Anyone…what is your first yr students monthly budget

DD is planning to go to uni (outside London) and she'll get minimum maintenance loan. If we topped up to the maximum amount, after rent she'd probably have 1.5k to live on for the year.

so were planning to do what other pps have said, we'll pay rent, she'll use her loan. I realise we're fortunate to be able to do that and for lots of people that's not feasible.

I'm hoping she'll get a job and pay more of it herself in year 2.

I pay their rent and they live off the minimum loan and any earnings.

Keeps it simple.

Some students seem to get lots on here from parents. Great if it can be afforded but many don’t get that much and do just fine.

DS had his minimum maintenance loan which pays for most of his accommodation for the year except about £500 which we top up. We give him £70 a week when he’s at university (term time), pay his phone £10 a month, gym £150 a year and coach tickets for when he comes home. When we drop him off we do him a big food shop and also visit about once a term where we do the same. In the holidays he’s expected to do some kind of work to pay for going out which again so far has worked out fine.

In his 2nd year shared house, he has one of the highest weekly budgets. A couple of them have much less than that a week and only one other slightly more. The only people he knows with more than £100 a week generally have full maintenance loans and are topped up by bursaries. He sometimes saves money and therefore often has only £40/£50 a week to spend so at a push we could give him less. For context, he is in a midlands city, plays sport in a club once a week and goes out but does it cheaply/pre-drinks.

I’m feeling very cheap reading this. Ds gets £250 a month which has to include food and all socialising, clubs, clothes spending etc. We pay rent £180 per week and a cheap phone bill, also any train rides home. Otherwise, they have to economise.

(Talking about parents like OP who can clearly afford it, here)

We are paying rent and DD is living off the minimum loan.

For those saying parents are meant to make the total up to the minimum loan, you do realise in England, this has not risen in line with inflation? So I think if you wanted to do this it might be reasonable to make the total up to a slightly higher amount.

OP - is there a reason that you are micromanaging your child's finances? Students typically get their own loan and work out where to spend the money themselves. If you are worried about your DC having enough, why not ask him to create a budget (or sit with him and do this, if you think he won't know how)?

£120 pw spending money Inc food

£500 a month here (£16 a day). Not in catered halls. Not in London or an expensive city.

That's after rent has been paid

So pleased you said that @uneffingbelievable. I worked two jobs at uni. No parental contribution. Graduated with a 1st. I'm fully expecting my children to have jobs while they are at uni and was starting to wonder if I was being unreadable.

She doesn’t get £100 a week btw! I send her £50. She’s catered bfast & dinner Mon-Fri so has to cover her own lunches and weekend food. £50 a week seems to be ok for this, her clubs/societies, gym and going out. She’s now got a zero hours contract job @ £7.49 ph so has a bit extra coming in. The catered ensuite that she has but didn’t choose is £192pw for 40 weeks. In a northern city. So well over the minimum loan amount.
In 2nd year we are looking at £180pw for the house share but includes bills albeit it’s a full year rather than 40 weeks. So very expensive but not unusual.

Sorry - this excuse of intense workload always surprises me.
We have dental and medical students who hold down jobs, play sport and still pass.
With one fast approaching Uni, I asked a group which was mixed responses but 70% had jobs in the holidays and saved, 40% worked during the termtime aswell, 30% were fully funded by bank of Mum and Dad to the tune of £1000 pcm in some cases with accommodation, phones, travel etc paid for on top and some still worked - some ( girls!) def did not work and felt it beneath them - very much Daddy pays!

One had maximum loan and worked on top as could not ask his mum for monies as she had v little in the first place.

Most were on the bank in the hospital - working as admin clerks, hcas picking up ad hoc shifts etc. Once known on a ward - they were contacted early to cover shifts.

None felt they were missing out on anything, they worked hard, partied hard and all were enjoying themselves

We top ds's up to the full loan amount as his minimum loan doesn't even cover his rent.

Last year we split it over the weeks he was actually there which gave him £68 per week and he managed fine (he pays for everything including phone and travel except the beginning and end of term we give him a lift).

This year due to getting part time work he asked for it to be split over the 12 months which gives him £45 per week. He has struggled on that and has gone into overdraft by about £900, however he is due to be paid £2,000 from work he has had to invoice and he has had a lot of work related travel expenses.

DS goes next year and I'm kinda planning for him to need £1,000 pcm and that will be a combination of loan, job and parental top up.

Non catered accommodation is likely to be £110 - £175 people for 39 or 40 weeks.

