How much money did you give your kids at university?

[BerryTwister]

DS reckons he’s had a lot less than his friends. I’m curious to know how much your kids at uni had to live on, after rent was paid.

DD will be living at home and using her minimum maintenance loan plus £200 each from me and her dad to buy a £6k annual railcard to London (an hour away). We can't afford for her to live away from home.

Zero. We can’t afford to contribute. They live at home rent-free and commute. The minimum student loan covers everything else.

This has been a very helpful thread. DS is due to start in Sept and I have no idea what a reasonable amount would be. I think we'll probably go with the paying his rent + a small top up (he'll get minimum loan) per month

DD will get the minimum maintenance loan which will cover her first year rent plus about £400. Her GP will give her £3000 for the year which we will top up to pay £100 per week or £25 per week when at home. She’s also got a summer job which will give her c.£2500 this summer and she can hopefully do when she comes home for the main holidays.

MIL kindly topped up maintenance loan so rent was covered. We sent £250 a month which doesn’t sound much but we also paid for phone, clothing, any extra resources he needed. He also had £1000 a term from his child trust fund.

We paid accommodation costs including catering. I gave £20 - £25 pw for food when they were self catering. I also still pay for their monthly mobile phone costs, Netflix and Spotify.
The minimum student loan was for everything else.

My DP also gave them monthly money, about £100-£150 a month each.

Both went to Oxford so weren’t allowed to work during term time, and often had field trips during the holidays. We didn’t want them to feel like they were poor relations or that they would have to miss out on some of the experiences.

We "only" pay her hall fees/rent & utilities. I think that's loads! She lives day to day off her loan (£5k so £100 per week) and uses a separate pot from her holiday job for big ticket fun stuff like concert tickets.

She seems to have plenty of money and just offered what she has left from this year's loan to us, to help towards the rent. She is quite a frugal shopper though, Lidl & Vinted all the way.

We pay for her Spotify & Netflix under the family account but she pays for her own phone (£8pcm Giffgaff and full replacement cost if she breaks it)

No, that's spending money, just want them to have fun and not worry. Everything else is covered too.

In response to the OP, it will vary hugely and always has, even in days of grants and no tuition fees. I remember becoming aware in the middle of the first term that some of my friends had no worries about “running out of money” as they were either on pretty much unlimited allowances or had access to their own pretty hefty funds ( I did not know any of these types of people before going to uni as they basically didn’t exist in my home town). International students also tended to be pretty well funded- some had credit cards which their parents just paid off. At the other end of the scale you had/have students who are scraping it together from grants ( then), loans ( then and now), jobs and parental top ups where possible.

so I guess what I’m saying is that YP kind of have to accept that all family financial situations are different and parents can only afford what they can afford. Don’t impoverish yourself so your DS can run with a wealthier crowd.

I lived at home and my parents didn't provide anything for me. I had a student loan and a part time job.

We topped up to match maximum loan which is what you are supposed to do and he had a job

We pay rent £1200 pm that includes all utilities and wifi, then £ 550 pm for food, phone, transport. Occasionally, we will send extras when books need to be purchased, or new shoes.

We give/ gave our DC £1100 a month to cover rent and spending money
Also continued to pay things we were paying eg phones

DS goes in September. To UCL so expensive! I’ll be paying rent plus tuition fees. About £23k per year in total. Spends (food, gym, Oyster card etc) will be paid out of DS’s part time job and DH will top up as needed. An article in the complete university guide I read suggested London students need about £600 per month.

@Ventress You are paying £13000 a year isn’t £600 a month,. You won’t get London accommodation for £600 a month. CUG is incorrect or you would not be paying a lot more.

The rent for DS is £300 per week. I thought that wasn’t too bad. I pay that directly to the halls.
The £600 per month is for spends like food and Oyster card. If it’s not enough DH will top up - I guess we have to see how it goes.

Apologies, I’ve realised my post was very confused.
Ive got £300 per week for rent (approx £14k)
£192 per week for tuition (approx £10k)

Plus about £120 per week for everything else. May be a bit too little. Perhaps we’ll increase but DS has his own money from his part time job so that will top up.

Can’t remember (too long ago) except that after a few days of the new term, dd once told me she couldn’t find the cheque I’d given her.

It turned up about a week later - chewed into little bits. Her pet rat Dave (often free range) had found it and thought it’d do very nicely for his bedding.

DD £450 pm in rent looks cheap now! She has no access to student loans for maintenance (Irish national studying in NI), so we have to cover rent and living costs.

DS goes in September. He's got a loan for tuition but we'll pay accommodation and food, bills, etc. Curious to see how much that should be, so following with interest!

We pay accomodation. It's about £400/year more than our contribution is supposed to be. He has a loan to cover tuition and living expenses.

@Ventress Most people cannot afford that and your DC will have a high life as a student! Even London doesn’t have to be £300 a week for a student rent and a gym is a luxury.

£70/ week to cover food/ travel/ going out. Phone contract paid for. Anything else covered by their summer job

DD just finished uni. She took out the max loan for fees and about £3k a year maintenance loan.

We paid for her rent the whole three years which came out to about £25k. Also paid for her driving lessons which cost a fortune and her mobile phone bill plus Spotify and Netflix under our family plan.

She had two part time jobs during her course, earning about £300-500 pm on average depending on what shifts she could get.

DD got a job the first week there, Pizza Express was amazing for tips and a free pizza every shift. She had more fun at work than Uni 😂
We used to do her big shops when she was short. Money if there was an emergency.

• edited to add… This was 9 years ago. We have 2 more kids going to Uni in a couple of years and they’ll overlap. We have more income now but honestly can’t imagine how we’ll afford to supplement them. DD2 is already planning a year out to save.