Maintenance/living costs for first year students?

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First son is off to Uni soon (Bristol). Ignoring course fees and accommodation costs, what is reasonable to pay for living expenses? I.E. food, travel, washing/laundry, social/going out, activities, extra clothes if needed etc

Some of our friends seem to be giving about £80 per week for this, but that feels high to me, so wondering what others think or have experience of?

Dd1 did Law at Bristol (graduated 2015). We paid her accommodation - halls then flat in Clifton for years 2/3 at about £380pcm if I remember rightly. We gave her (and dd2, graduated Newcastle this year, similar Jesmond rent but bigger house) about £250pcm but they had phones paid for by us and each had an Amex for emergencies/additional costs and journeys home. They rarely used Amex. Any extra money they spent was from what they'd earned during holidays, plus their grandad and his wife often sent them a few hundred in addition, say £300 at Easter and Christmas and the odd extra £100/200 during the year. They used Amazon to start with for books (on my account) and I sent the odd JL parcel. Kept asking if they had enough - they said yes.

Dd1 didn't take the living loan. Bad mistake - dd2 took hers but didn't use it. As she now starts work post graduation, it's coming in very useful. Would have been useful to dd1 on her postgrad as they give a loan for fees but not living expenses (she was in London). I do appreciate these are middle class problems but it's something to bear in mind for some of you - my thought in dd1 not having loan was keeping her debt down.

Nothing, when I was at college I got two jobs to support me instead. Will hope my dc go down that road.

Did is doing a diploma course in Chester that isn’t eligible for student finance. We are paying her accommodation £120 per week catered & giving her £30 per week living allowance plus she’s earning £15 per week on top of that.

Thanks for this useful thread. I don’t know what we are going to contribute, dd has got money in her account from her summer job, generous birthday gifts from grandparents and other rellies, and will get a maintenance grant paid in shortly. We have paid for her self catering halls. I was wondering is she should set up,a second account and pay herself an allowance so as not to burn through the savings, but having watched her agonise in Dunelm mill store over what was the cheapest bedding etc. We saw that’s when it’s her “own” money she is tight as the proverbial .

One tip from a recent grad at work, who I saw cooking fresh veg (think potato’s, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot discs) for lunch in the microwave, was that she was in the habit of keeping some in Tupperware, it was healthier as well as cheaper than buying from canteen or sandwich shop, only took a minute or two, but the main thing was the other students didn’t steal it from the shared fridge! Too daunted to cook.

Au, my children had their life savings (the £10 from relatives at birthdays since they were born etc) which we put in their bank's deposit account and then a current account with the same bank. They can see the balance of each when they log in and if they have spare money they do move it over to savings (and vice versa of course!). It is similar to what I do as an adult and works quite well.big spenders however, old or young, often instead need to lock money away in hard to get at ISAs etc

In retrospect, ds could have got by on less money, but we could afford it, and it seemed standard from the colleagues of dh who have kids of the same age.

Placemarking for next year !!!

Seriously Bimgy85 - no grants are available now it is all loans and with the cost of living rising I don’t know any students who can get by do well in their studies whilst earning enough to cover the cost of living in halls or rent costs in private housing, course materials, food, travel and other living costs etc etc. Also most Uni’s accept that many students have to work to make the funding go further they generally suggest students do no more than 15 hours a week term time otherwise it may seriously impact on the studies.

Not at Bristol, but my eldest just graduated from Nottingham and middle one currently at RHUL. They both took the maintenance loans but got the lowest level, which we topped up by £350/month.

Eldest said he had enough money to socialise but not so much that he didn’t need to budget, and he worked during the summer breaks. At RHUL the allocated halls for the first year were £800 more for the first term than he got as a maintenance loan - and that was uncatered 😳. Luckily he had savings which he’d accrued, so he could pay the rent when his loan came in, leaving him our £350/month to live on. He got a very well paid p/t job in the autumn of his first year, so now has no money worries, and has also gone into a shared house for year two which is far cheaper.

It’s part of the uni experience to need to learn to manage their money, but we’ve told ours to ask us, not to starve!

HostessTrolley - since they did away with the grants system their is an assumption that parents are able to top up a students funding to the minimum level.
But many students aren’t as fortunate as your D.C. OP, HostessTrolley especially those whose parents have taken on a big mortgage, have taken on other life style commitments or whose parents have been remarried and have additional responsibilities and financial commitments to younger siblings in a second family.
For these students some parents expect them to stand on their own two feet and don’t get that the ML doesnt even cover the rent let alone books, food or travel. These are the students I feel sorry for.

@waltzingmatilda65 - I know, we are very fortunate and have made cuts at home to be able to support the kids as it’s a priority to us. Last year we were funding two, my eldest has graduated but daughter hopefully starts next September so we have a year of breathing space. When I was a student myself I had three part time jobs to get through - one shift at McDonald’s, saturdays in a bakery and casual bar work.

I think the system should be more explicit for parents. Ie, “your means tested loan, based on an assessment of your parents income is £x/year. This is £y/year below the full loan as it is assumed that your parents will contribute £y. I do know that not all parents will be able to afford £y and conversations will have to happen, but at least everyone would know where they stand. My eldest had several friends whose parents didn’t make any contribution because they didn’t realise that their son/daughters money was reduced because of their income. These students either worked a lot of hours (in one case to the point that he was only just scraping through academically) or had no money, and were often helped out by friends.

