DD starting uni, what to do about money/accommodation?

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DD1 holds a conditional place to Durham for October and has had her maintenance loan confirmed at £5000.

Her accommodation is £7000 a year so DH and I assumed that the £5000 would cover her accommodation and then pay the extra £2000 needed, she would then live off a monthly allowance of £250 from her grandparents.

However DD feels the £250 a month is too little (accommodation is catered too) and wants to keep the maintenance loan for living (i.e. Clothes, going out) DD will probably get a job in the second year but would like to have a break from working in her first year (has worked every Saturday since the age of 14)

Would any of you mind telling us what you do regarding finance/are planning on doing so we can get a better idea?

Thanks

We pay accommodation and DD gets the maintenance loan (about £330pm). She also has a really good job so all in all I think she has about £1k a month spending. That has to pay for car, insurance, food etc though.

Why isn't 250 a month enough? That's £62.50 per week with no bills and no food costs.

Hasn't she saved any cash from her Saturday job? She's had the Saturday job years, so there must be at least a few hundred stashed away in the bank.

She probably just needs help with how to budget. She needs to write down all her outgoings and input them into a budgeting app and then review her spending.

She's 18. She's an adult. If she wants more, she can earn the cash. If evening work isn't practical, she can try daytime work instead.

Wow a whole 5k per annum just to fritter away on crap and booze. What fun!

DD just about to graduate. We paid accommodation and she lived off her maintenance loan which was less that your daughters at (approx) £3400 a year.

She has saved £4000. However she is not a big drinker.

So, I think your DD has plenty under current arrangements and if she wants more then should, perhaps, work in the long holidays.

^I made an error. She has saved £1500 ( the rest was an extra scholarship she was given). And she's had to pay for her food.

DD1 was in self catering halls in her first year. Her loan didn't cover her rent so we made up the difference. On top of that we gave her £50/week for food. We also paid for the train tickets home, her phone contract and sent her off with a large store of non perishable. She didn't live in luxury but also didn't starve.

One of the pieces of advice I gave her was not to develop a Costa habit. It's fabulously expensive and bad for the waistline.

It must have stuck because I heard her giving the same advice to DD2!

We are just having this discussion with ds. He had planned to go into self catering which would cost about £5k per year, which we would cover. He would then get the minimum maintenance loan (£3800?) Which would cover his living costs.

However, he has now decided that he wants to go into catered halls which are of course more expensive (£6800 per year, 19 meals a week included). I feel he ought to pay us the difference as he won't have to pay for food. He has agreed to this but then I'm thinking maybe we're being a bit harsh. However we can't really afford more than £5k towards the accommodation.

So he'll have 2K and be fully fed. Sounds perfectly fine. If he wants more he can work. Even at the universities that prefer no term time jobs, the holidays are generous for summer work.

My DS is in first year in self catered halls. He gets minimum maintenance loan which pays for halls. We top up the difference - around £1500, and then we give him £75 a week for food and socialising. We also pay for his phone and some books. He seems to be managing, I don't think he has dipped into his overdraft yet. He has some money from working at home last year and worked when he was home at
Christmas.
His workload at 'school' has increased so he has had no time since he came home for Easter to work. He has just applied for a summer job but has his zero job at home to fall back on too.
Next year he is moving into a shared house which is £50 a week less than his current halls but is a 12 month contract so works out around the same.

For all 3 of our DDs we covered the accommodation and they used their loan for living expenses.and uni costs eg books. We didn't give them any extra money.

I think that to compare you really need to look at how much cash they have after rent is paid as everyone has different rent and loan amounts. Also remember there are very long holidays when they may be back home and the third term seems to finish early. So if you are looking at an annual amount it may only be needed for 25 to 30 weeks, at least in the first year.

.I have two student DC. One in self catered halls and one in a student shared house.

They each have £200 a month after rent / utilities to cover everything including food, phones, clothes and entertainment.
I have also paid for bus passes and sports memberships as a one off.

By the standards on this thread they are hard done by but they both manage fine.

We are thinking of giving dd £380 a week for London for everything.

We pay the rent for ds and he gets £500 per month allowance in term time. He has no loans. I pay for a grocery shop for him at the beginning of each term. His allowance is to cover food, bills, (he is finding out that electricity on a prepaid meter costs), books, clubs and a bit of socialising, and there is emergency contingency built into that as we are in different countries.

I suspect that the friends who are being given their whole loan to live off only qualify for the lowest amount and so that seems like a more reasonable split. You do get all meals at Durham (although you don't always want to eat them!) and the cost of living is cheap compared to elsewhere so I think what you have proposed is very reasonable.

