How much do students need to live on per week/term?

[mrsmootoo]

How much do students need to live on per week/term? DD starting at Bristol this autumn. I have already paid accommodation separately so what will she need for everyday living expenses (food/washing/socialising/books (do they still need books?!)? I'm planning to supplement her minimum maintenance loan so need suggestions for overall figure and then I'll deduct loan and make up the difference. Thanks!

When I was at uni I had £50 a week for that :)

If you have paid her accommodation I assume this is because due to your household income she will only receive the minimum Maintenance Loan.

If this is the case if minimum ML is just over 9k (check on Martin Lewis website) then deduct accommodation costs from 9K or whatever the figure is and give your daughter at least that figure to live off divided by 3 and give her 1/3 of this per term for living costs as a minimum. Your DD can always get a job either full time outside term time or part time during term time to top up her funding or both and use any savings. If the halls are non catered make sure she can cook some basic dishes and understands about budgeting and living within her budget. However, if money is no object it is a case of how long is a piece of string and you can give your daughter any amount.

Minimum maintenance loan just for living costs after accommodation is pretty generous, especially if she’s going to be living with you in the holidays and all her bills will be included in her rent in halls.

I’m in your position. I might top up for specific things like train tickets home, and I’ll continue to pay for her phone bill because we have a cheap family Sim only deal, give her the Netflix password, and send her off with a new bag of shampoo, toothpaste and skin care but basically she’ll have her maintenance grant once a term to live on.

There was a similar thread last week.

One of mine was at Bristol. We gave her £90 a week.

She could have lived on less, but I would say they need a bare minimum of £70.

My other DC was getting £100 by final year. We'd started on £70 but it clearly wasn't enough. He did have a better social life and liked the odd pint whereas my DD is teetotal. He was also in a more expensive location.

I would also maybe suggest requesting moving this thread to Higher Education as you will receive more responses as assume your DD is doing an undergraduate course at Bristol.

I agree with the others. Take the figure of the maximum loan of £9,488, subtract the amount of loan your dd is actually getting and then subtract the sum you are paying towards accommodation and you will end up with a figure.

Divide that figure between however many weeks there are in the uni year then that's roughly what she will need you to give her.

We budgeted £10 per day once accommodation sorted however they were lucky and got an extra £100 per month from grandparents
They have mainly worked in holidays and added some more to that but depends on course - I have one doing vet medicine who can’t work and we would top up a bit around exams if they wanted to stop working for a bit

Minimum maintenance loan just for living costs after accommodation is pretty generous, especially if she’s going to be living with you in the holidays and all her bills will be included in her rent in halls.

This ^
Roughly £4.5k for roughly 41 weeks give more than £100 pw

In terms of weekly spends, my dd lives on about 1/3 of that, so you really don't need to 'top up' if you have already paid accommodation.

Of course, as with all these "how much" threads, I am sure there are students who can manage to spend a lot more, if you have loads of disposable income and you don't want them to learn about budgeting, but your undergraduate years are a good time to learn such skills, and any "spare money" you have would probably be more usefully saved to help them when they graduate, at which point they will also have learned a lot more about balancing their books as well as getting the degree.

I'd like to know the same thing! With the best will in the world it would be enormously helpful if people could just state how much per week they give their dc rather than 'take x then multiply by y, divide by 72, howl at the moon, turn round three times and you'll have your magic number'

Just a weekly figure for living expenses not including accommodation would be really helpful! Not all dc can manage term time jobs to top up (my dd has ASD and adhd, just managing herself and her course is going to be exhausting for her).

Sorry if this comes across as churlish and maybe the op is happy to do the twirling and maths but if anyone can just give a weekly figure that would be awesome, thanks!

Ok then, assuming bills are included in the accommodation I'd say the bare minimum to live on to cover the absolute essentials would be £40-50 per week depending on whether the student has any travel costs.

To have any kind of social life I'd say £70-80 per week

Rage we give our DS £250 per month (stopped during summer vacation), he received the minimum loan £4K ish and has to budget himself to pay for the accommodation each term. He also gets £100 a month from DGPs. He worked part time during his first term but that all stopped during covid. He works during the summer. He is very frugal and accidentally left his banking app open open on his phone .. I glanced at his balance and he has considerable savings .

It's so hard to give an exact figure because different cities/towns have different levels of accommodation costs, some students have a lot of text books, equipment to buy, some like to party hard, some cook for themselves every night (like my DS) - yet a friend of his gets a takeaway or eats out every single night - no way would I be subsidising that!

Sorry Rage, don't think I answered your question properly . After accommodation costs my DS has approx £70 a week ( that includes what he receives from his DGPs as well).

