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?

Also adding that my student finance was always put into a second account, I calculated all my expenditure including monthly payments for the year, then worked out what I had left per week. Then set up DD into my every day account to send the monthly expenses once a month when they needed to be paid and then the weekly allowance every monday. I found it.much easier to calculate money and it ment I didnt risk getting to the end of term and finding out i had no money left! I also worked ad hoc (I'm disabled so worked as much as I could when I could) and any wages then I was able to spend on any treats or save up for any bigger things I wanted. But I never took money from the second account and only used what was in my every day account, but I've known others who couldn't resist dipping into the money with the idea of "putting it back" or "spending less later" and got into a complete pickle when they got to end of term and didnt have enough saved.

Which is why if you pay the accomodation then ultimately if your DC budgets badly then nothing bad will happen, you can always send an basic food shop to get them by (you can like.off a 5kg bag of dried pasta ) and they live with the consequences of missing out of activities and social events. But it's better to learn in a safe environment then when having to juggle Bill's and living expenses post university when no safety buffer is available, and the consequences are no greater then missing a night out.

We pay the rent and we give them £350 a month and they get the min loan.

For the first year we also paid their car insurance and mobile phone. We also paid for them to come on family holiday. We dont charge them living expenses during the holidays. They do pay the gym memberships, sports memberships etc.

Second year, they picked up their car insurance and mobile contracts as ran out then. They usually do some sort of work at a fastfood during holidays (to fund holidays with friends and festivals). Also pay for car servicing and MOT. (I do pay RAC family membership)

They have become excellent at winkling money ... often asking eg for car insurance for birthday and Christmas!!

Our DD is at Winchester so accom is £520 per month which this year includes bills. This is her 4th year (had a whoops year) so expensive
All accommodation is a 12 month contract which you cannot get out of - have to find someone to take it on instead - which isn't going to happen - big dropout rate!
She is on minimum loan
We pay for accommodation, car insurance, car service, insurances, car parking fines 🙄, petrol, and probably another 5K per year
We want her to do well so I don't expect her to get a job (although my husband does)
I'm looking forward to July (end of accommodation contract) and October (graduation)
Then she has got to start earning!

On the point above about catered halls my 5 all had catered halls in the first year and it seemed to work well for most in that you meet meeting at meals and have that regular routine of your two meals a day - usually breakfast and dinner. Mine coulod already cook anyway so years 2 and 3 were fine in shared houses, self catering at that stage.

Agree with paying for accommodation and leaving the minimum loan to live off

We simply can’t afford to do that.

Great if you can though.

I think we will put the minimum loan towards the termly halls accommodation and give him £50 a week for food etc and see how we go.

Monkey2001
nope, daughter's loan was just over 4000

@fedup21 we could afford that, but we felt it was too much money. Also giving them £4k split up in three odd amounts at odd intervals is not ideal from a budgeting point of view IMO. Too easy to mess things up.

We didn't want to pay weekly because we wanted DS to do some budgeting. So we're paying monthly - £300 I think. Stops in May so if he doesn't save, he'll need a job in the summer..

Shocked at how expensive university is for the parents. I naively thought child expenses stopped when they turned 18/left home. What if the parents just can't afford it? Do the parents have to take out a loan?

@captainoftheshipwreck that is pretty impressive then if she managed on £4k. Was she in a cheap city?

@KenDodd I think all parents in the £25k to £60k income bracket are shocked by the amount they have to stump up to prevent their DCs from being at a disadvantage compared to students from lower income homes! There are a few people giving their DCs £10k on top of the basic £4k but that is simply not manageable for most people, particularly if you have more than one child. It really should be more tapered so you only get the minimum if family income is much higher.

Ken, depends on the country, even Wales is more generous than England. IN England there is no obligation for a parent to pay a penny if they don't want to do so. The minimum maintenance loan is about £4300 and if you live at home that is enough to live on. If you don't you can usually make it up to the most basic rent with a term time and holiday job and over draft if you have to.

I pay £9250 a year fees, £6000 rent, £7800 allowance per twin - total £23,050 (more than their £18k school fees were) plus provide a car and food in holidays, a family holiday etc. and probably endless extra things I am asked to buy in holidays from dinner jackets to some new clothes. It is probably about £50k plus for the two of them out of after tax income (but I have been working full time without a single break even for maternity leave since 1983 so I can afford it and lucky to be happy to work full time until I die which not all women can).

