How much does uni really cost?

[NImumconfused]

Aiming this question at those with a young person already at university.

I've seen quite conflicting reports in the last few days. One in the media which suggests students need £260 a week on top of their rent, and others on student sites saying just over £1000 a month including rent.

Rents at DS's uni for first year are likely to be around £200 a week, and his maximum maintenance loan is £6000 for the year (NI system is less generous). We expected to have to top up quite a bit, but if he needs another £260 on top of rent we'll really struggle.😱

Which would you say is nearer the truth? Or what sort of level does your young person spend at?

Hello! It varies and depends on quite a few factors. Ignore any of the below you already know.

First of all the student needs to apply for a student loan. As you may know, this is in 2 parts: 1) is the £9k a year tuition fees, which are paid direct to the university and 2) is the maintenance loan, which is designed to be towards living costs but in reality doesn't cover the half of it, IME.

The second part (the maintenance loan) is based on parents' earnings so the more you earn, the less your student will be lent as the maintenance part of the loan. The max is about £8k IIRC if the parents earn under £25k.

Parents or the student therefore generally need to top this up, either via the student working or the parents contributing. To give an example, 2 of mine went to uni and got the minimum maintenance loan. So this was something like £4k a year to cover rent, food, going out etc. So that works out at about £390 a month.

Actual costs were much more: rent at £500 a month, bills at £130 a month plus we paid another £480 for food and various other expenses. Many people pay less or expect the student to work throughout uni.

We chose not to ask our kids to work so we paid the rent of £500 plus £480 a month for food and other expenses plus £130 a month bills so a total of £1.1k a month. When the loan came into our kids bank accounts (it's paid direct to the student) they gave it to us so we paid £1.1k x 12 months (£13,320 a year) less their £4k contribution from the maintenance loan. It was expensive and I'm glad we're not paying it any more! They both left university with over £50k of debt and it cost us £9.2k a year x 3 years x 2 kids.

I think it's a huge shock for parents the first time as I'm not sure how well understood the arrangements are. Good luck.

Depends on the student

list out the essentials- rent, any bills ? Tv, mobile? 50 a week for food? Cost of trip home at the end of each term? Bus fares depending where they live? 50 for going out with new friends ? Gym cost? Clothing? Some can get through a lot of shoe leather

you get people unable to go out on less than 50 a night and kids with that for the month

many get the full maintenance grant and it doesn’t really cover rent in most places so they need all their living costs from somewhere - some work and the lucky ones have mum and dad to help them out

You need to consider

1. Rent
2. "Start-up" costs - the £260 a report for example, included the costs of buying things like laptops and phones and all bedding, kitchen stuff etc
3. "Normal" weekly things or reasonably frequent expenses. DD is easily managing on £100 a week (minimum maintenance loan in England)
4. "non-weekly" larger expenses such as travel, holidays, course books, course trips etc -DD pays for these from her summer job money

DD is not a huge socialiser, and generally buys drinks for home rather than spending a lot when she is out.

We pay her rent, and bought her "start-up" things. We also tend to buy a big food shop when we visit.

It depends on the housing and meals accommodation.
with three who attended away from home; dorm room with zero appliances allowed, quad set up with kitchenette but mandatory cafeteria meal plan, quad set up with kitchenette no cafeteria on site, standard apartment shared off campus. On two occasions we needed to rent a small storage locker.

Not RoI but in general after course fees and rent is paid about 500 pcm to cover food, toiletries, gym membership, clubs, mobile and activities seems to be about right if student is in halls so no electricity, gas water, TV licence to pay. If second year and no halls it's much more expensive.

Thanks for all the replies, I didn't realise that £260 included all the set up costs, he's got a laptop etc.

So we know his loan will be 6k, tuition fees covered (uni is in England, although we're in NI). Our original plan was to cover his rent (includes bills for first year in hall) and expect him to use the loan for living costs, so a wee bit more than £100 a week.

Does that sound realistic? He'll not spend very heavily on socialising, doesn't drink much, but more inclined to do sporty things/hiking etc so there might be travel costs for that. He's taking his bike so day to day travel costs will be minimal.

