How much for a student to live on per week?

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My DS will be staying in self catered student accommodation (with utilities & WiFi included in the cost) we will use his maintenance loan to pay for this (which won't cover it, so we will pay the shortfall)

How much will we need to give him monthly to cover: food, clothing, toiletries, travel (train travel home only), books / stationery, recreation money?

We will continue to pay his mobile phone contract.

As we probably can't afford to cover everything he will need to get a job, I am just looking for a rough idea of monthly costs as a starting point.

We pay our DCs rent and they live on their minimum maintenance loans. DD1 is able to run a car and DD2 pays for travel costs to visit her bf. They do both have occasional work to pay for extras. They seem to manage ok. They are both decent cooks and eat well.
I think they’d both be delighted if I sent a shopping delivery. I know what they like to eat and I’d probably include some pink gin which would be gratefully received. I really don’t understand this ‘they are grown adults at 18 shit’. DH and I often organise a Tesco delivery for his Mum. She loves it and she’s nearly 90.

I earned 80 quid a week on average, loan paid accommodation, and I was fine - this wasn't in halls, so I also had to pay my share of electric/gas/internet etc. from that. It was a few years ago though.

If you could stretch to 400/month, they would be swimming in cash, I would think that if need be, 200/month would be enough for someone to not feel terribly deprived - I have 2 adults and 2 kids now, and that, scaled up, is what we spend a month outside of rent and bills.

I think they’d both be delighted if I sent a shopping delivery

My first year, my mum and me overlapped (she was finishing her degree - but commuting - whereas I was living on campus) so she'd take a bundle of washing home because she knew the laundrette was slow, expensive, and just unpleasant to hang around at.

She'd often put a couple of chicken breasts, or some other food in with the washing when it came back, and it was much, much appreciated - made me feel so loved and thought of. I imagine an online shop would be the modern equivalent!

I was wondering similar except Dd will be living at home for at least the first year & her course isn’t eligible for a maintenance loan.

We paid for accommodation for all 3 of our DDs when they went to University and they used the maintenance loan for everything else. They did also top it up with money from part time jobs if they had one.
But not all of them managed to get a job.
To those saying their DCs need to get a part time job it actually isn't that easy.
I did get DD2 and DD3 a Sainsburys meal card. A parent has one card and the student the other card. The parent can then put money on their card and it goes on to both so the student can use theirs to buy food.

Useful tips here. So if a student gets a full maintenance loan would it be fair and reasonable for parents to pay accommodation?

Our kids got the minimum loan and we topped them up by 4.5k. They mostly picked up casual, events type work as and when studying allowed. Two of them also worked a few hours of admin jobs for the uni.

A friend of mine decided to go down the paying for accommodation route; her DS and his best mate announced they have signed up for a very smart two bedroom city centre flat. Its a far cry from the cheap scruffy house we lived at uni and she's not happy.

We pay accommodation, her phone bill and provide DD with £100 PW. She also gets a minimum maintenance loan. I tend to do a big shop a month for her.

This has been fascinating and really useful as DS is off to university in September and we've been discussing how much to give him.

I had the idea that he could take the loan out and if he got a good degree then we would pay it off when he graduated as that would teach him more about budgeting etc but now that I've discovered that he pays interest from the moment the loan hits his bank account, we've changed our minds.

With some help from his grandparents, who paid most of his school fees, we're going to pay his accomodation and give him £100pw to live on. Plus we'll carry on paying his phone etc and I daresay he'll keep using our Netflix and Spotify subs.

thesearepearls Am I reading that correctly - you pay DD's accom costs and then she has loan plus £100pw to live on? So almost 10k in addition to having her accomodation paid for? That's very generous - I'd better not let DS see this thread!

Additional note: We're in Scotland and he's going to a Scottish university so fortunate in that there are no tuition fees to pay.

I think the minimum maintenance loan is around 4K, She gets that and £100 PW for 40 weeks as we don't give her anything over the summer vacation - she's expected to work and she does. So that sounds like around 8k

we were planning on making it up to the full maintenance loan - so up to 8700. I think she'll get about 5000 on our current income so would top that up by about 3500 to 4000 a year maximum.

She's planning a (working) gap year so extra money she needs will have to come from that. I don't expect her to work during time time but she will definitely need to work in the summer.

so about 90/95 a week for 42 weeks assuming she works/uses savings for the long summer break.

For DD1 maintenance loan (just above the minimum) was used to pay for accommodation with me then paying the balance then £50/week for food etc term time only. On top of this I pay phone contract and sent her off with some store cupboard staples and a couple of bottles of home made fruit flavoured vodka.

This all clearly demonstrates that your parents' wealth can have a huge impact on your uni life, doesn't it?!

Dd only had a few hundred pounds left from loan after paying for accommodation, despite getting nearly a full loan. She has just about survived on a very generous college bursary and a small scholarship. However, it’s been difficult as so many of her friends seem to come from a very affluent background which probably wasn’t apparent to her initially although she might have guessed from which school they attended.
I will try and contribute more this coming year but I think she feels a bit guilty about this.

Blushah - it doesn't have to though. DD's loan just about covers her accommodation and the rest she pays for by working. Have seen her grow up so much this past year and become very self-reliant and confident - I love treating her by the way! The fact that lots of her friends are given large amounts of money hasn't affected her enjoyment of uni life at all.

captain That's good. But she has to work, her mates don't.

Like in life.

Such a helpful post! Dd going to Uni in September. I was initially planning to pay for accommodation and living expenses. I have recently changed my mind on the basis that daughter will benefit from budgeting and planning finances. So will pay for accommodation and she will get a loan which should leave her with Stg 100-110 per week. Happy to pay for her travels to get back home. Hope it works out well.....must say getting ready for Uni has been intense and expensive

Burningthetoast - the interest charged on a SAAS loan is only 1.5% It's not the horrific interest rate you hear about with the English loans.

So if you can afford it, it makes sense to take the loan out, put the money into a long term bond at a higher rate of interest and effectively you make a profit on it

Ds has also worked out that taking out a student loan (given that he doesn't have a credit card) is the easiest way to get a credit rating which will help at the next stage of his life when he might want to take out loans.

Blimey these figures are scaring me! MyDS will be getting the maximum loan, I was thinking that would cover most stuff. He's got some money saved from work for personal spending.

Ds gets his loan which covers his rent+bills with couple of hundred quid left over. We also send him £300 a month for everything else. He has a part time job for the summer which means he can pay for a few extras. We certainly couldn't afford to send much more.
He's much better at budgeting than me and understands that parental money isn't bottomless.

DS is at a northern uni, and managed accommodation, food, phone and daily travel on his loan of just over 6,000 last year. We send him back with a food shop after the holidays and if we visit him. He used a small amount of holiday earnings for some bigger social events.

The previous year we'd topped him up £30 a week, and he admitted he'd saved most of it and didn't feel it was necessary.

dd will get a bit over the minimum loan, which won't even cover accomodation. So we will cover accomodation, contact lenses and any prescriptions. She will cover everything else. She has some savings from work to get her going.