How much does it cost to support DC at university?

[planningtomakeaplan]

I've been skint for years, I don't have any savings. I've just started to earn a relatively decent wage in a job with prospects. (A very average wage compared to loads on here probably)!

For the first time, I'm able to look forward to the future and make some plans.

I expect my DC will want to go to university (they may surprise me! but let's assume for now...)

How much does it cost to support DC through university? How can I budget for this? Thanks :)

This is something I’m really worrying about atm. DD is going to uni in a couple of weeks. We’ve already spent a fortune getting bedroom/kitchen stuff etc sorted and her maintenance loan is taken up entirely by her rent. I’ve got no idea how much she will need to live on. Some of her friends are saying their parents will be sending around £80 per week for food and socialising etc but there’s no way with our mortgage and car payment as well as having another child still at home and the rising energy costs that we can afford anywhere near to that, so I’m really interested in what others would suggest too.

DD will get £10k per annum (mix of grant and loan).

accommdation comes out of that too so we made a sum she has approximately £100 pw to live on. We’ll top up £60 and she is planning to get a job asap.

I was going to post the same question...

DS gets the £4,200 mainteance loan which will just about cover his halls (we'll top up the difference) then we were thinking of giving him £400-500 per month to live on. When he gets a job, we'll reduce that down to £400 per month.

Does this sound about right?

£400 a month is what we gave ours for living on - seemed to be similar to most of their friends.

We’ve decided on £400 p/m for food and general spending. Her accommodation is £180 p/w in Bristol, the halls she chose were a bit cheaper but she wasn’t allocated her first choice so she’s got the more expensive accommodation.
Her maintenance loan is the lowest, I think it’s around 3.5k per year from what I can remember off the top of my head which means we have to make up the (large) shortfall.
We’re in for an expensive few years. How much you give them depends on too many things really, income is the biggest factor or more specifically what you can afford to or want to give them.
we thought £100 a week is enough for food, social activities (a night or two out) and she will have to decide if she wants to find a part time job down there to top it up.
We pay for her phone and she pays for her gym membership which is transferable from here. She has a job at home and has put some aside for savings so has quite a bit of a buffer to keep her going this year (depending on how she decides to spend it obviously).

My DD received the minimum (8 years ago). Fees were paid by loan. We paid her rent. She got a maintenance loan of about 3k which she had to live off of. She didn't work in termtime (but did in the summer) but would have had to if she had spent more than her 3k pa.

My DS got a well paid degree apprenticeship. We gave him my old car, first years insurance and costs paid and first months rent and deposit. Then, luckily, that was it!

wow I think I’m even more worried at hearing how much others are giving their DC. £400 a month is way beyond anything we can afford. We’ve got no choice but to support her, if we didn’t she wouldn’t be able to go to uni but I don’t know how she’ll manage.

@Mamomag After topping up the rent (she gets minimum loan and her rent is a little more than that), we give dd £40 pw from when she goes in Sept to end of June. She chooses to work to earn more, as she likes spending and is partial to do just that, but she is insistent £40 a week is very 'live-able on'.
My older two had less than that from us (we've allowed for cost of living rise) and they too said that was fine for what they needed.
Mine all worked in the holidays for their "luxuries" - one bought and ran a car (incl insurance), one likes his holidays and also takeaways and meals out etc. but both said that £35 ish was plenty for week by week expenses.

We pay halls and ours live off the £4200 loan, which sees to be plenty for them. Both work in the summer to fund extras during the year.

Also depending on their course depends on whether they need any new stuff on a regular basis ie books for English Literature.

A lot of students work to earn extra money. At the end of the day you can only afford what you can afford and it will have to be enough. If they want more then they can look for a job. We had an open and frank discussion with Ds about how much they were spending and where it was going just to gauge where his money was going. He is incredibly sensible so he had plenty of money left over which has seen him through going out this summer.

