If you are fully supporting DC through uni - how much is is it really costing?

[QuandryQuaint]

As title really. DH has got a big promotion and we are looking at whether it will be possible to fully support our DC going to uni without any loans. If you are fully funding your DC would you please share what this is actually costing you per year? Assuming not in London.
Fees : £10k ish per year
Accommodation?
Basic living costs? - food, study texts/equipment, basic clothing.

Just trying to get an ideal if this is even feasible for us.
Thanks

Accommodation is very university dependant and costs can vary hugely. Does your DC have any idea of where they want to go? It would probably be worth having a look on the Uni accommodation pages and getting an idea of costs.

The government standard maximum maintenance loan is £9118 for people living with parents which is quite high but this is a useful starting point for consideration if you're paying rent separately.

We pay DD's rent and give her £400 per month on top plus a trip to Tesco when we visit. She's managed fine on this but doesn't drink so doesn't spend much at all on going out.

As PP said, it will vary according to uni, type of accommodation etc.

DS is at Warwick, we fund him fully and I would estimate about £23K per year.

Approx £10K for fees, a bit less than £10K for campus accommodation, plus £500 per month while he's up there for living expenses (including food - accommodation includes all utilities, but isn't catered).

Holidays are quite long, so there are quite a few months when he's back home and doesn't need the living expenses money.

Travel costs are negligible for his situation, but might not be for everyone.

DS is very frugal and doesn't tend to go out drinking etc. He says the amount of money we provide is more than he needs, and he saves a fair bit up. But I would say this isn't typical, and we want to encourage him to have a social life.

Accommodation will vary but it’s fairly easy to find out the range as universities will publish their rents.

Fees about £10K.

Living- we are giving DD £800/month which is upper end. Again there’s a wide variety and it will depend in part on whether your DC is working during term.

DS is in the north of England. He gets a student loan of 6k which he uses for all his living expenses. We pay his rent, which is a lot more than I expected it to be to be honest, £950 a month for a room seems extortionate to me, you can rent a 3 bed semi where we live for that!

We’re fully funding year 1 at UCL. Circa £10k fees, £12k accommodation and £5k living expenses

£27k

We funded dd through a year at drama school on a course where student finance wasn't available.

The fees were £10k. We paid them termly using savings.

We paid her accommodation which was £155 per week back then. It was payable monthly.

She got a part time job which paid for her food, travel & bills. In hindsight she was working too many hours. I reckon she needed about £60-£70 per week for food etc, £20 per week for travel (travel costs were higher as a lot of it was for her to get to work) and £50 per month for bills (that would be higher now).

My DS is starting university next week and we’re fully paying - 10k fees, his halls are 6.5k and at the moment we’ve agreed on £650 a month living costs and we’ll see how that goes. Does really depend on location, halls for one of his other applications were 10k

We give DS £100 per week for food, ents etc.
We’d paid into a trust fund for him from when he was tiny which was worth £11K when he started Uni. This is used for the shortfall in rent money.

Will he also try and work part time to fund some of it? We are planning to try and fund ours, but on the proviso they also work, even if its just the holidays.

I would base it around giving them the equivalent of the maximum maintenance loan - learning how to budget and live within your means is a really good lesson to learn.

Having held down a part time job is also great experience when you are applyling for a proper job - I know when I have interviewed young people for entry level graduate jobs, the ones who have done some paid work in any job have more to offer than those who haven't.

It was about the same as private school fees for us all in - so about £25k

Bloody costly kids aren’t they!

Why would anyone fully fund their children's university? Thats what student finance and part time jobs are for.

My parents bought me saucepans, plates, drying racks etc. when I moved into student accommodation but never gave me any money.

Because the changes to student finance mean this is not longer the no brainer it once was. And because if you can afford to give your older child a great start in life, why would you choose to put them on the back foot.

By the above I mean the scandal of student loans by the way, absolutely they should have part time jobs from 16yo as well.

Hopefully Labour will resist the urge to add VAT on top.

Definitely depends on the university. Ds was at Warwick and his accommodation was much more reasonable than DD’s - she is at Bath. She shares a one bedrooom flat with her boyfriend and it’s £1400 per month plus bills. Friends of hers are paying £700/£800 for a room in a shared house.

About £27K, made up of 10K fees, room (London private halls) £14K and the rest on food/living allowance.

We did briefly look into this but then when we factored in having 2 DC at uni at the same time for a year (assuming both do a 3 year degree) it was completely unaffordable.

We aren’t fully funding at all, but estimated costs are:

Tuition fees £10k ish per year as others have said

Accommodation - he’s in Bristol which is pretty expensive. £9.8k for 38 weeks room, self catered. We didn’t get much choice - this was about 3k over what he’d asked for but at least we can afford it.

Living costs - we’ll see I guess, but we used this to help estimate https://www.bristol.ac.uk/students/support/finances/advice/set-up-finances/living-expenses/
Deducting accom costs, internet and utilities, it looked like about £550/month typical living expenses for undergrads. We’re giving him £500 monthly for now.

So aside from tuition fees, it’s about £14k accom and living expenses. But that’s an estimate - he hasn’t started yet.

One at Nottingham - rent was about £450 pcm plus £650 living expenses. Plus course fees.

One in London rent was £1000 pcm plus £650 living expenses. Had a nearly full scholarship so fees were £300 a term though. Were still v glad when they decided to live at home in 3rd year onwards.

Rent is about £10k a year then living costs we pay £120 a week. We pay because uni was free for us when we went so it’s only fair we repeat this, if they want extra they have to get a job to fund it. It’s cheaper than private school.

This isn’t that helpful to @QuandryQuaint tho. High earnings mean minimum loan which won’t cover accommodation at most unis.

Agree they could take out a fees loan; if not then that’s £9-10k a year.

Ds2 got min loan in the end and worked PT a day a week; I paid his rent (about £7k, fairly cheap tbh) and his loan plus job came to about £6k on top, so about £12-13k a year. Good luck finding a it job that pays £8k.

But as others say it so depends on the uni. Friend’s DD (or rather, friend) pays £10k Pa for house share in Bristol. Bath, Edinburgh, Exeter also ££.

I'm paying ds' halls room, and he is covering his own food/travel.

His halls room is £8k per year. Ds expects to spend £75 a week x 40 weeks = £3k for the year. He doesn't drink alcohol or drive, and knows how to cook to a budget so I don't think this is unrealistic.

He also hopes to work during termtime - he's an experienced pool life guard with a reference/DBS so that may be possible.

We will take the £10k p.a. tuition fee loan, but I'll start nibbling away at that, and hope to have cleared most of it by the time he graduates.

Thank you, this is all really helpful. So basically £25-30k per year is a reasonable expectation.

As for the poster who asked why anyone would fund their DC's university - have you seen the mess the student loans situation is in?? Why on earth would I want my kid to start out their working life with a debt they may never clear if there is a way around it? That's just madness!

We will expect DC to get a job of some kind to fund 'fun money' but we want them to focus on their studies, not be working every spare hour on top to pay for beans and bread.

We are a few years off yet so have some time to save but do have 2 DC who would be at uni together if they both go. We are south west based and i'd imagine both would prefer to stay within a reasonable distance - so likely on the more expensive end if the are somewhere in the south - bristol/bath through to london borders. DS may want london as is looking for a career in finance.

Because we wanted to avoid student loans partly because we had the means to do so and partly because it felt wrong to use taxpayers money when we didn’t need to. We were used to paying school fees though so just an extension of that. It has meant that my kids have been able to earn without deductions.