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?

£50 a week for food and going out. He asks if he needs anything extra like print cartridges etc and we also pay for phone.

And it's a weekly direct debit to help with budgeting

@bpisok - the 400 we give per month simply takes DS up to (just over) full loan. He pays rent and food out of the whole figure. We also buy some food to start him off at the start of each term, but that is more because he cycles to the edge of town Aldi rather than shopping in the closer more expensive supermarket, so we buy tins, rice, pasta and maybe a few beers to cut down on the weight he has to transport. Father Christmas put a few toiletries and treat foods in his stocking too!

Thanks Panda.

It's not clear whether people are talking about having £80 -£100 per week (after rent is paid) from which they pay their food, social, books and travel. Or whether it's £80 - £100 per week left over after rent AND food are paid.

I appreciate it depends on what you can afford and life style but there are some wildly different figures floating around.

It's not clear whether people are talking about having £80 -£100 per week (after rent is paid) from which they pay their food, social, books and travel. Or whether it's £80 - £100 per week left over after rent AND food are paid.

I presumed it was after rent but before food. I might have been wrong though!

In Wales the maintenance money is paid in three roughly equal instalments. £3049, £3049, £3430
The accommodation isn't charged equally. £2271, £1500, £1900 .

So she has varied amounts to live on each term.

Next year's accommodation will cost £1200 more than this year.

Another one here that pays for halls (no meals). The maintenance loan has to cover all their other living costs.

I also have another dc who is under 18 but living away from home to attend sixth form. We pay full rent for an 'all bills included' flat plus £50p/w for groceries - dc also has a very well paid Saturday job.

I was assuming after rent but before food - I know so few people who are catered it is not a factor I would consider.

Wow this thread is an eye opener.
DD1 gets a full loan and I only pay her phone. Occasionally I will be able to give her £20 or so or pay for books or train fare.
She says that there are very few term time, part time jobs.
She lives entirely off her loan.

Our son graduated this year. We paid for his accommodation, c £5k per year. We also paid for his phone and bus yearly pass and trips (he did one foreign field trip a year).

He lived off the maintenance loan (minimum). He had loads of spending money, tbh.

DS gets minimum loan. 4K for a 40 week academic year. The loan is paid to him by student finance England in three instalments each academic year, which is what all English students have as far as I am aware. We cover his rent and associated bills (heating etc) and his mobile phone. He uses the loan for everything else - food, travel, clothes, gym, fun. It’s plenty - loan is basically £100 pw and is enough to live on as rent is covered by bank of mum and dad. He is in his second year so living in a house. We had the same arrangement last year when he lived in self-catered halls. He works in a pub when he is home in the holidays. His course is high contact hours so a term time student job isn’t ideal.

@HorseFlyOfExtraordinaryLength I think the people who are giving money (me included) are giving money because it is expected, if you don't get the full loan. We aren't talking about "extra" money, we are talking about bringing the cash the student has to spend up to the level your dd gets from her loan. If we don't give money, they can't eat.

HorseFlyOfExtraordinaryLength

But your DD gets £4000+ more money a year, so obviously she would need to be given less

@BackForGood I get that. It's just quite shocking to read in bald terms the large financial commitment parents make to their children's uni education.
Logically I know that's because the parents whose children don't get a full loan should have enough income to be able to afford it.
Parental support knows no bounds.
That and they'll all be living with us forever.

We topped up DS loan to the amounts of the full loan, we got details of that from Moneysavingexpert website, it worked out at just over £3k a year which we paid towards his rent, DS also worked about 16 -20 hours a week and more in the holidays ( Physics degree) so he had extra spending money.

Parents have always had to pay some of the costs, my grandfather was the only one of his siblings to go to university in the 1930s because of the expense, my grandparents (for my parents) and parents (for me and my siblings) had to pay for maintenance - I got no grant in the 80s and my parents had 4 children so had multiple children at university at the same time for years (2 of us did PhDs and my parent supported me for the last 6 months of mine giving me £500pcm over 20 years ago). Of course 30 years ago the benefit of a university education was much more obvious, less than 10% of the population went.

We pay accommodation. Loan for studies plus living expenses works out about £100pw for her to live on which I think is a lot! She thinks differently have told her to get a part time job

quite a lot here paying the rent and letting the student live off a minimum loan. We looked at that - its certainly simpler admin. But we thought it was too much for the student. over the term time, its over £100pw. Thats why we chose to pay a set amount (£300pm) and we top up the loan to pay for rent.

Overall cheaper for us, while still giving him plenty to live on hopefully

Indeed as Count says above, I got a minimum grant and my parents made it up to the full one - a huge difference, I think bigger in those days than now. I found my uncle's 1936 Durham university fees bill (medicine) and allowing for inflation his father had to find in today's terms £9000 which is amazingly about what the fees are today. His youngest brother my father who was born when my grandfather was 49 could not read medicine due to the cost so had to read a 3 year physics degree instead as his father was retired by then . Luckily my father married my mother, they put off children for about 10 years and her teaching earnings and I think post WWII grants meant he could then do a 6 year medical degree after the BSc so he had about 9 years in all and was doing exams until he was over 30.

We did the same as you @MrKlaw - we have another dc going next year (hopefully) so did have to work out the fairest/cheapest way to support them. Especially as we will probably repeat it again in 5 years with dc3&4!

Oxford doesn't allow undergraduates to have paid jobs during term time. But terms are short, accommodation costs are low, and financial help is generous.

Living costs are relatively low at Oxford as well. One of the many reasons it’s a good choice for students from low income families.

quite a lot here paying the rent and letting the student live off a minimum loan. We looked at that - its certainly simpler admin

although I think a lot of 18 year olds would struggle with getting all their money on one lump at the start of the year and - living on their own for the first time - being able to budget well enough to last well into January. I suspect a lot of grown adults would find that quite difficult, tbh, let alone first time shoppers and budgeting.
I think a monthly or even weekly amount is much easier for them, as well as more affordable for many parents.
Using the loan to pay the accommodation -or the part of accommodation it covers means no-one has to find the lump sum up front. except the top up--.

That’s a really good point Back for Good, and not one we had really considered but child 4 has certainly found it hard and I absolutely agree it would have been easier on him to get a monthly sum, and use the grant for the rent, bit late now but worth considering for others.

The loan gets paid per term, not all at once at the beginning of the year.