Most of us don't pay out what Xenia does though Ken

I worked practically every weekend when I was a student nurse. You can manage it when you're young as well as being full time on placement lol. I banked in a nursing home

I think all parents in the £25k to £60k income bracket are shocked by the amount they have to stump up to prevent their DCs from being at a disadvantage compared to students from lower income homes

I think that a student whose family income is £60k a year has probably had 18 years of advantage over children from most low income families.

Parents in the UK have been expected to support their children at university ( to some extent or another ) for about 50 years. Everyone posting here has access to the internet.

I’m surprised that it comes as a shock to so many people.

Is it fair ? Well that depends on your politics.
Is it affordable ? No for some it’s a struggle.

But is it a secret that’s sprung on families on their child’s 18th birthday? No.

I think it is shocking that children of 2 working parents on the average UK salary are expected to top up each child by £5k. If you have 2 DCs at university that is a massive chunk of your income. We knew it was means tested, but until we did the calcs we had not realised how much it was. In the old days the costs were much lower - single rooms in my hall cost £220/term in Bristol, equivalent to £1,914 adjusted to current RPI - no university is that cheap now.

* Bristol rent would be £1,914 per year on old price with RPI

We pay his rent which includes utilities and his phone and travel home which are automatically flights as we live abroad.

We then give GBP 400 a month for food, clothes and going out.

At the start of the year we pay his annual gym subscription too.

He does not get a UK maintenance loan.

Parents in the UK have been expected to support their children at university ( to some extent or another ) for about 50 years.

Well, for very much longer than that, if you think about it.?

Actually longer than 50. I found my uncle's 1936 Durham university bill for medicine and applying inflation since then the university's fees were £9000 a year which is incredibly similar to the current £9250! His parents paid. When my father came to age 18 howeve rhis father was retired - his father was 49 when he was born so he could only do a 3 year phhysica degrees although then grants came out and he married at 23 and my mother's full time teaching wages plus that meant he could do 3 years physics BSc and after that do 5 years + of medicine. He was doing exams until he was 30 and they put off children for about 10 years and both worth full time to be able to afford it all and to buy a house 2 days before I was born!

YY Xenia. My father wanted to study medicine in 1944. However he came from a working class family - he had won a scholarship to a grammar school but his parent couldn’t afford to pay the university fees.

So he studied the same subject at a technical college and sat the university exams.

He then worked in the NHS from when it started in 1948 until he retired in the 1990s, without ever having an MbChB.

Personally I would like to see the maintenance loan amount to at least cover accommodation costs for every student and then extended dependent on parental disposal income (I might add that this doesn't benefit my DD).

My parents could not afford for me to go to Uni so it wasn't an option and my brother who is incredibly bright attended the local Poly on a Sandwich course to study his Accountancy exams. Worked well and I don't think he's lost out...nor have I to be fair.

It's great having wider access schemes BUT not so great if the middle earning parents cant afford to support their DC through Uni. These are the years where ideally we want our DC to work hard and play hard because it takes a few years for the DC to get onto their feet in terms of earnings and maybe getting onto the property ladder which is out of a lot of DC's reach.

In terms of support, I'd like to ensure that DD has enough money (not sure how much) but also ensure that she understands the value of money too.

We made up the difference between the maintenance loan and rent and then by third year we were giving DD £250 per month on top.

She is now doing a masters and we pay her rent of £650 per month and she has a retail job to cover her other costs.

I haven't read the whole thread but DS is at Birmingham Uni at Tennis Courts (which isn't exactly luxurious ie. Non en suite and cell like rooms), hall fees are £5500. Second year house share (note tenancy starts on 1st July) is also £550 per month x 12 minus bills. We are paying this from inheritance so he only needs to get loan for tuition fees and maintenance.

Blimey, @SmithfamilyRobinson, where is your DS's second year house? DD and 3 of her friends will be renting a house about 10 minutes from campus at just under £366 a month plus bills.

£1k per month Covers Hall fees of £600
So leaves £100 /week for everything else

Double3, well done to your father. Mine got some kind of post WWII grant although this is only what I remember being told and also married my mother who says she was the first womn in Necastle to claim the married man's tax allowance as she was the earner helping keep him during his medicine studies! Again that might just be anecdote not fact.