We set up automatic weekly deposits into their accounts on MONDAYS, therefore having to plan carefully M-Th if they wanted money for the weekend.

My DS was in catered accommodation. He had £80 per week term time only (so 30 weeks) beyond his accommodation.

This was for going out, snacks, toiletries, joining clubs etc. He does drink but not loads. He had £250 left for a cheap summer holiday.

Apoarantky some had significantly less than £80 per week and some a bit more.

One thing to bear in mind is they sign up for 2nd year accommodation before Christmas in most places. They will prob need a deposit in region of £500.

I expected them to fund socialising in the hols with a job. Obv we fed and kept them. A summer job could earn them £1k in about 3 weeks.

So you'll pay the rent, the bills are included and he'll have £500 a month to live on? I think that's probably achievable.

There were huge variations in our kids unis, some parents didn't contribute at all and others paid more than £500 a month and the rent.

We give our DD £750 a month and pay phone contract and contact lenses on top so the equivalent of about £820 a month. Her grandmother gives her another £100 a month. She gets minimum loan and works during uni holidays as many hours as she can get at £12.21 per hour. Her rent is £800 a month inclusive of bills. She seems to manage ok for money as we virtually cover her rent and she has her loan and holiday wages to live on.

It depends if the YP has any savings or works too. DS was fortunate in that he didn’t need to get a loan as his dad paid his fee’s and accomodation. I gave him £125 a month, but he also had several thousand in savings from childhood and he worked full time in summer 1 earning 5k, and internship summer 2 earning 3k. He is having this final summer off and starts his graduate job (secured via internship) in mid Sep.

I’d say he needed £60 a week min for food and going out. In year 1 he messaged me to say his outgoings were more than his incomings, and I said ‘welcome to adulthood son’! He doesn’t much like spending his own cash, so was quite tight and rarely paid for a lunch out.

I mean it obviously depends on where you are, prices of accommodation and your income. Student finance minimum no matter income is 4000+ (can't remember exact amount), the max for students at home is 8k and a bit, student not at home and outside of London 10,500 and not at home in London is 13k. Personally my parents income was very low so I got a high student loan, and paid all of my accommodation out of that and then did some part-time work which was accessible for me as a disabled students so eas slightly hard to balance. I also did have my accommodation reduced from 8k to 6k because I needed an en-suite due to my disability and the uni/DSA covered it. If you're in a more expensive city then everything will cost more (I do think student finance should adjust to more cities than just London but that's not going to happen any time soon). I think shop in cheaper stores and budget well for the week, and term as in pay accommodation first then split into any costs you'll definitely have (sports, food and then disposable for fun but with a strict limit works well).

.

My DD is about to start her second year. Whatever the rent is, say you’ve covered that as it’s a fixed amount and of course depends where he’s at - are you talking uni halls which are for around 38 weeks if private accommodation which might be 52 weeks? So say between the loan, what you can give and hopefully your YP has been working to contribute too, accommodation is covered.
So living. I think it’s reasonable for £200/month for food, socialising and personal items. Perhaps an initial bump of £200 extra to cover things like freshers week, societies, gym, sport fees, whatever. But that should be plenty, though slightly more in London mainly for transport costs around the city.
My DD was catered last year and I worked out she sorry about £35/week which included all her expenses bar phone. That included two return trips home (Durham to London), a weekend visiting friends in Liverpool, a few charity shop buys, any socialising and fees and a couple prescriptions.
So is start with that. See how it goes. If too low (and not because he’s off drinking several nights) add a bit more. But £260/week is a ridiculous figure - do you spend that a week per person at home??

What they all said ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️

DD is just about to finish her Masters.

It's cost us a FUCKLOAD! THE most expensive she's ever been. Plus you'll want to buy them things to treat them/make life more pleasurable.
Oh, and she's worked throughout.

P.s. in halls is the cheapest year.

