Uni pocket money?

[Lollypop4]

Did you support your DC with a little bit of cash each month?
DD goes to ini this year.
I was thinking about paying her mobile bill (is only £10pm now) and maybe £30-40pm too , towards food for example(Though this might be used on nights out sometimes!. )
DD will be working during holidays still.
DH thinks the student loan will cover everything and she should just be left to that.

It depends how much she’s getting for her loan. DD gets the minimum and I pay approx half her rent and then £50 per week spending money for food etc. She has a job in the holidays but not term time

Student loan amount depends on your household income even if you don’t intend to give any financial support.

Our DDs loan didn’t even cover her rent let alone anything else. We paid the difference between her loan and her rent and then gave her (if I remember rightly) £200 - £250 per month for all her other expenses (over 19 they have to pay for prescriptions, dental, optician etc despite being students).

You will get so many different answers on this one. There are so many variables - rent, hobbies, travel costs etc etc.
Ultimately it will come down to what you think is acceptable and what you can afford.
From your description I presume that your daughter will be getting the full loan amount which is about £9.5k? My DS pays £6500 in rent per annum, so he would be left with £3k to live on based on that. That is not a lot to pay for phone, gym, food, clothes, travel - so we give him more than that and he works during the holidays too.

Thanks for the replies.
She has'nt been told the loan amount yet, hopefully soon.
Uni is in Wales , where be also live, medical needs will be covered as usual ( Unless this does'nt happen if you are at uni? )

DD's student loan doesn't cover her rent, let alone living costs. She has a monthly allowance on top and we still pay her mobile phone contract, her travel costs and other expenses as and when.

It will really factor in how much she will get and what her rent will cost.

Why haven't you checked how much loan she'll get, and how much you are expected to contribute? Unless you're a very low income household (under £25k a year) you're expected to top up her loan. The min loan is £4k. Max is £9k. If she get less than the max you're supposed to top up.

Calculator here:

https://www.gov.uk/student-finance/new-fulltime-students

We used to send some money every now and again, and would pay for all of his food. Paid his phone contract and his bus pass. I would also take things like toiletries/cleaning stuff/loo roll if visiting.

In year 2 he got a PT job and he funded himself completely after that.

I did have vision in Year one of the flat (I think there was 6 of them) all being mega sensible and going food shopping together and cooking for everyone etc. Clubbing together to save money.

But no, each person cooked their own individual meal.

As you live in in WALES, where the system is different , she will get the full amount and it's a bit more than the full amount for English students.

So whether she needs extra depends on other things. How expensive is the city where her uni is? Will she be able to work in termtime or is she on a more intensive course where that's not possible? Will she live with you for the holidays and not have to pay for her food etc? The holidays could be 20 weeks of the year.

Dd took over her own mobile phone bill from the September after she finished her A levels.

We give her the amount that she would get if she were entitled to the full maintenance loan. She pays her halls fees and everything else out of that. Her grandparents pay her car insurance for her and we do give her petrol money during holiday times when she runs errands for us/her elderly grandparents (dh can't drive so she helps out a lot in holiday times).

If she were to get the amount that Welsh students get then we wouldn't need to give her anything.

This is very interesting and timely to read. You all seem to be writing about student loans paying, or not, for rent and living expenses. Who pays for the tuition?

DD has the minimum loan which doesn’t cover her rent so we top that up to cover it. My in laws transfer £200 a month to her for living expenses. We pay her phone and occasionally txf some money or pay for a food shop or takeaway. She seems to manage ok but said it’s obv been easier during lockdown with nothing open ... £50 a week doesn’t go far when they’re out socialising.

The tuition loan goes straight to the uni and it’s the students debt.

DD also gets minimum which doesn't cover rent, and we give her a set amount every month - but I would not call it 'pocket money' or specify what it's for, because as a student moving toward independence, I think it should be for them to work out what they can and can't afford. It's also not a 'little extra' or a kindness, it's just a fact that the loan won't cover the rent and they need to live. Give what you can afford and are happy with, perhaps taking into account what you won't be spending because they're not in your house, and think about:
books
tech stuff
food
phone
laundry
socialising
clubs and subscriptions

Also it's harder for a lot of students atm because there's so much less casual work for them in term time or holidays - great she's got a job for her holidays though!

Sorry for being thick. So a student leaves Uni with a debt of £27K plus however much they need to borrow for living expenses?

@Smudgeis13

Sorry for being thick. So a student leaves Uni with a debt of £27K plus however much they need to borrow for living expenses?

That's the top and bottom of it. In England anyway.

My Ds gets the minimum maintenance loan and we pay his rent which is £350 a month.

In England, given that student loans are based on your parents income then I think its only right for the parent to top it up to the maximum amount and I think it's wrong that it isn't made clear that's what is expected.

The Welsh system of loan and grant seems much fairer.

My DD gets £120 a month on top of topping up to the full loan amount, other dd lives at home so doesn't get a top up but I pay her annual prescription certificate

She will get 9k ish maintenance then in Wales. The only question is how much she doesn't need to pay back that is a grant not a loan. Dd gets the minimum grant so has 1kt grant and 8250 loan.

It means it more than covers her rent at uni and we set her up with a full cupboard of food at the start of each term and send her there with a couple of hundred £ in cash for emergencies...like when her bank card stopped working the first week she went there last year and the bank wouldn't send a replacement to her uni accommodation.

She then has more than £70 per week left over from her maintenance (more in some terms as her rent is not split equally and some terms are more expensive) and she has managed to save a fair bit by aiming to spend only half of that each week.

Next year her accommodation is 700 more expensive! So I will give her some Rachel month to go towards that.

Her uni is In Cardiff, Wales ( We live in West Wales) nothing on the student finances has been set out for anyone yet, should be in the next fee weeks though.

Ah Wales sorry! Lucky you....

Cardiff is very cheap compare to many uni cities, so the grant/loan should cover rent and spending money.

Maybe send a monthly £50 Tesco/Lidl voucher?

@Smudgeis13

Sorry for being thick. So a student leaves Uni with a debt of £27K plus however much they need to borrow for living expenses?

In England that is definitely the case.

This Martin Lewis video explains it all really well (for students and families in England)

@Smudgeis13

Sorry for being thick. So a student leaves Uni with a debt of £27K plus however much they need to borrow for living expenses?

It's best not to think of it as debt in the traditional way but as a graduate tax. You don't have to pay anything until you are earning £27,000 per year and it gets written off after 30 years.