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?

Will she be allowed a freezer in her room? I had assumed that would be ok stupidly!

I remember having to.put my name on food🙄

Can I just point out that a single parent with 2 small children living on UC may well have to feed themselves on £50 a week!

Whenever I'm in Home Bargains in Liverpool, the go-to for students, seems to be Koka noodles (box of 30 £12), cereal and multi packs of chocolate/crisps. Add in cheap bread and butter and you can live on £20 a week. I'd step back for a few weeks, then see how things are going. Then I'd do top up payments, if needed. Then money at Christmas/Birthday/Easter, enough to cover decent footwear and basic wardrobe.

OP, a lot of people are chatting a lot of rubbish and you can tell they went to uni 50 years ago!

No - she likely won't be allowed a freezer in her room, but check with her accommodation provider.

She will likely have one freezer drawer - not huge, but enough. Her food won't be used.

Flatmates do not all share the cooking between themselves. They may sometimes do a roast where they each buy one thing for the dinner, but they won't all be cooking for each other!

Well, in terms of keeping her costs down:

how far is it from halls to campus? My DS got a second hand bike which meant he wasn’t spending in bus fares. Saved him a lot of money.

as others have said batch cook - even without a freezer you can make veggie chilli and it will keep in the fridge for a few days. Sure it’s boring eating but it’s cheap.

egg fried rice with vegetables is also cheap and healthy.

You are a bit limited in halls. There's room to store some frozen food but the freezer space can be quite tight.

No.

almost certainly not.

if she’s in halls there will be space in one in the communal kitchen. How big it is you won’t know until you get there.

i would also suggest a part time job if possible but @Lex345 has stated that her DD struggled with the juggle and this is a crucial year to get her revision / studies right so she gets the grades to even go to uni in the first place. Not sure where you live @Lex345 but is there any scope for seasonal work - places that might hire a lot of people just for the holidays. If I remember correctly the school term ends after the exams April- June time then off until September so could maybe try thinking ahead to get a job in that period that could tide her over ? I lived close to an airport before I went to uni so I worked in the summers for first 2 years plus worked as a carer whilst at uni and that was 2008-2014. Could she babysit or offer some childcare to parents who need it over the summer ?

I’m not sure how much I had left after my loan but things have drastically gone up in price - accomodation, food etc so you have my sympathies. Lots of good suggestions on how to keep prices down whilst she’s there, megabus was a lifesaver and I was going from Sheffield to south east! There be a lot of people in the same boat as her - she will unfortunately have to cut her cloth like many people do at Uni - it’s part of the fun and the novelty to begin with. If you can’t fit in another job, I can’t see a way around it. Hopefully in her consecutive years she will get rental student accomodation which is cheaper than the halls ?

How is your daughter getting that much?

My son’s loans don’t even cover the cheapest halls. We have to top up and pay £300 a month which is £75 a week. He has autism an and adhd so can’t hold down a job as well as a very intensive course.

I think student poverty is an increasingly massive issue. Parents can’t afford to top up, these mythical student jobs are like gold dust ( his brother has struggled to find anything) and accommodation outside of halls is £££ for complete shit holes. The jobs people like to quote are disappearing .There are next to none and then if anybody is lucky enough to get one that locals don’t want and works round a student timetable and doesn’t involve expensive travel they hold on to it
thus meaning there is even less for new students arriving.

A-levels can actually be more intense than a degree in some ways, especially since first year at uni is often pass/fail and doesn’t count towards the final classification.
Does your DD know roughly how many contact hours she’ll have? Unless it’s something heavy like medicine, it could be as little as 10 a week. She could easily try a part-time job in first year and see how it goes.

Mine wasn’t allowed to have a freezer in his room. Keep in mind that he is now in a house share and whereas, previously, bills were included in the cost they are now having money removed from their security deposit to pay for energy, after it reaches a certain amount. It’s a new house move so we don’t really know how energy efficient the house will be. All waiting with bated breath to see what the heating costs will be like (the parents are, anyway).

Current living costs are not what they were in 2020…

What travel is needed, and what laundry is needed?
If the halls are on campus/ walkable, and she has laundry facilities included, then yes it's achievable. If she needs to get a weekly bus pass and pay for washing facilities, then I don't think it is.

DD has just finished uni this year, and we sent her £250 a month living money. Her halls were on site, she had a washing machine in the flat, and she found it achievable but tight.