@Kite22 thanks for this. This is reassuring. DD is the first in our family to go to uni so we have no idea what to budget for her. She’s got 2 jobs at minute and has been putting money away to help and both jobs have said they’ll keep her jobs open when she’s home during the holidays so that’ll help a bit. We’ve discussed her getting a job when she’s away but I’d rather wait until she’s a few months in so she can find her feet. I dunno if I’m just panicking a bit

Twins going here, minimum loans, it will cost me about £750 a month. This is offset by not having to buy them food, clothes, lunch money, bus fares etc but even so 😬

I'm paying for stuff preparing ds to go (from the house plus £100 at Dunelm, not all of which was essential, plus a suit and a couple of books) and that's it. Ds will get full fees loan, full maintenance loan. He's working a lot of hours washing dishes in the run up so will have around £600 cash - he's hoping already to go on a Christmas trip. I will probably carry on paying his phone because I'm too technically useless to separate the contracts

I expect his funds will go down by about £800 a term/80 a week the following 2 years because I'm earning more now. I'm expecting him to work throughout the holidays to contribute to that tbh. I'm lucky just having one child and ill muddle through somehow. I live in a uni city myself so if I have to I'll rent out his room.

Depending on what they want to study or career they are after they may want to consider degree apprenticeships. My DS starts his soon, no loan as tuition fees are paid and approx 25k per year salary. It will be exceptionally gruelling and it was very competitive getting a space.

They could also consider working for a year or two, my DS has also worked for a year before starting this October.

Our son will get the minimum maintenance loan and it looks like we’ll be topping that up with £5-£6k a year if he doesn’t stay at home. Glad we have a 5 ish year age gap between our kids.

I assume you're in England if he's wanting to go to London. Not that you can't go there from anywhere else, obv, it just seems more likely.

I'm lucky to live in Wales, where the amount of student finance is £9250 for the fees, and another £9250 for mainteance, with there being a sliding scale for the amount of the maintenance being a grant that's non-repayable (£1k minimum) and a loan that needs repaying. As such, we didn't have to give DD any regular amounts of money towards her £6k accommodation and she had enough left each term to not have to try and get a different pt job in her uni town, she just worked in her old pt job when home in the hols. I think if we'd lived in England she'd have had £4.5k max loan for maintenence by comparison, and we'd have had to make up the shortfall of her loan and she'd have had to have worked for her extras.

I will have 2 at the same time as only one year between them. How on earth will we afford another £800-1000 a month as well as everything else going up… this is madness.

We're feeling the same at the minute. DC is due to go next year but I'm already worried about how much we can afford to contribute as they wouldn't be entitled to a full loan. We would just have been ok to contribute £300-400 pm at a push, however, our gas and electricity will have gone up by £400 in October (since our fixed tariff ended in June) and then who knows what it'll be this time next year!
We just can't find an extra £300-400 on top of energy and cost of living rises to contribute towards their uni costs, we've already said they need to get a job (which they are fine with) but I don't want them to have the worry of finances whilst they are studying!

The amount of maintenance loan depends on household income as people have said, there’s an online calculator where you can see what to expect, the minimum is 4200 and it goes up to about 10,000 for a household income of under 25k I think. Our DD gets a little above the minimum, about 4,800, and she lives off that and has a job. We pay her rent, £645 a month, Bristol is v expensive and getting worse. I recommend looking into private rental costs when choosing where to go. We host homestay students in her room to help with this.

@Mooloolabababy yeah we’re the same. I don’t want her worrying about how we’re coping, I want her to be able to fully experience uni life and not sitting in every night coz she can’t afford to go out. She’s very sensible though and does understand how difficult it is going to be for us so has been working multiple jobs over the summer to save some money. We know we’ll have to make some serious cutbacks but I also don’t want it affecting our other child either. The system is so wrong, the loans shouldn’t be based on parents income, especially at times like this

We paid their accommodation, about £6500pa, and they lived in the allowance. Plus they worked the summer, and also a couple of evenings in term time too.

We pay ours £1100 a month each which covers rent and their spending

My dd maintenance loan covers accom plus about £50 a month spare. We then give £100 a month. She works part time earning about £800 a month. So £950 for food/nights out / clothes/toiletries etc

The maximum student loan is £9250, however, in the last year they get less as it's deemed they've finished their education at the end of May. Rent isn't cheap in many cities, DD will be paying £7800, her cousin £9600. You'll certainly need to top up to the £9250 which is what we've always done. DD can find work locally adhoc but seems virtually impossible in her uni city despite a range of experience.

You don't have to support them at all because there are loans available and they can get a part time job.

However, it makes their lives a bit easier if you can contribute towards living costs, and reduces the amount of debt they will have to repay.

But asking how much is a bit of a 'how long's a piece of string' question as there are so many factors to it.

You will have to work it out based on your own situation and what your child wants when they get to uni in terms of accommodation etc., where they go to uni (expensive place like London or somewhere more affordable?), whether they are going to get a job or not, and who knows what the cost of living will be doing by then?