To think £60 a week to live on will be a struggle for DD at uni?

[Lex345]

Just that, essentially. DD is looking at moving into halls next September and when we looked at the cost of halls, based on her budget, this is how much she will have left to cover course materials, food, clothes, travel, socialising etc.

All bills would be covered, but I think this will be a very, very tight budget even just on food. She is planning on moving away from our home area and will be looking for a job as well, but I know that isn't a guarantee, especially not immediately in a new city.

AIBU to think this will be really hard to live on, or am I being completely ridiculous and DD will be absolutely fine, £60/week is plenty?

It will be tight, my Dd's halls charged £5 to do a standard laundry load and dry, via a topped up card system, so on top of £200 we sent every month I also sent £20 for laundry and we paid her train fare if she came home. Her full student loan covered her rent and a bit left over for food, clothes etc. Check if her uni does extra grants for low income students, we were both (early) retired by the time DD went and she did get uni grants

Dd gets the minimum loan, we give her 1k a month for rent….that leaves her with about 5k a year to live off. Which I appreciate is more than £60 a week but it’s still not loads.

However my main point is if we had just topped up her loan to the maximum it wouldn’t have been enough. The maintenance loan hasn’t increased but cost of living and rent has rocketed. Students are stuck unless parents can afford to cover the gap. Part time jobs are very hard to come by in many towns/cities these days. A friend’s son applied for 96 retail/waiting jobs before he got one! Jobs in coffee shops are asking for 4 years Barista experience for a minimum wage job. Thanks Labour for stuffing the economy up/increasing NI contributions.

I went to uni in 2020 and only spent around £30 on food shopping a week for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. My dad did take me shopping the night before and stocked me up on cupboard essentials (seasonings, sauces, pot noodles, crisps etc)

I had a fiver a week in 1976. It was pretty awful and nowhere near enough, but my parents had just moved and my mum couldn't get a job in the new place, so they were assessed for a grant (no loans in 76) on the previous year's income but were on half that and couldn't afford to give me much and the state covered virtually nothing except the tuition fees. I used to run out at about 3-weekly intervals and have to ring home for a bit extra, but they always said yes. The worst bit was when I went to Germany in spring 1977 for the exchange part of the course. The pound was really weak against the Mark, and I had 4 Marks a day to live on. A Bratwurst was 3 Marks...

Very tight for one person for food alone? As a family of 4 that’s what we live on weekly. Unless she’s hitting M and S or Waitrose daily, that’s a sufficient amount.

My DD is going into Year 2 at uni. This summer and last summer she lived at home and worked. She was able to save over £2k each year. Look out for seasonal work in local attractions or tourist bars - places like Go Ape and Legoland are often on the lookout for seasonal staff.

That was what I had in 2006. I think that’s going to be tight.

My dd survived on around £30 a week, not because she needed too but because she’s very tight. She does have a bus pass though so that didn’t include travel. A lot of students get part time jobs to fit around uni. I think £60 is doable.

Both my children went to uni some years ago when things were cheaper, but they both had part time evening jobs when they were there, and during holidays at home they both worked and saved some of their money for term time. Our agreement was that we wouldn’t ask them to contribute anything during the holidays (even though at the time money was tight at home) provided they saved for the next term.
They both had a great time and had enough money to enjoy the experience.

DS had £30 a week from us for food 2012-2015, it was plenty, he became a great cook and ate well. They shopped in markets and budget stores and meal planned and ate as a flat/house.

This didn’t cover entertainment or fun though and he couldn’t get a job in his uni town, deprived area and things were bad economically, so he used to get a train home every Saturday morning, work in a petrol station for two shifts then back to uni on a Monday at 6am. That paid him about £85 a week, less his rail fare with a student discount and he was left with about £60 a week fun money.

managed that for three years, the round trip was about 160 miles.

DD was in an expensive city and her loan didn’t cover her accommodation so we had to too her up £100 a week, she also couldn’t work because of placements in cities 60 miles away. She probably has less disposable income than DS for fun stuff.

Don’t be reassured because this isn’t possible. Return bus fare in the city I live in is £4.40 so say she has to go to uni 4 days a week that’s £17.60 so she would be left with £42 for everything…. Books/supplies/toiletries/food etc. it will be grim. She’ll have to work now and save and then get a job when she moves.

I used to live on £35 a week that's before to good to go bags which Ur kid could get . They can get yellow sticker food to and cheap own brand it can be done the to good to go bags have food from Gregg's,Aldi and coop. They could also sign up to oilo and go collect food from Tesco

OP has said she will be doing this.

