How much do you give your uni offspring a month?

[fedup21]

Looks like we will only be entitled to the minimum rate of maintenance loan so will have to top it up quite a bit.

His top choice is Birmingham and it’s looking to be between £3/4K for the first year in halls (without meal plan) or £5/7k (with Meal plan) which is the maintenance loan, but how much would they need on top of that?!

£200 a month? £400 a month?

We pay for ds's halls which is £116 per week then he lives off the minimum grant.

If he has a meal plan then I'm sure £30 a week would be more than enough.

My daughter advises don't do the meal plan if he can help it. We top up loan by about a 1000 over the year, plus buying trainers.

I think there was a thread on this a few months ago. I have 2 kids at Uni and we give them each £400 pm. I pay for one phone and DH pays for the other and also part of the car insurance and servicing (he uses the car a lot of the time although it belongs to DD1).

They both work though DD1 is a vet student so has limited days/weeks she can work. DD2 lives in a very expensive area as her college is a bit niche. Only 18 more months to endure for each thank god. Both due to graduate in 2021.

DD uses her minimum loan to cover most of her rent, in halls.
I then give her £325 a month which averages at £75 a week.

My dd maintenance loan just about covers her rent, we give her £100 a month and pay for her phone. She has a part time job, so this pays for her clothes & social life!
I often get a plea for a little more and I'm happy to top her up during the month as I'm really proud of her working while she studies.

I feel a bit mean looking at other replies but dd eats well and has a good social life so I probably shouldn't worry?

My student DD lives on £80 a week. Not including rent and utilities.

Like a PP, she’s on a course where it’s very hard to hold down a PT job.

We top up ds loan so that he has £80 a week spending money after paying for halls. He was also given £1000 lump sum to go with. I anticipated him having £50 a week initially but my DM guilted me into thinking it might not be enough! His bus pass was £250 ish and he is spending a fair amount on martial arts so at least it isn't being spent on beer. His dad pays for his phone and I pay for Spotify (that we share). He seems to be doing ok on it and I have made a conscious decision not to quiz him about it as it is his money to manage.

DS has been in halls and houses. His loan has sometimes more, sometimes less than covered his rent. We give £300 a month on top for all the rest. He manages well.

I give my son £200 a month and I also pay for his phone. His maintenance loan covers his accommodation and leaves him with about £300. He's not working at the moment, but he lives in an area where there's loads of part time jobs available so he tends to get casual work for a few weeks when he needs to.

Like some others, DD is not doing a course that is conducive to having a PT job - sadly.

His maintenance loan covers his accommodation and leaves him with about £300.

£300 leftover a year?

Thank you for all the replies so far.

I was hoping the loan would pretty much cover the accommodation and then £50 a week on top of that. Not sure about food/meal plan though??

DS has £70 pw at uni disposable income.

He has slightly less over the summer, but I buy him lots of things such as day trips, which he wouldn't go on unless I pay, and I obviously pay for his food then. Obviously if he was somewhere else over the summer I'd still give him the same amount as term time, possibly more.

We also tell him if he has a big expense such as new glasses we'll pay for them, but that's only because he's obsessed with saving and would rather walk around half blind (I'm not exaggerating) with more money in his savings.

I know this sounds controlling, but he refuses to spend money when, IMO, he should. We also gave him a big store of food three times last year.

Fedup sorry that wasn't very clear. He has about £300 per term left from his maintenance loan after accommodation is paid.

Im not sure about next year though when he moves into private rented, as I think the tenancy starts in July. He's viewing houses this week, but it's clear as mud to me how much it's going to cost and he's not being particularly forthcoming with information 🙄

We pay accommodation.

We pay £6k a year, how much per month depends on where he is in the term - we give a bigger proportion at the beginning for accommodation costs then the rest monthly

I think it depends to an extent on his course and other stuff like the location of his halls - does he need fare money, how much will he spend on lunch etc.

I sat down with DD2 this year and made a budget spreadsheet. Turned out she could save a fair amount making packed lunch and cooking from scratch (she's vegan). She also changed job.

DD1 lives very frugally but has to spend a large amount on travelling to placements and food and more often than not accommodation.

DD2 has to spend quite a bit of her own money on art materials and trips to galleries and theatres and fares when she does so.

I’m always wondering what these courses are that they can’t work? I’m in my 2nd at uni and they’ve both worked even with placements. Current student has a private rented flat with friend, SAAS loan covers living costs, PT job covers travel, socialising. I give her £50pm and pay for her pet food delivery, she manages well.

@LynetteScavo
Why are you paying for things when he has the money but just refuses to spend it?
Future post from his future DP; My DP is a miser, he’s rather we freeze than put heating on!!

@JKscot

Re not being able to work. DD is doing veterinary medicine. It's full on Mon - Fri with a lot of private study. I imagine the same is true for medical students. When doing A levels she had a Saturday job and
volunteered at a vets 2 evenings a week. She spent much of the holidays on the work experience necessary to get into Uni so she is hardly a shirker.

She has regular compulsory placements in the vacations so she unable to work then. She does work on a casual basis for her old employer but just the odd day here and there she can't work that often.
If she worked more she would risk failing her exams.

Medical courses do have huge workloads but there’s an awful lot of MN kids who can’t possibly work, I doubt they’re all vet/med students.

Mine will get minimum maintenance loan, so he can live on that and we will pay his rent.

Where is he at University? The maximum student load for students living outside London is £8,944pa and for those living in London is £11,672pa so you should top up his maintenance loan to at least those levels. SLC expects parents to contribute £4777pa to students outside London or £5860pa to students in London. It's not hard to find those figures but they are probably a minimum. We're working on an assumption of £500pcm (kids aren't at Uni yet) which is much less than their preschool childcare cost per month. I got more from my parents in the 1980s than some of these suggestions (max grant then was £2265, but I got no grant).