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?

Oh and as rent can vary and we’d rather have a fixed, known amount for living costs (easier to budget) - we top up the min loan to cover accommodation and then pay living expenses. Effectively after paying rent DS has £0.

We did that rather than give him the maintenance loan to live off and we pay accommodation- works out cheaper for us but still should give him enough to live off

Mine will get a bursary which should cover about 75% of her rent so she should be able to live off her loan. She will have about £7000 left for food, books, travel and social life, she will probably do volunteer work rather than a paid job. We will give her £60 per month towards food but can't afford more.

Can I just well I’m well impressed by the GP who are helping their GC though uni? That’s the kind of Grandmother I want to be 👍🏻

@fedup21 to answer your original question - £250-300 per month should be enough assuming rent is covered.

Thank you all for your replies!

One more quick question, does the maintenance loan come in three parts (£4000/3) like the old grants did? And do you then pay halls accommodation in 3 amounts as well?

And am I right in thinking that if your household earns over the top amount (£62k?) you don’t need to fill in as many forms? When do you have to do those by?

I appreciate that wasn’t just one more question!

Halls accommodation is paid in three amounts. We don’t have a loan (overseas) but I think that is also three parts.

Always best to get your information from official sources: student finance

@fedup21 the loan comes monthly with a double amount the first month. They need to NOT spend all this unless it’s for hall fees or one off set up Costs like a lap top, printer, text books or annual membership of sports facilities etc.

It’s not a drinking fund for freshers week. Every year there are demented mums on here saying that their child has spent it all and has no money for food for the rest of the month. Understandably they are reluctant to send them more.

Student finance money comes in three instalments at the start of each term but they’re not equal - the payment after Easter is smaller x

ds always his loan termly and I think could have got it as one lump sum if he had wanted. I haven't heard of anyone getting it monthly before, although that might help for budgeting.

Must be just in Scotland then.

Fedup21 the maintenance loan is paid in 3 termly instalments, not monthly.
If your income means DC only quality for minimum maintenance loan, the application is very straightforward as you don't needs to supply any evidence. It's all done online by your DC.
To answer your original question, my DS gets minimum loan which he lives on and we pay rent which is £370 monthly including bills. He earns money as a football referee and does a bit of cover supervision work in schools before uni term starts/after it finishes.

I pay the full rent, nearly £6000 a year. DC keeps the minimum loan payment to live on and pay gas and electricity etc.

@fedup21 yes - three non-equal payments around the start of each term. If you will clearly get minimum loan you can save some pain with the application by just ticking the box that says 'I'm not giving you my earning information, just give us the minimum' - thats what we did.

the uneven loan payments is one reason we went with paying accommodation ourselves.

• we set up an account solely for accommodation money (DW bank account)
• we pay accommodation termly to the uni from this account
• when DS gets his loan, he pays the full amount back into that account

This means no worries about the loan coming a bit late for when the uni wants payment, and no worries with the amounts all being a bit off (eg first loan payment is more which if left in a student's account will inevitably be spent)

The min loan barely covers rent (depending where you are) so we effectively top it up a little bit. It also gives us a clean slate - DS has no money from the loan, so we just pay him £300pm directly

Yes, in England the loan comes in the first week or so of term and you pay for halls termly too, so it is just in and out in one day.
It isn't even amounts though - varies with length of the term.
By 2nd year, it still comes in in one block at start of term and then usually the student has to remember not to spend it s most shared house rents are monthly. Some, however, will take it termly to make it easier for the students to budget and the landlords get interest on having all the money up front and the security of knowing they have all the rent for the term

Max maintenance loan for London is £11,672 yet student halls (without catering) typically cost £10k so I don't see how £11,672 is enough to cover living expenses.

The reality is that Students in London either need to work or to be topped up by parents in excess of the recommended parental contribution as advised by the government.

for an example - our minimum loan is paid in three bits : 23 Sep - £1375; 6 Jan - £1375; 20 Apr - £1417

Accommodation was due in three bits : 21 Sep - £2100; 4 Jan - £2100; 18 Apr - £1120

as you can see, it often doesn't line up either in dates or amounts. Thats why we just paid the accommodation direct, and then got DS to transfer the loan back to us whenever it arrived - saves any aggro from the uni if payment is late, and covers situations when the amounts aren't enough

We've topped our DD up to the full student loan amount. She's sharing a room so discounted to £5,000. However, the rate for a single room is £8000 and attracts many well off students whose she's mixed with. Therefore, they've got more money to go out it's costing her!. Also, she's 600 miles from home so travel costs and storage are factored in.

One reason I pay the twins' allowance weekly 52 weeks a year is so they can never in a sense run out of money although some parents might like to give a term in advnce to help the child learn how to budget I suppose.

Some teenagers have hardly any money and others a lot but they all seem to appreciate the differences (mine do anyway) . however sometimes mine have made a loan to friends which I think is a bad idea and also why should I work full time for 30 years when some mothers do not work at all and then their children borrow from mine - better their mothers went back to full time work and their children were not asking mine for money really. Of course mine could say no but I do think it is a good idea to advise them not to be lending money to other students.

Pay my DD monthly ( plan to pay for all 12 months of the year ) .

I give my son £50 a month as that's all i can afford. He gets almost full loan and is very good at managing his money.
He did work in summer and would get a job if he felt he needed more money.

@Snog my dd gets full loan as I'm currently a sahm. Shes at a London uni and manages ok. shes not a big drinker though and doesn't smoke.

@Janaih she is managing her money very well if not working to top it up. How much does her accommodation cost and is it student halls?

Yes halls, think it's around £620 a week

A month even!