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?

I know this has already been mentioned, but would she consider a gap year and get a job? Although I know jobs are much harder to find these days.

DD took 2 gap years between undergrad and post grad and saved enough to live on for her post grad course.

I would look at the 'prefered uni halls cost'. Is this an en suite? If she has medical reasons for needing an en suite then contact the university they may provide one for a cheaper cost. If no medical need then encourage her to consider a shared bathroom. It can reduce the cost considerably. Being in a shared bathroom mean that my dc have managed to live on minimum student loan plus 5k a year from us as parent contribution. Their preference is to get this money weekly so it is never too long until they next get food. They do get more than £60 a week, but that is because they are in a shared bathroom.

Bear in mind that private accommodation in later years often has to be paid over the summer holidays and in final year if there is time remaining on the lease they may need to pay council tax.

I wouldn't expect her to have to buy any clothes other than the occasional say a uni society top.
Travel, assuming you're only talking about beginning of end of term and that she doesn't have placements, maybe you could buy her train tickets then.

Course materials we've always looked on as a separate thing so we normally pay back, always if it's an essential.

So you're looking at £60 for food and socialising. That's more than doable - she can choose between more social money and cheaper food or more expensive food and not going to expensive places. That's a normal thing, and a good thing to learn to budget over.

Send her with a big bag of pasta, some tins of beans and a few other staples and she'll be fine.
Ours all have/had about £40 a week and a supermarket shop at the start of term. Only time they've struggled has been when something unexpected has come up and with internet banking it's easy to sort quickly now.

Oh my goodness. Read the thread!!!!

The jobs just aren’t out there. Things are v different now for students.

She needs to work her ass off in the summer before she goes if you’re anywhere at all with seasonal work. I worked from after exams to the week before freshers every year and one year in two jobs - a family visitor centre in the daytime and waitressing in the evening. It was knackering and I had no life at all but it was only for 3 months. And the more hours you work the less you spend over the summer. Definitely worth it to have that money for the uni year. And where I am summer work is much easier to get than a term time pt job.

Who's paying her rent and bills? I had to pay everything myself out of full-time work and my student loan. That's a lot of disposable income per month actually.

Break the £60 down, how much would she need for travel etc . So she can budget the £60 to see how realistic it is .

We're paying DS's rent so the (lowest level) loan has to cover his living expenses. This equates to about £100 a week which is very comfortable in my view. We bought about £100 of groceries so he'll only need fresh fruit/veg and bread/dairy for at least a fortnight.

Could you give some indication of her preferred course and/or uni? You need to think strategically and people might be able to give some extra insight. For example, some unis (Southampton and Bristol, for example) include bus passes with their hall fees - immediate win. Some do free laundry, another easy win.

Do you live in an area with a low transfer rate to tertiary education? Check POLAR4 and Tundra; some unis may have bursaries to offer. A friend of DS's has a scholarship because his parents live in a postcode on the list.

Start buying something every week/month now. A set of kitchen utensils when they're reduced, a new duvet, have you got towels/crockery that she can take? Then the last month isn't spend, spend spend.

It will be tough so she needs to get ready now. I used to teach Food Tech and always did Uni starter food courses for the 6th formers. Getting a job in a main supermarket will be a good start as some encourage good workers to stay with company and help with transfers to Unis (def Waitrose do…..I know, not the cheapest store, just an example). She’ll then end up getting staff discounts off her shopping bills.
Things to encourage her to do between now n Uni:
Upskilling her cooking so she has good range of basic recipes and how to adapt them.
Lots of food shopping and how to find bargains. Trying the cheapest pasta and actually finding it’s OK as long as you don’t over cook it and use plenty of boiling water when cooking. Same with rice. Can of value tomatoes blended with dried herbs is a good start for a tomato based sauce.
Building confidence in cooking so she’ll know you can just swop some ingredients in curries/stews/sauces depending on what’s on offer that week but that you def need to measure others eg flour in cakes.
Yellow label discounts, when they discount, best things to buy, not always ‘food’ shops that do this. Last 2 weeks I’ve got boxes of 6 eggs for 17p each in Home Bargains. These eggs had dates over 1 week ahead!!
Bulk cooking and then freezing into portions so always have decent freezer food for busy days or night when working.
Cheap or free treats, everyone needs these. Add birthday details etc onto the apps. Use apps that give free or random treats/food eg Lidls,
When she knows her Uni and it is getting time to go then encourage her to make contact with her flat mates to be if it’s that type of Halls. Building good friendships before if sharing a flat could lead to team cooking which is fun and less isolating.
101 ways with rice/pasta/potato/mince/chicken etc. Recipe challenges and trying new things eg Lidls were doing boneless chicken wing meat which was great for a curry.
Lentils and other tinned pulses that fill you up and are good sources of cheap protein.
How to extend meat in recipes eg adding in a handful of soya protein when making bolognese. Good luck and definitely start doing this now!

It will be tight. DS1 finished a year ago and DS2 has just gone.

Both got the minimum loan. We paid accommodation and did a big shop at the start of each term. DS1 had an ALDI near by and DS2 is organising an ASDA delivery to his flat (they may all chip in and get one big one).
Both batch cooked and used the plastic meal prep boxes so they could stack things in the fridge and freezer.

DS1 worked in the holidays and did online tutoring. DS2 won’t be able to work so easily but gets PIP. If your DD could earn enough to add another £20 pw to her budget she’d probably be ok.