That's a very tight budget, I think you need to sit down with her and make sure she knows how much everything costs, so she can go into it with her eyes open. I remember the washer and dryer in halls being ridiculously expensive and that was over 20 years ago!

My parents used to drop me off at uni and do a monster food shop of pasta, rice, tinned foods, laundry detergent to see me through the term, I only had to worry about buying fresh veg etc, which drastically cut my food bill. I'd look at trying to cover a couple of things for her, maybe offer to buy her books second hand or something.

Why has she chosen so far away on such limited funds can't she stay nearer so at least you can call and top up food wise?

She needs to get a job now and save seriously, she should have been doing this already. Yes part-time work and college or uni is a challenge but it's part of being an adult and she needs to learn time management and organisational skills.

Imo £60 a week is not enough. She'll have a miserable time as won't be able to afford to go out.

I'd rethink this. Change to a place nearer home or even live at home.

She also had a McDonald's job back home, that she went back to during Easter, summer hols and Christmas. If she can get a fast food job here during the summer holidays and request a transfer, it would save a lot of hassle later.

My DS has just started at Uni max loan only and some savings saved from working before he went. Thankfully he's 'cheap to run' and not one for socialising. As Halls include all bills expenses (plus about a £5 for 1 laundry wash a week) the amount is doable....just. And, as student bank accounts come with an interest free overdraft, there is 'emergency funds' available.

Going to Uni in a poorer area helps to keep living costs down I think but then that also reduces employment opportunities. Probably making friends with similarly 'poor' students would be helpful as they can devises their own entertainments based on the little money they have available.

It entirely depends on what her course costs and travel costs are likely to be. If these are negligible then £60/week is a generous budget for food - I don’t spend that myself - and others will be in the same position re having to think about costs of socialising so they will all find cheaper ways.

If she has high course and / or transport costs around the uni area then £60 probably won’t be enough.

60 isn't that difficult to live on as a student. Course materials might be available at library. I get she struggled with a job at a levels but is due to knowing mum was giving her top ups anyway? Students do work to survive and most people have bad diets because they can't be bothered to cook and would rather funds be redirected elsewhere. Also depending on her thoughts towards it, a student bank account with interest free overdraft helps.

Part of being a student is debating whether to use your last fiver in the laundrette or on jacket potatoes, bread and beans for the week. It's all good learning experience. If she gets stuck to speak with the uni Hardship team. She'd need to provide bank statement but they can sometimes help. Most unis have one

DS was away last year. No appliances were allowed in the uni bedrooms.

One shelf in the fridge. One drawer int eh freezer.

He ate crap food from Iceland and places for teas or ate out of there was something in. A homemade cheese sandwich every day for lunch, 60 quid is doable.

She does need to find a job both now and when away.

How many hours a week is the course. DS was only 12 hours first year so plenty of time to work. Is she still at college this year or a gap year?

You send her with essentials that will keep like pasta, beans, soup, juice, sauce etc. if she wants to go she will make it work.

We paid DS rent in full. He lived off his loan. With his job he didn't actually touch his loan.

I had £25 per week but that was 30 years ago, and it wasn’t enough then. I worked weekends so that I had enough… not by choice, there was no finance available to me from family and it’s what everyone else did. If you can supplement your DC a bit more please do so.

How is this contextually relevant?

Oh bit gutted she won't be allowed a freezer I can stock for her, but all the tips are reassuring. I will be strongly pushing DD to get a job in summer-if for nothing else a reference for a job at uni.

I will keep paying for her phone so at least she can tell me if she is struggling. She has a laptop but she will need a new one. We are planning on buying her one this Christmas though.

I think I might start an emergency savings pot now, even if I can only put a couple of quid a week in, at least I could give her that if she really struggles.

I think after her first year, she may rent privately hopefully with friends she makes at uni, which should work out cheaper?

We don't have extended family, not even grandparents now I'm afraid, so this will be on us to help her as much as possible.

I am certainly not from privilege, but I am in reality - we are right in the middle of all this so I can see the reality of being able to have a university experience. You do need some money for socialising, especially in the beginning - and that doesn't mean alcohol, but going out anywhere is expensive.

Another £40 a week would make a massive difference and this could be covered by working in the summer.

Is she veggie? If not it would save her money by not eating meat and fish as lentils beans grains etc are cheap and easy to bulk cook with.