to think that £500 a month is enough for a child at uni

[FunnysInLaJardin]

we will pay his accommodation and his tuition fees will be paid, so this will just be for food and travel etc

That's pretty much what DS had from us. He graduated Summer 2022.

@Gensola
I agree, for 17k you can get a one bed flat in central Bristol. We pay 18k for a 3-bed house in the suburbs.

You can still get a studio flat in Hove for about 800-900 a month which is way less than 17k for a single room in halls, especially since students don't pay council tax.

Yes of course, the £350 is just spending money, so food and drink

Travel
Toiletries
Prescriptions/dental appointment/glasses
Laundry
Club/society/sport membership
The occasional social activity?
Books/study materials
Phone

£500 is way more than generous. I think £300 should be ample then they can learn to budget and choose how to spend their money i.e. they can then decide if they have lots of expensive coffees and cocktails out, takeaways, restaurant meals out, expensive weekends away and travelling all summer in which case they could get through any amount of money.

Or do they do what most Uni students do take own coffee out with them to lectures (most of them time) and use a refillable water container. Cook from scratch to do more than one meal and or shop and eat with friends. Have pre sessions in halls before going out, go out on student nights out, have cheap nights in games night, watching footie, chatting etc. Have a weekend visiting Uni friends (save on accommodation costs) and plan a week or a fortnight away with Uni friends in summer either a cheap package or a fortnight's inter-railing etc and work during the rest of summer.

They're doing all that on £9.80 a day (£300 per month). Wow, impressive.

That's so lovely of her brother!

This has got to be the most out of touch MN post I've read in a while!

DD's student loan covered her accommodation. We gave her £400pm to cover food, going out and travel (she was 330+ miles away from home so wasn't cheap travel wise).

First year it was impossible for her to get a job, second year we were into lockdown so she stayed at home to continue with a lockdown job she got here - worked 39 hours pw and did uni work. Third year, she was abroad. Fourth year, she easily got a job working for uni along the lines of her lockdown job here.

I agree this is a weird thread.
I have not long graduated from uni. I studied in London. My accommodation was no where near 17k so that is baffling to me. I was in until 5pm everyday in uni. Then worked in a call centre 6-9 Monday to Friday. Then when placements came I obviously had to quit working but worked Saturday and Sunday in daytime in restaurant and in the holidays a great deal more. Still managed to go out drinking several times a week and get my uni work done but then I again I much preferred writing essays at 2am than in the daytime.

P.s my family gave me nothing to live on

I’m in Brighton. £500 is plenty. If he wants to top it up then it’s relatively easy to get part time jobs here.

I hope he has a great time.

why?

I agree!

One infection needing antibiotics, so no food that day!

Not really. A lot of responses are from people who wouldn't qualify for the full maintenance grant, if you are low income you get the full £11ishk anyway. If you have two full time working adults in the home chances are you'll only get minimum, in which case you have to make up the extra £7ishk pa. Different people have different affordability, and whilst most parents on this thread would acknowledge that sending a child to uni is bloody expensive, we have probably saved their whole lives to get them there and will be cutting the cloth at home accordingly too.

My dd is in her 2nd year and gets by on £50 a week, so £500 is more than enough.

@Lovemusic82 does she get a loan?

quite amusing the number of people who haven't RTFT.

And the private halls in Brighton all start at £303 a week for an en-suite with shared facilities. Since I have realised that we need only pay for 44 weeks and store his stuff locally this brings the total cost down to around £13,500.

Still way more than the general perception of what student accommodation actually costs.

Even in a shared house the prices seem to be £200 a week which you have to take for a full year.

thanks! I also expect to pay around £1,000 a year for his flights.

Its a costly business!

The minimum loan is around £4500. That’s £500 pm over 9 months. He’s involved in uni sport so spends some of the holidays at uni for preseason training

thanks! I also expect to pay around £1,000 a year for his flights

Is your child an international student? All of my lot were and my grandchildren will be as well.

I was at university in the Seventies (pre-Thatcher). Tuition fees and some maintenance grant were paid by one of the more generous local education authorities, though my middle-class, reasonably affluent, parents were expected to top the means-tested grant up. I knew one person in my year whose parents refused to top up their grant, and they were the only person I knew who had to take a job during term-time. The rest of us were lucky in that we were supported by our parents, and also had a huge range of jobs to choose from to work at during the vacations (anyone remember doing the Christmas post?). I paid rent of £8.00 a week for an unheated, mouldy, manky, damp, basement flat-share, furnished with toads and silverfish. Times have definitely changed and when financing our daughter through university, we took that into account: there is no way we would have expected her to have a worse university experience than we did ourselves, despite university financing having changed so much since we were students.
I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say here, except I think £500pm should be fine and does not make @FunnysInLaJardin's son a "spoilt rich kid" in today's world. A very fortunate kid, yes.

We paid accommodation and books. In Scotland, so fees paid by government. We gave them £10 per day and expected them to work to top it up if they wanted to. They also had student loans.

She does but it only just covers her rent. Her rent is much higher than last year. She hasn’t managed to get a job. Her £50 covers food, going out (luckily she doesn’t drink) and any taxi/train fairs, she has a bus pass. I do pay for her mobile phone and I do her washing.

but will also presumably cover going out/socialising, clothes, travel back home, books, phone, exercise, toiletries etc .

I think it’s probably enough but don’t think it’s loads/a crazy amount.

we aren't classed as international for the purpose of tuition fees, so not really