How much will your DC have to live on per week in first year at university?

[Bouledeneige]

My DD is off in September to a vibrant northern city. We have applied for student finance for a tuition loan and the minimum maintenance grant because of our earnings. Her Dad and I (divorced) plan to split paying the self catering accommodation rent which also includes utilities and insurance but not food, and she will live on the maintenance grant - £4,168 (which over 52 weeks would be £80 per week though I would expect her to get work in holidays and possibly part time during the course). We also pay her mobile phone bill.

I have checked the Save the Student website which says all in the average student spends £770 per month but that includes rent and bills. When you subtract those that comes to about £82 a week for food, travel, social life, books etc.

What are you expecting your DC to live on per week after bill and rent?

Mine has €100 a week, which has the buying power of about £100 but an exchange rate of about £80.
He pays for transport, food, gym membership, phone contract and entertainment. Not books. He spends every cent and the bank manager has occasionally phoned me when an unexpected direct debit (Amazon Prime yearly payment) came through. We didn’t bail him out, but sent his allowance slightly early so he could budget to pay for it from the following month.
Seems to work.

I think what you are proposing is quite usual when they get the minimum maintenance loan - parents pay accommodation and child lives on loan. But I don’t divide the amount by 52 weeks in my mind - but by the number of weeks of term. Presumably your dd will come home in the vacations and you will then feed her. That means she has quite a bit more money for the termtime.

Good point Yotam. Yes I usually do feed her at home!

I do want to find a way to give her a rough budget per week to live on - working it out together - so she can try to manage her finances effectively. So I will need to find a term time v. holidays calculation.

Not a parent of a uni student but i graduated 3 years ago and had just short of £80 a week in a cheap northern city and was very comfortable for me. I wasn't much of a drinker and did keep an eye on what i was spending but never went without a managed to afford cheap package holidays two of the years at uni.

We’re same situation - basic maintenance loan. We’re approaching it that our son will use that to live on and we’ll cover accommodation (he’s looking at options today and we’ll negotiate a reasonable cost)

Should be enough - they only have short terms and he’ll get Red Cross food drops from mum as well. Might even have some left over to go towards next year

We’d expect him to get a job this summer and out of term at uni, and for that to help his living / accommodation in years 2 onwards (with us as backup if necessary but not told him that)

MrKlaw - your approach sounds similar. That's reassuring.

When DC went we arranged for the loan to be paid into bank account A then a monthly DD into bank account B

This meant it was easier for budgeting for DC as they used bank account B for their food, bus pass and swimming and gym payment and as it was monthly they knew how much money there was coming in

So they had to budget but if they ended up eating baked beans and bread or pasta at the end of the month cos they binged on take aways at the beginning then so be it

Actually they were really good at it, much better than expected

Sounds like she will be very wealthy.

My dcs have used their maintenance loans to pay their rent, then we've topped up where the loan is less than the rent. Then they've had £35 a week from us - mid Sept to end of May - for the rest of living expenses (food, toiletries, travel, cleaning stuff, etc). We've generally taken and fetched them at the start and end of terms and left them with a box of food basics at the start of term.
They've found that to be more than adequate.
Both work during the holidays, and dc2 got a term time job at University in this, her 2nd year, but she does run her own car out of those earnings. They've always paid their own phone, Netflix, etc.

Did is going this year. We're planning on her using her loan (basic) for the accommodation costa which we'll also have to top up and give her spending money too. I'm planning on £70 per week spending. I can't remember what the accommodation top up will be.
Hopefully it will be enough.

We thought it might make it easier to budget (and thereby ensure ds wasn't without food with a month of term still to go) by giving him the money weekly. I think most of us would find it hard to budget from 3 uneven payments a year, so that's why it made more sense to us to use the loan payments for the accommodation and then drip feed in the food money.

When we were helping our DS work out a weekly budget we started by realising that the first few weeks of the first term were likely to be the most expensive, so tickets for freshers events, a lot of socialising, paying to join sports clubs, plus contributing to some general shared kitchen costs like a kettle and toaster for everyone to use. Then add in the costs of a few trips home during the term, and an allowance for course materials eg books, lab kit etc if needed.
Once we had guesstimated the cost of these, we deducted it from his first terms loan and divided what was left by the number of weeks in the term. I’m not saying it was perfect but it was helpful to realise that the first 2-4weeks were quite expense heavy compared to the rest of the year.