Hopefully during the summer the parental contribution will be less as he'll get a job!

We top up the rent (she’s now in second year and in private rental down in Bristol which is ludicrously expensive, this year is £210 p/w without bills), she only gets the minimum loan and it doesn’t come close to covering the rent.
so whatever it is to top up rent monthly and then we send her £100 p/w to live on. She does work when she’s back home and saves her money for travelling. She was in Australia for a couple of months after breaking up for summer. We are happy with our arrangement.

I'd say about £60 a week for food, plus whatever necessary travel, plus £30-£40 a week for socialising and hobbies.

I'd expect them to find paid work in the Uni holidays to top this up.

i didnt pay but dd did have a maximum loan, find out how much that is perhaps?

i think martin money website might tell you
depends what you can afford
food isnt that expensive! how much do you think he would need for food for one?
you say his course is too intensive to work

Sorry to hear your dd has had such bad luck with accommodation @NotDonna . Obviously not that it helps you, but that is quite unusual though.

I still think £100 pw is incredibly generous for a student who is in catered accommodation. I mean, it is more than twice what my dd has from us, and she is self catered, so has all her food to buy from that money.

Obviously, if families are wealthy, and have that money, then it isn't anyone else's business, but I always worry on threads on the internet that when parents suggest that their students need that kind of spending money, that it might put off students from less wealthy families from going.

When I was in uni…which was admittedly about 18-20 years ago I worked each weekend (24-26 hrs per weekend) which earned me 195ish and then tips (very high end restaurant!) was another 200 per week. My parents paid my accommodation. I paid everything else.

I think universal credit is £73 per week (I may be wrong) but that gives some idea of how much the government thinks it's possible to live off.

@Uurrjb if they’ve not suggested an increase I’m wondering why you think they may need it? £100pw seems reasonable. Just have an honest conversation. If he says he’s fine leave him be. I was going to give DD £50pw (as semi-catered) but she said too much so agreed on £40. A few weeks in we had another convo and I upped it to £50 after all. She’s not working atm.

@UsingChangeofName We’d calculated the finances based on DDs choices but before she was assigned accom. ALL her 8 choices were self-catered & shared bathroom to keep costs down (yet still more than min loan). However, she wasn’t allocated ANY of her choices and was given the very expensive catered ensuite which totally scuppered the plan and is only a few quid off the max loan amount (that she doesn’t get)! If she’d have declined this she’d have had to find private accom.

For 2nd year she’ll be lucky to find a house for £180pw and all the lettings are a full year; for 52 weeks. So already £9360. I’m thinking £100pw for spending on top of that.

Our masters student in London was managing on £100 pw for food and bills . The course is almost full time. They do ad hoc work , maybe one or two sessions a week, taking coats, waiting or bar work. It was a bit of a stretch and was putting a bit too much pressure on the need to earn( he has a chronic health issue that was also suffering). We are discussing increasing it to £125/150. He hasn't asked us and is not someone who spends much on going out or expensive hobbies.

Our son gets the basic loan which is about £4.5k. We pay his rent in halls which is £7.5k.

He bought lots of new clothes before he went, from earnings over the summer, but we gave him some money towards them.

He has savings but so far says he is managing on the loan. We’ll check in again about money at Xmas. I think you just need to ask how he’s managing and how things are going.

I have no idea if you're being fair.

My DDs loan goes on her accommodation and we pay the rest. After that we give her £50 pw for food, each week she is at uni, not over Christmas/Easter. We also pay for her phone and all her course materials and clothes that she needs - not whatever she fancies from Biscester Village . She comes home once's a week for a long soak in the bath and a roast dinner. She'll then insist we take her to Sainsbury's stock up on goodies like her favourite drinks and snacks.
She also works one day a week, sometimes two so usually earns about £100 per week, but it could be £180. She has a very intensive course of over 40 hours pw contact time, so working isn't totally impossible with that type of course. She still finds time to party.

She told me recently she is "dirt poor" and I had to walk away to avoid an argument.

There is no simple answer, but I certainly don't think it's "top it up to the maximum loan". That just doesn't work- some parents won't be able to top up to the maximum loan and and some parents whose student receives the maximum loan might think they don't need to contribute anything, which would leave some students on £38pw (going by what DDs reasonably priced shared house will cost next year)

We went for the cheapest halls possible but they're limited. We were offered halls at £160 pw which included en-suite. We literally had no choice, it was that or nothing.

We also pay DS £100 pw