Financial support at university

[Tevion28]

Im already fretting about ds and how he will cope at university financially as after accomdation is paid he only has £540 left for next 3 months. He will probably get a job butvibwas wondering how much do you give your dc each week if anything

@Tevion28

He gets £3.331 tomorrow £2592 is due in rent on the 8th October. He doesn't get another payment until 10th January of 2022 of £3.331

So will he have to pay 3 x £2500 over the year?

I only ask because dd's instalments we're not uniform - the first one was £500 more than the other two. I phoned up and got it recalculated into three equal instalments to take the pressure off.

Another thing to consider is making sure his bank statements show a history of careful spending so he can apply for financial support from the university if he really can't manage.
If it is all Google play and online gambling (extreme example obviously) it might be trickier to ask for help. But help is there if things are really tight.

• temporary jobs (zero hours)

Is he in self catering in which case he will need more money for food. Divide his money by the number of weeks in the term and try to work out a budget. I've known students who have powered through all their loan in the first couple of weeks. Don't let him be one of them. But most folk anticipate the expense when choosing a uni and then when choosing accommodation. If hes chosen more expensive places then thats going to be a problem.

He eats a lot of pasta and baked beans
shops in Aldi
gets a PT job
etc

My 2 eldest will be off next year and will get the full loan - I plan to top up by £100 a month but beyond that they will work PT - they both have PT retail jobs so should be able to move within the company

There are calculator sites online for exactly this.

Put in your uni to get locally relevant information on costs.

The gym really is a luxury though...

OP, most people aim to top up to the full loan. If he already has that, and still can't make ends meet, he's either too spendy or needs to find a job.

I help out by sending occasional extras - items he's mentioned needing or a food delivery.

I would check to see if the university does offer bursary's to low income households (not all do automatically).

It is very likely he will get a bursary if he's on the full loan but let him find that out for himself, or he might not work so hard at finding a job and/or cutting back.

As pp said, if he needs to access hardship support in the future he'll need to show a history of sensible spending.

www.ucas.com/finance/managing-money/budget-calculator

Sorry, meant to include a link!

This suggests average costs of about £200 per month if you exclude accommodation and travel, which he already has covered, and also exclude the holidays and clothing allowance for now, though obviously he's unlikely to go the full 3+ years without buying clothing.

Gym is a luxury. If he wants it, he gets a job to pay for it.

Mobile phone - look at buying a refurbished handset (if he doesn't have one already) and get a cheap contract (Tesco do some for less than £10 a month, I think). Music Magpie is good for refurbished handsets.

Food - get him a "cooking on a budget" cookbook. Once he makes friends, can they cook together to save money? Eg it's cheap to make a load of spag Bol, but not that useful if you're cooking for 1 and don't have freezer space for the leftovers, but if he has 3 friends and they take it in turns then it would work out cheaper.

Course materials - wait until he starts and then see whether he needs much. My uni course recommended several textbooks, but none were actually essential. The uni may give access to online materials too. And he may be able to buy books secondhand (and sell them on afterwards).

Other than that, he just needs to be really strict with spending. He may think he needs a fancy laptop, new clothes every few weeks etc, but he really doesn't. A lot of students when I was at uni insisted that they needed Mac books etc - they really didn't; I had a second-hand Dell and it was more than enough (unless he needs to run specialist software etc).

Fyi unies usually have pretty cheap gyms for use by students.

He’ll learn quickly what is important and prioritize. I was similar at university and didn’t get extra from my parents. Occasionally they put £30 on a gift card for Sainsburys but otherwise, I got a few crap jobs to see me through. Only a couple of shifts a week but I survived fine enough. Noodles and jacket potatoes

My son's university don't allow undergrads to have jobs. So I top up his loan by £100 per week. He didn't get the full loan, he has almost nothing after accom is paid

@ProudAlly

My son's university don't allow undergrads to have jobs. So I top up his loan by £100 per week. He didn't get the full loan, he has almost nothing after accom is paid

Where the heck is he😳

Our DD has just gone back.
Once she paid her rent, she had £9 a week for food, transport, clothing etc.
She found herself a job in a bar and now has more disposable income than me

To the people replying saying that when they were at university, their parents just gave them a bit of money a few times a year, I wonder if they know how different things are now.

DC is at university and gets the minimum maintenance loan. That’s about £4200. His year’s accommodation is £5500. So, we have to top up £1300 just for him to be able to live there. That’s without him eating a single meal, buying a single book or even getting on a bus.

£180 pm doesn't sound that bad to me? Not if it's not including bills or transport anyway. Certainly covers food and uni expenses (he can use their library rather than buy course books. I am currently studying and have spent about £100 in 2 years on books).

What uni is he at? My DD is at Manchester and in one of the more expensive accommodation (it was what was allocated). It costs £6830 per year for 41 weeks. Her rent is fairly equal amounts each term.

Her maintenance loan is £9600, so that leaves her with around £900 for the term. She also gets a bursary she will not need to pay back.

I can only assume your son is in London?

I knew there would be moans about the student finance system but, imo, we need to focus on accommodation providers who are charging more than the cost of a mortgage for a tiny room that the students aren't even allowed to inhabit during certain holiday periods. This is what causes students to struggle and its being publicly funded by all of us.

DS2 gets the minimum loan of £4,422. We pay his self catered accommodation costs for the year of £6,161.25 and give him £40 a week. So he has £125 a week to cover food, clothing, books, socialising, transport, phone etc.

I got the max grant/loan and was from a low income family, I graduated in 2016 so it was a little while ago. I was living very rurally (very small uni and went because it offered great practical opportunities) so everything was slightly more expensive than in the average university and there was very little competition on prices. I also never stayed in student accommodation as it just wasn't available to had to rent privately from the start so appreciate my situation might be different.

I made things last, he needs to learn budgeting fast unless he wants to get a job asap. I made things stretch as I didn't want a job if I didn't need to. I very rarely drank alcohol (I don't really like it anyway and very rarely drink now) or ate out, I didn't buy new clothes and I used the uni library including inter library loans as much as possible. I only bought books I thought I would use for multiple classes or that would be a better investment. I meal planned as much as I could with the occasional treat which I also budgeted for. The biggest pressure will likely come from keeping up with his peers, that's what I struggled with most. Many of the people I was studying with were receiving varying levels of support from one who's parents paid for everything (she had no loan by choice) to someone getting a regular £100 a month from a more well off parent so there was a big range in the amount of disposable income people had and therefore how they wanted and how much they wanted to spend.

I didn't get a job until my master's because I'm good at budgeting but just couldn't make it work for my master's. I don't regret not having a job during my undergraduate, I didn't miss out on much I just spent less doing the same stuff.

@Tevion28

Not a high earning household unfortunately

The amount he gets in loans is based on your household income. Whatever you may think about your household income, the loans he's eligible for are done on the basis that you need to make up the difference.

@Annoyedanddissapointed Oxford and Cambridge don’t let you get a job when an undergrad. DSS is living off his savings, we are giving him a tenner a week as his back up I’ve got no £ so need something fund.

But he will need to get a job, there’s nothing left after his loan comes out. It’s actually minus £1250

@Oh9autumn wowza. Had no idea!