Living expenses and maintenance loan

[theyellowjumper]

According the student loan calculators my dd should get around £6000 maintenance loan. We're thinking of getting her to pay the rent from her loan and then giving her a regular amount to make up the shortfall for food, transport and other expenses. I hope she'll be able to get part time work and holiday work, but I just want to get an idea of how much students are likely to need for living expenses when you exclude rent? She wants to go for self catered accommodation, but hasn't chosen her firm or insurance yet, possibly Newcastle.

Those who pay a regular amount to their dcs, do you think it works best to pay weekly, monthly or termly?

I've been looking at the Which? calculator, but I think they've taken yearly expenses and divided it into a monthly amount as some of the items are quite strange e.g. £60-odd a month for holidays and flights!? I'm trying to find a basic, but realistic total to budget for.

One more question I can't find the answer to on the student loans website: is the maintenance loan amount set for 3 years based on parental income in the year of application, or can it change if income changes in subsequent years?

Thanks Janinlondon, that's good to know as my income will be different this year than last.

The means-testing thing seems really odd to me - the lower your family income the bigger the debt you can rack up. It's not the way loans normally work, is it?

my income will be different this year than last

If your income now is significantly lower than in the 2017/18 tax year, you can apply to be assessed on the current year.

www.gov.uk/support-child-or-partners-student-finance-application

^If your current income is lower
You can give your details for the current tax year if you think your household income will be at least 15% lower than the tax year you’ve been asked to submit details for^.

You’ll need to:

follow the usual process to provide your income details online
fill in a current tax year income assessment form and send it to Student Finance England

DS got the minimum maintenance loan. We had to top it up. This was used to pay his rent.

Every Monday we put £65 into his account for food/anything for uni/going out. It was up to him how he budgeted. He was pretty good at looking at the reduced isle.

In his second year when he lived in a shared house, we paid his share of the bills when they came in.

We topped his phone up every month, paid for his hair cuts when he came home, train fares and any clothes that he needed.

Thank you MarchingFrogs - I think our household income might be over 15% lower this year, so I will look into submitting this year's info.

Just doing this - dd gets the minimum loan plus a £4K bursary (better than many) and we plan on £150 allowance plus extra for transport home if we aren't picking her up. Will send toiletries and cooking basics at the beginning (she boards so already used to the termly toiletry stock up)

Anyone done the finance application yet or is it too soon?

I recall one of my friends only half-jokingly saying the family would be living on baked beans on toast to pay for their DS to go to university. I can see we might be doing the same...

Applications usually open in April, I think - according to the gov.uk website, at the moment, the only applications being accepted are for the 2017/18 and 2028/19 academic years (you can apply up to 9 months from the start date of your course).

MarchingFrogs thank you. Is it a laborious process? Suspect it is!

I've taken the difference between the maximum loan and the loan she actually gets, then divided that by the number of weeks she's at uni. That's how much I give her each week to live on. If she needs more then she needs to use her own money. She had a job in the summer to earn a bit of savings, and works in the holidays when she's home but not during term time.

MsAwesomeDragon that sounds a fair way to do it.

DS got the minimum maintenance loan.

We decided to top it up to the equivalent of the maximum maintenance loan, and pay him monthly.

In reality we pay him a bit over £400 a month on top of the loans.

He seems to manage on that, along with extra cash he earned during the summer.

The maintenance loan is roughly equal to his accommodation costs, so he has about £100 a month to cover food, travel, books, going out etc.

Loan application is a five minute job. They don't ask for proof of your income when you do it, but every year for five years we have had letters in the February following the loan (so half way through the uni year) asking for evidence of every scrap of income and savings.

Rade, do they ask for info on mortgage, number of siblings etc...because to my mind that's also hugely significant...?

They really don't care if you have a huge mortgage and can't or won't be topping up the students money. There are many students struggling because their parents aren't able to help.

NewModelArmyMayhem18
No it's your income that counts, not what you choose to spend it on.

Even having more than one DC at university doesn't count for more than a tiny amount.

we give ds about 350 per month - he does not have any loans as we live overseas. We gave him 500 per month initially due to annual sports membership etc but he now manages fine on 350. His accommodation is self catering and he is a decent cook. We spent quite a lot of time over the summer holidays looking at different recipes and how to adapt them. He makes his own soup, fishcakes, pasta dishes etc, does some batch cooking and has a healthy and varied diet. He has a detailed knowledge of all the Tesco offers!

I got £3k maintenance and had a part time job so my parents covered by rent (£85p/w) and I lived off the rest (2014-17)

If you know that your household income is above the point where your DC is not entitled to the means tested part of the maintenance loan, there is no need for him / her to apply for that. Therefore no need to submit your details (only for him / her to be told that your income means that they are only eligible for the basic amount...).

We give dd the difference between the maintenance loan she gets and the actual amount of her rnet (rent is inclusive of bills) then we give her £35 pw from mid Sept to end of May.
She manages fine. ds managed fine on a bit less than that when he was away a couple of years ago.
They both work in the holidays. dd also runs a car on that (insurance, petrol, tax, repairs, MOT etc)
dd has now (in her 2nd year) does have a job at Uni as well, but that is to pay for her spending 6 weeks or so abroad this Summer, traveling.

My DDs maintenance loan was 1k short of her annual rent. We paid this shortfall in advance, then she had £200 pcm throughout the year, so £2400, from us. This was enough to live on. If she wanted extras and holidays, she needed to work, which she did all through until her final year.
We had saved up 10k from when she was born to pay for this, so actually we were better off once she went to uni as she wasn't eating us out of house and home/using heating and hot water 24/7, feeding all her friends after school, no bus fares for school etc,

Our DD gets the minimum maintenance loan which is about £1,000 less than her halls so we top that up. We pay for her phone, expenses incurred for her course are about £50 per month and we give her £75 every Monday.haircuts, dentist (not free now) etc all gets paid for when she’s home and we always do a shop for her when we see her. She says this is about average, one of her flat mates get £125 a week and they all think he’s loaded.