The other point is that (if in England) the maintenance loan has not increased in line with inflation, so simply "topping up" the loan to the maximum may well still leave an actual shortfall in terms of what it's reasonable to expect your child to live on. If you're planning to top up, you'd be better to use the amount in Wales (where the loan has increased in a more sensible way).

Can you please use this calculator
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator

to calculate how much £25 in the years you were in Uni would need to be today to be equivalent?

Otherwise it just sounds like my grandparents going on about buying a loaf of bread for a penny…

Probably depends how good DD is at budgeting. It's much cheaper to buy in bulk. If she buys a big bag of rice and tins of broad beans or butter beans and a big tin of bouillon, she can make quite nice and nutritious meals with whatever veg she can buy on its use by date. Maybe she can split the cost of some items with flatmates. The worse thing is to buy ready made sandwiches and so on with a coffee each day; that would really eat into her budget. If she's frugal like this she might survive on £35 a week for food and have a small amount for socialising and books. She could stop buying clothes for herself and ask for them for Christmas presents.
The cost of living is sky high at the moment, so it will be a challenge. In my uni days I managed on less than the recommended amount because my parent's didn't pay a contribution. Still had a really good time though most my socialising was done over a mug of chicory coffee and a custard cream biscuit in halls!

Are there cheaper accommodation options in the relevant town? She doesn't have to live in halls - she could become someone's lodger or look at paid house-sitting or similar.

That'd create a different uni experience but is an option I haven't seen mentioned.

My eldest says she spends about £25 a week on food. This is being just a bit careful but not massively so. The food she likes to eat (regardless of cost) is actually really cheap stuff. She has overnight oats every morning with chopped apple. Her other favourite thing to eat, and she'd eat it every day if she could, is homemade vegetable chilli. She's vegetarian so I suppose that helps. She also doesn't drink alcohol. This probably isn't a particularly helpful post as she spends so little without even really trying.

It's much cheaper to buy in bulk. If she buys a big bag of rice and tins of broad beans or butter beans and a big tin of bouillon, she can make quite nice and nutritious meals with whatever veg she can buy on its use by date. Maybe she can split the cost of some items with flatmates.

She won’t have the room for this in halls. She will have 1 small kitchen cabinet for all her dry goods, cooking utensils and dishes. She will have the size of a large Tupperware of room- about 1/3rd of one shelf in the fridge and the same in the freezer. In addition, kitchen mates are known to steal basics. My DD was constantly having her ketchup and ice cream treats stolen.

In addition, it is unlikely the kitchen’s cooking area will be any more than a tiny hot plate next to a combo microwave/toaster oven that you can’t fit anything big in. They are not allowed to use toasters, kettles, or hot pots even in the kitchen.

So there won’t be cooking large batches of anything.

@independentfriend Sorry, but that’s a dreadful option. Just a bit sad!

In the 1970's?

She can survive on that for food - easily. I could feed a family of 4 for £100.

If she was smart - she could feed herself for less and then save £30 for going out.

Pasta and tomato sauce is dead cheap - baked potatoes and tuna and beans a cheap lunch. She needs to figure out lots of cheap meals she likes and focus on those.

No she's not going to be having nice wholesome meals all the time... But she would easily survive.

My DD has roughly the same, but shes kept her McDonald's job and only does every 2nd weekend. Summer she will go back to 4 shifts a week for the following year. So thats another £300 a month.

She's got savings as well which she hasn't dipped into yet.

@boys3 Why was 2021 so pivotal? There’s a big difference in a very short period of time. All post Covid. It will vary between universities and courses. Plus dc living at home can often continue with jobs. Finding them isn’t easy and I would love to know who is employing double the number of students as Hospitality is really struggling.

Anyone paying £1000 a month student rent is well off and £5,000 for term time living is pretty good money.

It doesn't work like that @Smeegall
Everyone knows that eating as a single person can be more expensive than for 2 or more because you have to buy smaller portions (or they go off.)

As a student in halls, she won't have much space in a fridge and there may not be a freezer. She can't bulk buy 1kg of mince and make spag bol for a fortnight.

Even when my DCs were out of halls and sharing houses, they had ONE shelf each in the fridge and one small drawer in the fridge freezer.

She needs a job next summer. DS didn't work in termtime but did work in holidays and was able to save a lot. If she could save just £1000 from holiday earnings that would be another £27 to spend each week over 36 weeks. Train her in looking for yellow stickered things she would buy eg fruit. DS also found the Chinese supermarket good for noodles etc.