It's cleaned us out.
Fuck knows how we'll pay for (for example) a wedding

Our DD gets the minimum maintenance loan, so we agreed at the outset that we would pay her accommodation fees and she could keep the maintenance loan to live on. The accommodation costs where she is are expensive £8000 a year. She found it ok living off her loan in the first year (worked out about £100 per week). She did get a job in year 2 and 3 to get extra to save up for a holiday with her friends. She is going into year 4 (integrated masters) in September and will be back to living off her maintenance loan only, as this year will be full on and she won’t have time for a job. We have agreed the same arrangement for DS who is off in September although his accommodation costs are a lot less £6000 a year.

This seems realistic. But we only paid son for 10 months. He was expected to get a job in the summer holidays. He did holiday club sports coaching and worked in a wine bar (so went back xmas and Easter). He would have been struggling without those earnings.

I have a DS at uni. Last year he was in fully catered accommodation and we gave him £50 per week on top of his rent. This year we'll have to increase that (as he'll have to buy food) - we haven't yet discussed how much. Obviously he can top that up by earning money himself.

My DD is studying in an expensive place, so rent is £700 a month which we pay. She only gets the minimum maintenance loan (£4750). She lives off of that and has never been in debt, but never has anything left at the end of term either. Works in holidays. Her course is 9-7 five days a week so not much chance to work in term time. I feel if she only had max student loan she would struggle as that would leave about £1700 a year to live on after rent.

Thank you to everyone for the info. We just got his accomodation confirmation -£197 a week, nearly £9k for the year. It sounds like what we're suggesting will be fine for this year, but might be tighter in second and third year.

He doesn't really have savings right now, but we'll be encouraging him to get a part-time job or holiday job to help with future years, if it's going to be even more expensive once he's out of halls. We'd hoped to have saved a lot more in advance of uni, but have had to spend a lot supporting his younger sibling who has been badly failed by the health and education systems, so we've had to spend a lot on private provision.

@NImumconfusedSurely there was cheaper accommodation? Unless London of course. Did you look at all options because you seem to have not got the cheapest in any city. Many will be £7-8000. What he’s chosen isn’t the cheapest anywhere. What discussions did you have about money? It’s very late now and not all students can get jobs either. Could he not have worked this summer? It all seems a bit laid back to me. Have you even looked at student rents in this city for y2 onwards? A bit of forward planning is necessary I think.

Also sport costs and he will socialise! It’s what the vast majority do. They might start not drinking and then they discover going out with friends. Life is lonely if they don’t.

Dc1 has just left Bristol and it cost us about 1K a month to keep her down there. Rent in Bristol is astronomical pretty much everywhere.
she got the minimum maintenance loan and lived off of that, we paid her rent.
next dc is just off to Brighton and this year her rent is also about 1K a month and again she will live off her minimum maintenance loan.
Obviously we had to do a ‘big ikea shop’ for both too although dc1 brought back quite a lot of the original stuff so dc2 is reusing a lot of that.

We have foster son going this September coming and we have budgeted to give FS £125 a week to include membership to sports clubs as he's very into his sports. He's also said he wants to try new sports too so might need kit. We've also just bought him quite a lot of new clothes to take him through he rest of the summer and into the Winter including 10 new pairs of pants, 12 new pairs of socks and a lot of toiletries. I'm hoping he's going to manage but he does eat a lot of protein; steak, salmon, tuna steak and chicken breasts. He cooks and also eats a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables and I'd like that to continue. If he needs a bit more we will give him more but hoping he can learn to budget a bit too as a life skill. He will have a free bus pass due to his disability. He's done amazingly well better than we could have ever dreamed when he came to us so willing to be generous to him as he's worked incredibly hard from a low beginning and made us really proud of him.

DS going this year. We’re paying the rent, he’ll have the minimum loan to live off, plus back up of not large child trust fund (unless he fancies getting a job.)

The speed that you go from getting A-level results to setting up huge direct debits for accommodation is pretty sobering! DS’ accommodation is 195pw - so first DD is £3k.

We pay our DC £1100 a month to cover rent and spending money
They don’t have loans (Scotland so no tuition fees)
We also pay stuff we were paying like phones,contact lenses
They get 500 a term from my In laws