Yes, I'd agree with that Error
Plus, if they are buying own food, when they first start it is useful if you can start them off with things like teabags / coffee / bottle ketchup / box of cereal / washing up liquid / etc which otherwise would all be needed for that first shop which would be disproportionately massive.

@backforgood OP is only gwtting basic maintenance. That won’t even cover accommodation for our son - your situation sounds like you must have a larger maintenance loan?

Weekly/monthly sounds like a good option - will look into that. In the modern world of contactless and paying with your phone it can be v.easy to spend more than you realise, especially as this will be their first time living on their own

Dd will be living at home so no rent, no bills and no food. I will buy her train pass.

She gets the living at home loan which is about £3200. So I reckon £60 a week for lunch, coffee, clothes, make up. She will need to pay her contact lenses at £20 a month and her phone contract, but she could go to a sim only deal rather than upgrade in Oct.

She's a total shopaholic so I think might struggle but I'm determined not to sub her. She can get a job if she wants more money.

Organized ours similar to Subis.
Paid money into account by standing order ON MONDAY. Meant to be used throughout the week for food. Hopefully little left by Friday night 😜 for alcohol.

I hadn't realised the three payments were uneven, does anyone know when the payment dates are and what the split is?

Maybe I need to think of her money being for the 30 weeks of the term and not for the 52 weeks of the year. But then I don't want to spend 3 months of the summer subbing her social life, obviously she would always have food here and a roof over her head.

Yes MrKlaw - we had to top up to pay the accommodation too

Maintenance grant is paid termly and I think the summer term is less - if the accommodation payments are anything to go by. That seems to be structured 35%, 35%, 30% for the 3 terms (if you child is doing 3 terms).

I think the monthly direct debit is a good idea with a rough idea for a weekly budget but I take the point about the first few weeks of term being more costly. We are going to get her a new student bank account to take advantage of the offers, so she can move money between that and her existing one.

I do realise there is huge disparities between what students will be living on. Its not fair. My DD will have a lot of extra costs for materials on her course - which are not cheap. knows lots of rich kids who have even more money but I'm trying to manage her expectations! I'm hoping the super rich kids will be in the most expensive accommodation so she's not surrounded by them.

Oh and the maintenance grant would not have been sufficient to cover my DD's accommodation costs which is why we are doing it that way. Also, I'd rather she lived on maintenance grant which is a set amount as its distances her from the bank of Mum and Dad if you know what I mean!

Nico but you don’t have to subsidise her summer social life. She can get a job, save from the term or just stay at home all summer. So long as you are clear upfront what is happening then it is up to her. Ds wants to go on a fairly expensive trip this summer. I’ve told him that he needs to save and cut back his termly spending money to afford it. And he does seem to be saving.

One of his ways to not overspend on nights out is to have a prepayment card (his is Revolut since it good for overseas travel ) Before a night out he tops it up with his spending limit and then that’s the only card he takes out. He’s lucky that his university town is small enough that nowhere he goes out at night would he need a cab home so once the money is gone he’s able to walk home.

It is very hard to generalise as people have different incomes etc. II pay my twins fees, their rent and £150 a week (and provide car they share) and feed them in the holidays when they still do get the £150 each. I think that's quite generous. They have friends with more and friends with less so just pay what you can.

I pay the £150 week so they never run out. The converse of that is if you pay termly they might learn to budget but I don't find mine have too many problems doing it this way and today's instant banking makes it easy for them to check what they are spending and when.

I have not increased it in year 2 despite this year they are not in catered halls but this year they go out less (they are both in year 2) so it is less expensive. I also started paying thier allowance just after they left school from start of summer holidays so they could save it up because week 1 at university is quite expensive with lots of things to sign up for.

DD supports herself and has done since she started uni 2 years ago. She works in the holidays and has learnt how to budget - a lot depends on expectations and lifestyle.

I keep telling myself she can get a job but she's doing architecture and ive read stuff about students averaging 12 hour days so not sure how feasible it will be.

Guess she could do some ad hoc baby sitting. She volunteers with a kids art club on a Saturday which she doesn't want to give up.

But yes, she could look for summer jobs.

My son is just finishing his 3rd year , we are not high earners so he got nor far off the maximum loan then we topped it up every Wednesday. It worked out he would have about £85 a week to live off. He managed fine and didn’t go overdrawn at all. In the holidays he came home and worked. When he went back I would send him bag with bags of food.