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?

LynetteScavo I have one like that. From about age 14 I gave him an allowance to cover clothing etc. This was meant to teach independence and budgeting. He saved it all and would walk around in rags. It meant he had no trouble managing on a budget at uni.

Nothing.

DD graduated last year and DS will graduate this year. Not given either of them anything. They both had jobs before they went and saved up.

We Pay £500 a month for his rent
Then £100 a month for food
He has his grant for the rest.
We also pay for his phone, contact lenses & train fares home, so probably £650-£700 a month

My dc are still very young so I can't answer the initial questions question, but I'm baffled as to why students can't work.
I did a nursing degree, complete with the requesite practice hours plus academic stuff, got a first so obviously put a lot of time and effort in, and still managed to do 1 or 2 12 hour shifts a week.. What on earth are your children studying?

This thread is such an eye opener. I have young children but nephews are at Uni studying economics and seemingly "unable" to work due to the requirements of their course?

Aceinthehole perhaps wait until you're in the same position,as you say you have small children. It's not that easy to find part time jobs that fit round uni and these days part time jobs are in high demand with lots older folks wanting to top up their pensions.

We have had 5 DC to put through university. Sometimes they overlapped, so paying for 2 at a time. We had to have a plan!

Loan covered accommodation with tiny bit over. We gave them £50 a week and paid for phone and train home.

We said we can cover essentials but not social life. You need to work to fund that. They all did either in term time or holidays.
One spanner in the works was one son did an NHS degree and had placements in term time in different parts of the country. I called University as the bursary given was deducted from the student loan. We had thought this would recompense for not being able to work part time. Got a bit of a shock. The university came up trumps and paid and amount per term to give some spending money, phew!

1 medical student here, gets minimum loan and we give her 320 a month. Other child is also at uni but living at home so we don't give anything but obviously don't charge rent either.

DD gets minimum maintenance loan which doesn't cover her rent. Couldnt decide how best to do it. in the end we pay her rent. she uses her loan for living costs , food, travel etc. The money we pay for her rent means in total she has the same amount as the full maintenance loan. Tbh it's hard, it's a lot of money going out every month and we have other DC and big mortgage and outgoings but as the amount of loan she gets is limited because our household income I feel we need to do everything we can to top her up.

@Woeisme99
I agree with you, I think some students are spinning their parents a tall tale, there are pp here with med students who work. There are very few courses full 5 days per week, my DD is a SW student with placements and has always worked. Some of the amounts parents are giving out are ridiculous and does nothing to prepare their DC for life, no student needs £100+ per week to feed/clothe themselves etc, it’s not teaching them responsibility when they get shored up my mummy. I’ve never met a student who doesn’t work, a lot of gullible parents out there.

My ds graduated from Birmingham last year. He didn't take the meal plan but all his friends who did regretted it and found it very poor value.

We give ds 400 per month and pay his rent. He does not have a maintenance loan. He works over the holidays.

Maintenance loan covers majority of rent (uni residence self catering) we top up the difference, about £300. Then £10 per day from Oct to June to cover food/travel/books/booze.

Ace my DS is studying Economics and has a part time job, I do think some students are not always entirely truthful about their ability to get a job . My DS had an interview lined up before the end of the summer holidays, he only works one shift a week so it's hardly arduous (& gets given a lot of food where he works so that's a bonus).

We give him £100 a month (& pay phone contract) & his grandparents also give him £100 a month, he seems to manage very well and has never (so far) asked for top ups. Has even managed to book onto an expensive ski trip at Easter . Due to variations in our own income we will probably need to contribute more next year so we are budgeting for that - and grateful we only have one child!

To answer someone that asked me upthread... yes we receive dla and pip for ds and myself however our income is still very low. We can’t just suddenly magic up some of the £££ that people here are giving their children - even if the government thinks we should, like a lot of lower income families. I completely understand that they expect families to bridge the gap between the loan amount given and the full loan, to be honest I have no idea at all what sort of loan dd might get, I just know that we’re not absolutely bottom of the tier in terms of low income (dh earns £18k but we have so many benefits etc it takes us to about £40k) so I have no idea how it all works and whether only dhs income will be counted etc. I can’t even find that out anywhere! If anyone knows help me out. I think there are a lot of families in similar situations to us. Our local (!) university is 30 miles away and there is no reliable public transport so dd would not be able to stay home. We will support her as much as we can but like most students she will just have to work - I agree with the comments that some students are being a bit unreasonable saying they can’t work. Yes it’s nice if parents can support you so you don’t have to and of course it makes things easier but most students have to work - mature students often have families to support as well! When I was studying full time I also worked 35 hours a week in a pub! I survived, it was hard but it was also an amazing experience socially and taught me a lot about work and life in general.

DD can't work as she has CFS/ME and is doing a course with a lot of contact hours. She stayed in on her own last night as she was too tired to go out. I feel sad that she misses out on so much because she needs so much sleep. She sleeps through lectures as well, so ends up spending extra time catching up watching them online.

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor yes I do understand that part time jobs can be hard to find, it seems a lot manage to on this thread though. Also, the feedback from my nephews has never been sourcing the issue is hard to find, it's they don't have the time. I'm just interested to see the difference in experience. I guess for some students, they HAVE to work as parents can't afford to support them?

That sounds really hard Gin, you must be really proud of her for sticking with the study though.

My Uni boy lives at home as he's on the spectrum and doesn't feel comfortable on his own yet, so his basic packed lunch, evening meal etc is here with us but he pays his travel, phone, books, supplies etc.

Dad paid me £50 a month and my rent

I had minimum (£3k) from 2013-7

It seems to be quite common for parents to pay the student's halls/rents and the student if on the minimum maintenance loan of about £4k lives on that which is about £77 (£333) a week throughout the 52 weeks of the year.

I pay the fees and rent. I also pay for my twins an allowance of £150 a week (£650 a month) throughout the year.

The maximum maintenance grant out of London for the less well off in England is £8944 (£745 a month) so those parents paying the rent on top of that if they can afford it which in theory they cannot as this is the sum paid for the less well off, their child then has a fair bit left - m ore than my sons. If the parent does not pay the rent element (most won't be able to ) then those on the maximum out of London maintenance loan will have to pay the rent out of the 8944 so say it was £5k that will leave 3944 to live on = £75 a week.

I think comparing my £150 to what someone on the maximum out of London maintenance loan would get my £150 is fairly generous.

Tell him to get a job if he's not doing a science. Most people I knew had one... I managed a bar while I did mine and didn't find it too difficult to balance

Fairylea my dd is considering a degree apprenticeship earn while you learn instead of uni. However I was thinking that she might still need a top up if it's not one of the well paid ones and depending on if can live at home, expensive rent etc because they can't get loans and might be harder to manage a part time job.

www.thescholarshiphub.org.uk/degree-apprenticeships-vacancies/

@Fairylea, a student's entitlement to the means tested portion of the student loan is affected by the taxable income of the household. So if the only taxable income you and your DH have is his £18 000 pa, your DD should be entitled to borrow the full amount for her residential:university status (living at home vs living away/ university in London vs not not in London).

The calculator is on here:
www.gov.uk/get-undergraduate-student-loan

Several universities themselves provide bursaries for students from very low income households, e.g. the scheme at UEA
www.uea.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/finance/bursary-information
(tip, if given a choice, go for the accommodation discount, or better still, the cash option, rather than a fee waiver - you can't feed / house yourself now on money that you haven't had to pay out 'in real time' and may never need to pay back anyway).

Also see here
www.ucas.com/finance/additional-funding