@RageAgainstTheNahCantBeArse basically if student studying outside of London and the maximum maintenance loan figure is £9488 and if a student is say receiving the minimum maintenance loan about 4K of a Maintenance loan and you have also paid out say 4K for accommodation then parents are expected to contribute at least the difference to top up to the level of the maximum Maintenance Loan so £1888 to the student per year.

Most terms are approximately 40 weeks long so that would equate to £1888 divided by 40 = £47.20 per week. The student would be expected to live very frugally and budget carefully so may need to work part time or have a top up from GP’s if in a position to
do so.

such a good thread OP thank you - have been wondering the same but cannot ask people we know !

First of well done to your DD for securing a place at Bristol @mrsmootoo

I will have two at Uni this year, Fresher and Finalist. Accommodation - self catered hall and private rental - will be paid leaving them the minimum loan. Given they are there for 32/33 wks actual term time that works out at over £130 per week. My personal view is that such an amount is more than sufficient.

Worth remembering that Freshers, or Welcome Week which I think most now call it, can add some extra expense. But in the case of my youngest I'll expect him to manage his money accordingly. The maintenance loan gets paid early on, and he has his own funds he can draw on if need be were there any delay in that coming through. Equally I've expected all mine to use the budgeting skills they have learned growing up and prioritise spending, with this no different for the youngest heading off next month.

As others have suggested there may be other up front expenses depending on course etc. None of mine have ever needed anything more than a fairly standard spec laptop / chrome book; but for some courses something much higher spec could be needed if not already owned. I need to check that DS3 still has a suit that fits as he does have at least one formal event at Uni quite early on. So having some formal clothing might also be a consideration for some.

I'd also agree if may be worth asking MN to move the thread to the Higher Ed board.

If you’re already paying the accommodation, the minimum maintenance loan is more than enough for food/spending money.

We had this conversation today too. The minimum grant of approx £4K per year is plenty of ‘spending money’ IF you are covering the accommodation/catering separately as well.

Pushed post too soon there. My DC’s bill for catered halls is £7k a year. £7k + £4.3k = more generous than maximum mai tenancies grant and should be plenty.

My DD in her first year had hall fees of about £5200 and a loan of about £6800, so a surplus of about £1600. That's £40 a week. I gave an extra £20 a week on the basis that she would always have food. She's a veggie and doesn't eat that much so that was plenty.

DS2 in halls this year has very low fees of less than £4k, a similar loan so I might sub him similar as he will spend more on food and activities (very sporty). OTOH no bus pass needed which was a big expense for DD.

I am always amazed at threads where people are paying hall fees then thinking of supplementing a minimum maintenance loan - as if £100 on food and fun a week wasn't enough! Wish I had that much to spend!

DS is getting the minimum maintenance loan. We will pay his accommodation and he will use the £4.5k for everything else. In reality he will get the loan each term and pay to accommodation and we will top up for the term and then give him £150 a week (30 weeks a year) on a Monday until such a time he feels he can budget adequately for longer than a week. In the real world many people struggle to budget if paid monthly so at least in the beginning I think weekly payments make more sense.

Please see this article from 2019 and scroll
down to see the tables.

blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2016/09/how-much-are-parents-supposed-to-give-their-children-when-they-go-to-university/

My DD also going to Bristol - thanks for all the help everyone. I’m thinking once accommodation paid for, making sure she has £100 a week

A lot of people (who can afford to) seem to do the “we’ll pay the accommodation, they can live on the minimum loan “ scheme. If the student goes to somewhere really cheap eg many Oxford Colleges, this would leave them getting a bit less than someone on maximum loan, but that is rare. I would estimate your DC’s rent would be more like £7k, so if you pay that, their total rent plus spending is more than £2k more than the maximum loan so, as pp have said, you would in effect already be subsidising them, and they would have a comfortable weekly sum if spread over the circa 9 month of term.

A more austere approach is to top up to max loan and that sum has to cover both accommodation and spending, but in some locales that could be pretty lean.

Both systems break down a bit in London - my DS’s rent is barely less than the London max loan, but to give the whole minloan as spending money at £6166 or £158 a week over 39 weeks seems a but much perhaps as part of the London uplift is to cover more expensive accommodation.

@RageAgainstTheNahCantBeArse

My dd has £150pm (£37.50 pw) from when she goes in Sept until end of June - so she still gets if over the 3 weeks or so she can be home over Christmas and Easter. She manages fine.
I have two older ones who went to different places and they had similar amounts, and also managed fine.
Mine all work in the holidays.