal? There’s a big difference in a very short period of time. All post Covid. It will vary between universities and courses. Plus dc living at home can often continue with jobs. Finding them isn’t easy and I would love to know who is employing double the number of students as Hospitality is really struggling.

Anyone paying £1000 a month student rent is well off and £5,000 for term time living is pretty good money.

My DD has roughly the same, but shes kept her McDonald's job and only does every 2nd weekend. Summer she will go back to 4 shifts a week for the following year. So thats another £300 a month.

She's got savings as well which she hasn't dipped into yet.

She can survive on that for food - easily. I could feed a family of 4 for £100.

If she was smart - she could feed herself for less and then save £30 for going out.

Pasta and tomato sauce is dead cheap - baked potatoes and tuna and beans a cheap lunch. She needs to figure out lots of cheap meals she likes and focus on those.

No she's not going to be having nice wholesome meals all the time... But she would easily survive.

In the 1970's?

@independentfriend Sorry, but that’s a dreadful option. Just a bit sad!

It's much cheaper to buy in bulk. If she buys a big bag of rice and tins of broad beans or butter beans and a big tin of bouillon, she can make quite nice and nutritious meals with whatever veg she can buy on its use by date. Maybe she can split the cost of some items with flatmates.

She won’t have the room for this in halls. She will have 1 small kitchen cabinet for all her dry goods, cooking utensils and dishes. She will have the size of a large Tupperware of room- about 1/3rd of one shelf in the fridge and the same in the freezer. In addition, kitchen mates are known to steal basics. My DD was constantly having her ketchup and ice cream treats stolen.

In addition, it is unlikely the kitchen’s cooking area will be any more than a tiny hot plate next to a combo microwave/toaster oven that you can’t fit anything big in. They are not allowed to use toasters, kettles, or hot pots even in the kitchen.

So there won’t be cooking large batches of anything.

My eldest says she spends about £25 a week on food. This is being just a bit careful but not massively so. The food she likes to eat (regardless of cost) is actually really cheap stuff. She has overnight oats every morning with chopped apple. Her other favourite thing to eat, and she'd eat it every day if she could, is homemade vegetable chilli. She's vegetarian so I suppose that helps. She also doesn't drink alcohol. This probably isn't a particularly helpful post as she spends so little without even really trying.

Are there cheaper accommodation options in the relevant town? She doesn't have to live in halls - she could become someone's lodger or look at paid house-sitting or similar.

That'd create a different uni experience but is an option I haven't seen mentioned.

Probably depends how good DD is at budgeting. It's much cheaper to buy in bulk. If she buys a big bag of rice and tins of broad beans or butter beans and a big tin of bouillon, she can make quite nice and nutritious meals with whatever veg she can buy on its use by date. Maybe she can split the cost of some items with flatmates. The worse thing is to buy ready made sandwiches and so on with a coffee each day; that would really eat into her budget. If she's frugal like this she might survive on £35 a week for food and have a small amount for socialising and books. She could stop buying clothes for herself and ask for them for Christmas presents.
The cost of living is sky high at the moment, so it will be a challenge. In my uni days I managed on less than the recommended amount because my parent's didn't pay a contribution. Still had a really good time though most my socialising was done over a mug of chicory coffee and a custard cream biscuit in halls!

Can you please use this calculator
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator

to calculate how much £25 in the years you were in Uni would need to be today to be equivalent?

Otherwise it just sounds like my grandparents going on about buying a loaf of bread for a penny…

OP has said she will be doing this.

The other point is that (if in England) the maintenance loan has not increased in line with inflation, so simply "topping up" the loan to the maximum may well still leave an actual shortfall in terms of what it's reasonable to expect your child to live on. If you're planning to top up, you'd be better to use the amount in Wales (where the loan has increased in a more sensible way).

I used to live on £35 a week that's before to good to go bags which Ur kid could get . They can get yellow sticker food to and cheap own brand it can be done the to good to go bags have food from Gregg's,Aldi and coop. They could also sign up to oilo and go collect food from Tesco

Don’t be reassured because this isn’t possible. Return bus fare in the city I live in is £4.40 so say she has to go to uni 4 days a week that’s £17.60 so she would be left with £42 for everything…. Books/supplies/toiletries/food etc. it will be grim. She’ll have to work now and save and then get a job when she moves.

DS had £30 a week from us for food 2012-2015, it was plenty, he became a great cook and ate well. They shopped in markets and budget stores and meal planned and ate as a flat/house.

This didn’t cover entertainment or fun though and he couldn’t get a job in his uni town, deprived area and things were bad economically, so he used to get a train home every Saturday morning, work in a petrol station for two shifts then back to uni on a Monday at 6am. That paid him about £85 a week, less his rail fare with a student discount and he was left with about £60 a week fun money.

managed that for three years, the round trip was about 160 miles.

DD was in an expensive city and her loan didn’t cover her accommodation so we had to too her up £100 a week, she also couldn’t work because of placements in cities 60 miles away. She probably has less disposable income than DS for fun stuff.