If you have a dc at uni...

[TheChosenTwo]

How much money are you spending on that per month? Dd will be going next year (hopefully, she likes the look of Bristol). Neither dh nor myself went, I have no idea how to support her through even the application system but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
We have been putting money away for the dc since they were born to help towards things like this but I’m curious as to how much you’re spending a month to cover their time at uni.
Tia, I know I’ll have left out important points here, if you ask I’ll answer, not being deliberately unhelpful it’s just I don’t have the faintest idea of what figures I’m looking at
£500? 1K? More? Less? Literally no idea!

My DD (and DS starting Sept) have loans for tuition fees and maintenance grants. I will give them £25 per week, each for food. I also try to help with travel costs, car costs, clothes here and there. It's all I can afford. EXH contributes nothing.

And just to add, my DD is in Bristol and the accommodation is very very expensive so get maintenance loan pretty much covers that and leaves her about £1000 per year to live on

DD gets minimum loan and is studying in an expensive city. We’re giving £800 pcm (£600 is rent) and odd top ups. Halls last year were £1100 for the duration of the contract. We also cover her car insurance and contact lenses. She has a job in her university city but hours have been sporadic this year due to COVID.

Thankfully nothing as she lives at home and has a part time job.

Friend of mine who has a ds living away gives them £100 a month, but he has a part time job as well.

You need to work out how much of a maintenance loan they’ll get, this depends on your income. There’s an expectation you make up any shortfall of they don’t get the full amount.

We’re quite high earners and if Dd had gone away to uni she’d have got the minimum which I think is about 4 or maybe 5k. Well that would all be swallowed up by rent, leaving her nothing to live on. If she’d moved away I was expecting to have to pay her about 5k a year!

Mine is in the first year and gets the minimum maintenance loan which didn’t cover the accommodation for the year. We had to pay about £1000 to top that up.

We then give £50 a week for travel/living/food etc.

My dd finished uni last summer. She qualified for the minimum maintenance loan which she used to live on. We paid her accommodation costs which were just about £650 per month in her final year. She didnt have a job I term time but did work in the holidays. I also started her off at the beginning of each term with some groceries and toiletries.

Mine didn’t go to Bristol because we knew we couldn’t afford an expensive city. She is on a maintenance loan of just shy of £6K per year which covers her rent somewhere much cheaper. I give her £50 living expenses when she is away. I drive backwards and forwards to do pick-ups and drop offs, stock her up with groceries at the start of term, pay her mobile phone contract and cough up for big ticket items like shoes, winter coat and new glasses. In real terms she’s costing me about £300 per month.

Sorry, £50 per week living expenses

A good rule of thumb is to make sure they get the amount they would get if they were getting the maximum maintenance loan which is about £9k a year. All students are entitled to a basic loan of £4,500, so you'd be expected to top up between £0 (if she qualifies for the full loan) and £4,500 a year (if she doesn't qualify for anything other than the basic).

We pay for DD's accommodation, and she uses her maintenence loan for living expenses.

It depends what your household income is and how much loan your DD will getting. Most parents, if they can afford it, top up whatever loan is awarded to the full c.£9k/ year the child would get it it were from a low income family.
For us this works out at £3600 year ie £300 / month. That, plus the loan is what the government thinks a student can live on. I think her grandparents sometimes give her a bit extra and she works in the holidays too. I was hopeful she'd get a job in her Uni town but it's not easy at the moment with all the cafes, shops and bars closed and so many local people out of work.
Her maintenance loan is almost entirely swallowed up the the cost of her rent. Some cities are cheaper in terms of rent and cost of living than others; Bristol is not the worst but it's far from the cheapest either.

If she qualifies for the full maintenance loan of £9250 per year (because your income is under the threshold) then she should be able to budget within that if she also gets a part time job, and then you can just give her top up treat amounts. If she qualifies for a lower loan because you have a higher income then you should make it up to the £9250 but the government doesn't make this clear. www.gov.uk/student-finance/new-fulltime-students

Both my DD's have minimum loan, we given them £120 a month for food etc and everything else from their trust fund - the balance was £13k before they started.

I, like others give dd the amount that she would get if she got the maximum £9k odd loan. I give it to her monthly though, rather than termly as that helps our cash flow. She works part time for Serve Legal so gets all her alcohol and some food/takeaways from her audits.

Martin Lewis has a calculator on his web site that covers all this.
My children were all on minimum loan which didn't even cover their rent (by some way). We paid their rent & they lived on the loan (£4000/year ish). The rent was in the region of £6500/year. We also paid their phones (£10/month), car insurance (year 2 onwards) & of course fed & watered them in the holidays. Two had jobs at uni & all had jobs in the holidays.

£750 pcm

DS won’t qualify for the maintenance loan so will definitely provide that (£375pm) and are budgeting for £500pm if needed.

We don't spend anything. We don't have it to spend.
DD is at Brunel, and once covid is over, will get a job for extra money. She has the maximum loan and so far has managed on that.

Do put some cash aside for kitting her out though. We had to buy bedding for dd (she had a single bed at home whereas her halls is small double. Kitchen stuff (her grandparents gave her their spares but we found the pans didn’t work on her induction hob) & a few home comforts. (Dd splashed out on a fluffy rug for her floor). We also replaced her laptop as zoom wasn’t cutting it on her old tablet.

DS gets a top up to the full maintenance loan. We do this by paying his rent and a food shop allowance.

My two are both going to go to uni in the next two years. I found this really helpful
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-decoded/

My DC both got all the loans they could which included a 4K maintenance loan. It’s costs us £500 per month per DC for them to go to uni. Their houses are 6k per year so the £500 per month is made up of the shortfall in maintenance loan and rent which is 2k. Then they need money for food, spending money, activities etc.
It’s been more expensive than we expected. Like collusion our youngest finishes this year.

We pay her rent, she is in her last year. She has her loan and holiday work pay for everything else. We pay around £460 a month

DS gets full maintenance loan. College accom is expensive and eats up most of loan but he gets a £2k bursary (this is based on parental income and dont have to apply for it) which reduces that to a more realistic amount. Its worth checking bursaries. I also give him £500 per term (10 weeks), which is more than he needs and he has money spare. I would say the first few weeks of the first term are most expensive. He had to pay for books and fees to join social stuff (which ended up being one event before they all had to isolate!) and you end up buying stuff for their room / extra clothes (as they wont do as much laundry as at home). He also found his second year house before Xmas and had to pay a deposit and will have to pay his first bit of rent in July (as its a 12 month contract) so he will be dipping into his own savings for that as obviously this years maintenance only covers this years rent not next years. I also pay his phone as its on a family tariff. He could get by without the extra I give him but I want him to enjoy these years. Usually he would have worked holidays but thats been a no hoper this year. On the plus side you save on your food bill, school lunches and fares, pocket money etc. I dont feel I spend more than when he was living at home.

Thanks everyone, this has been really helpful and. I’m going to go and check out the links to work out what kind of maintenance grant she will be able to get.
To the poster who mentioned Bristol being expensive for accommodation, I had a feeling it would be pricey. She hasn’t made her mind up fully yet, she’s still exploring her options as to what she definitely wants to study and where, but Bristol is the one she’s mentioned a couple of times now.
I do appreciate everyone’s contributions to this, it’s sort of been slowly approaching and now it’s dawned on me that she’ll be going next year and we haven’t really thought about the logistics of it!
Dd2 doesn’t seem to be making any noises about any desire to go so far.