How much do students need to live on per week/term?

@RageAgainstTheNahCantBeArse basically if student studying outside of London and the maximum maintenance loan figure is £9488 and if a student is say receiving the minimum maintenance loan about 4K of a Maintenance loan and you have also paid out say 4K for accommodation then parents are expected to contribute at least the difference to top up to the level of the maximum Maintenance Loan so £1888 to the student per year.

Most terms are approximately 40 weeks long so that would equate to £1888 divided by 40 = £47.20 per week. The student would be expected to live very frugally and budget carefully so may need to work part time or have a top up from GP’s if in a position to
do so.

Sorry Rage, don't think I answered your question properly . After accommodation costs my DS has approx £70 a week ( that includes what he receives from his DGPs as well).

Rage we give our DS £250 per month (stopped during summer vacation), he received the minimum loan £4K ish and has to budget himself to pay for the accommodation each term. He also gets £100 a month from DGPs. He worked part time during his first term but that all stopped during covid. He works during the summer. He is very frugal and accidentally left his banking app open open on his phone .. I glanced at his balance and he has considerable savings .

It's so hard to give an exact figure because different cities/towns have different levels of accommodation costs, some students have a lot of text books, equipment to buy, some like to party hard, some cook for themselves every night (like my DS) - yet a friend of his gets a takeaway or eats out every single night - no way would I be subsidising that!

Ok then, assuming bills are included in the accommodation I'd say the bare minimum to live on to cover the absolute essentials would be £40-50 per week depending on whether the student has any travel costs.

To have any kind of social life I'd say £70-80 per week

I'd like to know the same thing! With the best will in the world it would be enormously helpful if people could just state how much per week they give their dc rather than 'take x then multiply by y, divide by 72, howl at the moon, turn round three times and you'll have your magic number'

Just a weekly figure for living expenses not including accommodation would be really helpful! Not all dc can manage term time jobs to top up (my dd has ASD and adhd, just managing herself and her course is going to be exhausting for her).

Sorry if this comes across as churlish and maybe the op is happy to do the twirling and maths but if anyone can just give a weekly figure that would be awesome, thanks!

Minimum maintenance loan just for living costs after accommodation is pretty generous, especially if she’s going to be living with you in the holidays and all her bills will be included in her rent in halls.

This ^
Roughly £4.5k for roughly 41 weeks give more than £100 pw

In terms of weekly spends, my dd lives on about 1/3 of that, so you really don't need to 'top up' if you have already paid accommodation.

Of course, as with all these "how much" threads, I am sure there are students who can manage to spend a lot more, if you have loads of disposable income and you don't want them to learn about budgeting, but your undergraduate years are a good time to learn such skills, and any "spare money" you have would probably be more usefully saved to help them when they graduate, at which point they will also have learned a lot more about balancing their books as well as getting the degree.

We budgeted £10 per day once accommodation sorted however they were lucky and got an extra £100 per month from grandparents
They have mainly worked in holidays and added some more to that but depends on course - I have one doing vet medicine who can’t work and we would top up a bit around exams if they wanted to stop working for a bit

I agree with the others. Take the figure of the maximum loan of £9,488, subtract the amount of loan your dd is actually getting and then subtract the sum you are paying towards accommodation and you will end up with a figure.

Divide that figure between however many weeks there are in the uni year then that's roughly what she will need you to give her.

I would also maybe suggest requesting moving this thread to Higher Education as you will receive more responses as assume your DD is doing an undergraduate course at Bristol.

There was a similar thread last week.

One of mine was at Bristol. We gave her £90 a week.

She could have lived on less, but I would say they need a bare minimum of £70.

My other DC was getting £100 by final year. We'd started on £70 but it clearly wasn't enough. He did have a better social life and liked the odd pint whereas my DD is teetotal. He was also in a more expensive location.

Minimum maintenance loan just for living costs after accommodation is pretty generous, especially if she’s going to be living with you in the holidays and all her bills will be included in her rent in halls.

I’m in your position. I might top up for specific things like train tickets home, and I’ll continue to pay for her phone bill because we have a cheap family Sim only deal, give her the Netflix password, and send her off with a new bag of shampoo, toothpaste and skin care but basically she’ll have her maintenance grant once a term to live on.

If you have paid her accommodation I assume this is because due to your household income she will only receive the minimum Maintenance Loan.

If this is the case if minimum ML is just over 9k (check on Martin Lewis website) then deduct accommodation costs from 9K or whatever the figure is and give your daughter at least that figure to live off divided by 3 and give her 1/3 of this per term for living costs as a minimum. Your DD can always get a job either full time outside term time or part time during term time to top up her funding or both and use any savings. If the halls are non catered make sure she can cook some basic dishes and understands about budgeting and living within her budget. However, if money is no object it is a case of how long is a piece of string and you can give your daughter any amount.

When I was at uni I had £50 a week for that :)