If you can afford to put a bit of money aside to help to top up at the end of term then that would be great. There are always balls and formals that require dresses/costumes and extra spend.

I'd recommend she looks at applying for a job as a student ambassador doing campus tours and open days etc. The pay is pretty good, hours are totally ad hoc and you can make loads working summer schools in the holidays.

My DS is in first year at Liverpool. He gets minimum loan and we top that up to cover his hall fees, self-catering.

We then pay him £300/month, incl over Xmas and Easter but not summer. He tells me that is too much and he could live on less, but I am keeping as is in case DD goes somewhere more expensive, and does need the £300. Plus we can easily afford it.

He also has money from working 18mth in 6th form, which he pays his phone contract from, and will no doubt use in the summer. He is hoping to work again too.

I think £250 is sufficient if in catered halls, she needs to learn to budget, and as someone said earlier, doesn't she have some of her wages to dip into? If she doesnt, it sounds as if she has been spending everything she has earned, which doesn't bode well for uni budgeting.

We're kind of thinking of it the opposite way round, Kath: if our younger children also go to uni, we'll be paying overlapping top-ups for years, and want to start out with a lowish amount that we know we can afford for all of them.

DS's budget spreadsheet is a joy to behold.

I can understand that Flyingsquid - but DS is in one of cheapest student cities, whereas DD may not be. He is also only 45mins from home, which makes for cheap train fares to come home. DD may not be as close. Plus he has some previous earnings, she has not yet got work, for various reasons, and whilst she hopes to have, it is not guaranteed. Plus I dont think £300 is excessive, given some of the amounts quoted on here!!! We will only have 1 year max overlap, so wont be too bad.

Op, I have read many threads on here and there seems to be a mixture in terms of whether the DC have the maintenance loan to live on, and parents pay accommodation outright, or, as we do, use loan and top up for accommodation, then also get a living allowance.

However, in your case, where your DDs loan is 5k, I do think it is too much for her to keep, unless you can easily afford to cover her accommodation outright.

You will also find a mix of people on here in terms of wealth and what they pay for, including many who pay everything, including the 9k a year fees.

You have to do what suits you financially, but as I said above, my DS can easily live on his £300/mth, including food, socialising, train fares, clothes. He shops in Aldi generally, with top ups from Asda and Tesco.

University halls are ludicrously expensive. They are sometimes not great places, noisy throughout the day and night.
A social student will find friends where ever they live. Just sign up for societies in freshers week.
Find a local landlord who will supply accommodation at a fraction of the uni rent. Check out the local landlords' association for references / adverts.
Do not use an agent as they too take stupid money to find a room

Our ds only gets the minimum maintenance loan. Can't remember what it is, but it is enough for him to live on.

We pay his rent (about £500 per month) and other expenses like the bus fare to campus (around £250 per year), phone contract, gym membership and field trips.

I have a family member in catered halls at Durham. Unfortunately, she hates the food so doesn't eat it and has to buy all her own food too.

We were generous first year, less generous second. So she in catered halls, cost was 7500 for the year and her loan was just over three grand I think, whatever the min was, so we made up the short fall and ensured she had 100 a week to spend on top. She saved a lot of it.

The second year, this year she has a hundred pounds a week to live on but this now includes all food. Which is a decrease of 35 per week as catered actually meant a food card with five quid a day on it.

She doesn't work because well I wouldn't ask her to, she's doing a heavy degree and I see it as my role to support her through her education. Any work she does in the holidays is normally unpaid due to her career choice. Accommodation costs are much cheaper in her second year, and she pays eighty odd pounds a week rent, but on top of that she needs to pay utilities and the rental contract means she has to take the house for the full year, not just for the months she is at uni. Landlords don't really offer that.

So for me I didn't want her to worry the first year about money, inwanted her to budget but settle in and focus on her degree and now this year I know she can do it and can spend less.

DS got minimum loan. We paid his rent and he put loan into an ISA and lived off his wages from summer job and jobs at Uni. The next 2 years he didn't take the loan as still had the year 1 loan, but had full time work in Holidays.
He is now graduated and working and desperate for a holiday as not had one since left school but has also just about cleared his fees loans too from savings and overpayments.

Just had a look, minimum loan in Scotland is £4750, that seems more than England from what you are saying?

university is the best time of your life. You're supposed to go out, spend money and have a good time. If you can afford to give her a bit more why not? I don't understand why people want their children to suffer socially as some sort of lesson in frugality.
If you can't afford it, that's another matter

It really does just depend on your circumstances. I will pay the fees, rent/halls direct to the unviersity and £150 a week including through the holidays (when they can save it up for term time which is more expensive). I think that is very generous. It is on the basis they take out no student loan, no over draft and no loans of any kind.