HostessTrolley - yes I totally agree it should be far clearer for ALL as not all parents are as knowledgable or as supportive as yourselves and some of the students struggle to understand, get by or articulate how badly off they are and how much they are struggling so they drop out of Uni. Less jobs are available now and almost all are minimum wage and zero hours contracts so it is often very difficult to get by, budget and balance working with the demands of an undergrad course. Especially as some courses have and demanding/long hours such as QTS, Nursing, Theatre etc.

I suppose it's a bit different in Ireland most get a student grant of average 200 per month but maximum 600 month. This isn't a loan. Handy for us I guess

DD is supporting herself (minimum living loan and loan for fees). She has worked since 16. Just going back into 2nd year on track for a 1st. Working and self-financing has made her much more motivated.

This is very useful. DD2 has been given catered accommodation in Bristol and that's 8100!! Judging by that Exeter guide, she'd need something like 400-450 monthly on top. Overall it's so much more than her sister needed at Cambridge and she was very comfortable. The benefits of cheap college accommodation I suppose.

Wow Cathy. That’s expensive.

I know! It's not even ensuite, just a sink. It's eye-watering isn't it?

cathyandclare, really as suggested above, you dont need to spend that much.

It so much depends on the individual. If you avoid taxis and takeaways and limit big nights out to once a week £75 should be enough. Also book trains home in advance, or take the coach. DD spent more in the first term because sports subs were expensive, but less in subsequent terms. Note though that Bristol terms are longer than Cambridge, and of uneven length.

Depending on the individual, friends made through low cost hall activities, societies or course, are as likely to as good friends and as much fun as those met through clubbing.

Dd is staying with a host family. College said it’s a more expensive option than a student house etc but as she is under 18 it is preferred.

It’s £120 per week (£4,320 per year) & includes breakfast & evening meal, laundry & lift share to college.

The bathroom is shared & there is a tv room/lounge shared between 2.

It really is a 'how long is a piece of string?' question that gets asked regularly on here.
My dd (not at Bristol, but at end of her first year) has managed very well on £35 pw, from middle Sept to end of May (didn't stop over Christmas and Easter). That covers everything plus phone and petrol. She works in the holidays but hasn't got a job in term time in first year. She uses a lot of her earnings to run her own car - mainly paying the insurance of course - which she saved for and bought herself in the 6th form. Day to day / week to week expenses are easily covered by that. SOme Universities have expensive first month with ridiculously priced 'fresher week' tickets and high costs to sign up to clubs and societies, so a 'bonus' for September is useful if you can afford it.

I always get shocked and disturbed when I read threads about this. Maybe I'm just incredibly mean! But when people say things like if they want lunch out or even cheap places like nandos I wonder! As an adult, I don't regularly have lunch out, eat out or even have take aways. As a student you are meant to be financially worse off than you will be when you're working. How does that add up if you're being given £100 a week to spend - after halls have been paid for? I don't think most working people have £400+ a month each to spend after paying morgage/rent bills and food!

Needmoresleep thank you for your posts :) As your DD experienced, my concern was that DD would find herself house sharing with students able to afford a much more exprnsive lifestyle than she could afford and that I certainly didn't want to support. I think the pressure to mix in especially when moving to a place they don't know a soul, with all the hype of Uni expected to be the best years of their lives can take them by surprise.

It was one of the reasons we agreed for DD to opt for the cheapest accommodation available. Indeed she has already been in touch with her housemates, studying Medicine or biomed and they are already talking about the jobs and signing up with agencies.

DD will get 2/3 of her accommodation paid by her grand parents and will get the minimum maintenance loan. I will continue to pay her mobile contract until it ends, that's it.

I expect her to get it wrong the first term but she'll learn then.

adrink, I don't often eat out myself either although I could afford it. However it's all just relative to your family. Someone above said private school parents save money at university stage - not if you pay the full fees and rent - those two alone are about (just under) my boys' school fees of the year before even before we add the weekly allowance on but I was certainly used to working full time for 30 years and weekends and shelling out a lot on education costs.

Also if you are a relatively high expectation family you probably don't expect not to be able to afford to eat out, you expect a higher income, £100k or something.

one of the nice things about university is people can meet lots of people (among those whose A levels were good enough to get in) from all kinds of families and that's a good thing in my view.

I don't think adrink is mean at all. We discuss these issues at home - of who has what (I have 2 at univesrity at the moment), what it i slike if you have less or a lot more money, different families' views on loans, debt, earnings, careers.

It is not wrong to make adults stand entirely on their own two feet. In my day the minimum grant was £50 (but no student fees) and unless your parents made it up to £900 full grant (at least we knew the level of the full grant more easily in those days) or you were from a very badly off home and got a full grant you had to find jobs to pay the different i.e. the rent and your food so in a sense we have reverted in a way to that 1981 position of requiring a parent or job top up unless you live at home except now most also have a student "loan" too. Nor is it wrong for those of us lucky enough to work full time and earn enough to help our children financially. My only concerns would come if someone where given so much in life they would never work hard because they knew they came in to £10m at age 25 or something like that.

Ever since my boys were about 7 we have had tried to make them aware some people have less or more money than others eg going to the cinema is expensive and beyond the budget of many people.

There seem to be an assumption that what students receive from their parents is solely based on what parents can afford but I don't think that is always the case.

Some parents on low income will get themselves into debt so that they can help their kids have the best experience of uni, especially parents who regret not having gone themselves. Similarly some parents who can very afford to give their children £800 a month opt to do so so that their kids can get used to being self independent.

In the end as it's been said it comes down to people's individual principles and it's easy to judge other's choices on this basis.