We were comfortable enough that we could have given them more but didn’t want to rush in a solve everything and they both managed / are managing ok so far.

@theriseandfallofFranklinSaint I’ve not seen many halls of residence that are so cheap that they match the minimum loan! Where is this? Most are around £5,500 and go sharply upwards to around £10,000 plus.

@Lex345 Might I suggest that you and DD look very closely at what halls are available. Start with ones operated by the university and swerve anything en suite. They are always expensive. From your info, she’s presumably got £2,500 left over after paying hall but that indicates the hall is around £8,000. There should be cheaper halls than that. She and you need to look much more closely at halls but I’m assuming this is not London. That would indicate the hall is £11,000. DDs tend to want mod cons and reality might dictate something else.

Work isn’t that easy to find. Weekend jobs might be available but students do want them. What about working now? Save up a bit before she goes?

Alm these stories of “my day” are pointless and boys spend less than girls. You should also decide what you will pay for to help out. Fares home, clothes, computer, phone, haircuts, sports clubs etc. However your main issue is cost of hall and she needs to look again and you need to guide her.

I don’t think it’s enough.
My DS is in Bristol, lots of bar experience, could not get a job last year or over the summer.
buses cost quite a bit so it will impact if she can walk to campus.
it’s hard if they miss out on socialising because they haven’t got money for a couple of drinks.
is there any way you can free up another £100 a month OP?

• extend mortgage term
• sell a car for cash then lease
• put some big items on 0% credit card and pay off when she’s finished uni
• ask family members to help - they could send supermarket vouchers etc?

If it's not in the last three years then it's totally unrealistic. Food has gone up so much, joining societies costs, socialising is expensive.

My dd worked all through her A levels and is taking a year out to keep working as much as she can to save. I hear so many parents talking about paying the full cost of their dc's accommodation, but there's no way I'd be able to do that.

I'm another poster that says without help that budget would generally just do the food then she'd spend that much again on other things if she's being careful. I would say that isn't too bad because she then only needs to earn book and fun money and earning £60 a week between summer holidays and part time campus job isn't too bad. There are also often different schemes she can tap into to save money. On a lot of courses the hours are not too bad at all in first year. It's probably about time she got some work experience for the future it will help when job hunting. If she and you can save for the intense final year with dissertation and more challenging exams she might be able to take a break from working then but she also might be in her stride

Will she get the full maintenance loan and will that have to cover her halls?

We are paying halls and our yp is living off the minimum maintenance loan.

There are a lot of hypotheticals here. A lot of applicants start with a dream of an ensuite room in self catered halls in their first choice uni. Then when rooms are allocated they're given catered halls with shared bathrooms instead. Many unis don't have the scope to give everyone their 1st, 2nd or 3rd choice.

Second year house shares will be a 12 months, so may well cost more than a room in halls from Sept to June. There will also be bills, wifi, insurance etc to consider.

Monotony and pulses save a lot. (And the cheapest spirits, concealed in underwear on nights out.) I used to make Dahl and leave it on the stove top (no fridge/freezer space) and it was fine. My friend grew up with meat stews treated this way - the whole pot reheated, added to each night, as fridges weren’t a thing in her parents’ youth - they never got food poisoning, though this was a winter thing in a coldish house.

As a single mum and student at uni back in the90s I had £70 a week to live on. We managed. Maybe beating in mind this was two people and the time difference it’s similar and she’ll be ok. Pasta, rice etc. she’ll be fine.

@Lex345 Can you save each month a bit for her?

Also, it may be tempting to buy physical things if you see them on offer but you don't want them all around your house for a year.

The biggest expense was bedding for us, the halls have small doubles but most buy double to be able to use them in shared houses and that wasn't what we have at home. So DD needed everything.

Kitchen was a bit easier, she raided our cupboards and the grandparents kitchen for things plus some additions you can get cheaply.

They don't use books anymore, course material will all be online but that means she will need a decent laptop.

I would encourage her to see if she can work this year, it gives her experience and saving.

£60 is pretty good to have left over after rent from her only her loan. Many people have loans thay don't even cover rent. Mist students work in the holidays or term time or both. Many have a gap year before uni to work and save up to help fund the full 3 years. She should be fine because £60 will at least feed her.

Work is incredibly difficult to find in some places. There aren’t summer jobs here. Work is not seasonal. There’s large numbers of dc wanting work! The other issue is transport to and from work. There are no buses here. In the towns, yes. It’s very challenging to find work now unless you know someone or it’s family.

I would really encourage her to try and get a few hours somewhere. If she did four hours a week it would give her a bit of extra money but more importantly, she'll have the experience to make getting holiday work easier.

If she works the three months between a levels finishing and uni starting she should be able to save a couple of grand quite easily.

I'm sure a levels have changed a bit but I managed 25 hours a week while doing mine. I did every Saturday and Sunday and two nights a week in a shop. I used the time between lessons to do the additional work and time on buses etc to revise.

I’d say it’s very tight if it needs to cover course material, alongside food and travel.

Thats less than £10 a day. A bus return here is £5.

If she lives in a city where everything is walking distance it may be possible.

One of mine has just graduated, the other is there now - not in the south thank the gods of finance!

£75 was a doable budget for this year - although they don't drink but do socialise somewhat.