University- Allowance

[Marvellousmum]

My daughter is off to Uni this year and has taken out all the usual loans (course and rent for student accommodation). She plans to get a job ASAP but I feel I should be giving her some money to cover expenses/day to day living to help her get started. She has some savings from summer jobs but not much. So the question is: how much do I put in her account each month?

How much can you afford OP it really depends on how much if any money she has left over each month after paying her accommodation. How about £200 a month to help living expenses? I pay my sons rent he opted for a more expensive flat £825 per month and he pays his utilities living on his basic loan.

You would be better posting in Higher Education for university stuff rather than Further Education which is 16-18 as there are parents of second and third year students on there who will have real life experience of this.

I suppose it depends on whether you are happy for her to finance herself from her savings or whether you can afford to give her money. Is she in catered or self catered? How much did she work out her food cost would be? Ds reckons £25 -£30 a week for food and toiletries. So after that it would be any supplies she needs for her course, travel, clothes and socialising.

Ds is not a big drinker or party person but I can see him wanting instead to eat in nice places to socialise.

Depends entirely on whether she is getting the full maintenance loan or not!

blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2020/09/martin-lewis--how-much-the-govt-expects-parents-to-give-their-ch/

this page contains a few ready reckoners

If your household income is under £25k, then you are not expected to contribute

If your household income is £35k, then you are expected to contribute around £100 a month

etc

But this is all dependent on where the student is living, home, outside London, in London.

And your own personal commitments. I add phone contract and a taxi fund onto the basic allowance, for example

@Howshouldibehave

Depends entirely on whether she is getting the full maintenance loan or not!

This. If she is t getting the full loan then top it up. If she is then she should be able to manage but you could give the odd treat if you can afford it.

The theory is every student should end up with approx £9.5K to live on (is more in London).
So, if your dd gets the full loan, you don't need to give her any more.
If she gets the minimum loan, then you are supposed to top that up - ie, give her the extra (I think it is just under) £5K.
Then graduated on a sliding scale in between.

However, many students don't need that much.
It will depend a lot on how much her accommodation is (and if it is catered or self catered).

Our child does not get maximum loan. We are topping up to this amount but no further. Having done the maths, she should be able to live on that fine - certainly more comfortably than when we were at uni but still having to budget carefully and sensibly.

Our dd gets the maximum loan / grant. We can’t afford to give her anything really but we’re continuing to pay for her phone (£19 a month) and contact lenses and we will give her £40 a month for bits and bobs. She worked over the summer and saved about £1000 to get her going and plans to get a part time job ASAP.

I think it also depends whether they’re in catered halls or not - my dd is, so I know whatever happens she’s not going to starve! If I knew she had to buy her own food and was worried she wasn’t budgeting well I’d probably end up sending more / Tesco cards!