How much do you give your child on top of their loan?

[tinkywinkyshandbag]

Hi, DD hopefully starting uni in Sept. We are on a very tight budget as DH is currently not working and I'm self employed. Just budgeting for next year, very very grateful that she got nearly full loan which will cover most of Hall fees (catered if she gets her first choice). How much do people generally budget to cover additional expenses, clothes, lunches, pocket money etc? Thanks.

My daughter has the minimum loan. We pay her rent and utilities bills and give her £30 a week for food. Her loan pays for clothes, books, toiletries, going out and any food/drink that isn't covered by the £30.

Really it's books and materials, depending on course, toiletries, going out money, travel (either there or coming home), phone contract and potentially food at the weekends, depending on catering contract.

DD’s loan is about £3000 less than the accommodation...

If they get the full loan which is £11k or so in London that is one thing. If a minimum which may be £4300 outside London a parent for a non London univesrity might make it up to the full loan the less well off get which is about £8k (guessing the figures here).

My 5 didn't have loans and I paid their fees, rent and £150 a week.

I paid rent for my two and let them take out loans and work to cover the rest. Among their friends from home they were deemed lucky; among their friends at uni they were poor!

DS has asked that I pay his rent and he wants to live off the minimum loans so he can budget trembly.

I can't see the difference, as the rent is about the same as the loan, but it's important to him 🤷‍♀️

I do expect to top up a bit though - I don't want him to miss out through lack of cash or not being to afford the train fare home.

*budget termly

My DD receives a decent loan as it's based on my salary. She gets around £8k which covered her halls last year and her shared flat this year. She had about £1k left over per year.

I gave her £30 per week for food, then paid for her phone, all car running costs, train tickets and Uber and clothes. This year I'll also pay her utility bills. So probably £200 per month.

I am divorced from her father and he contributes nothing despite earning 5 times what I do 🙄

I plan on giving dd the equivalent to what she would get on a full loan and she will pay everything including rent out of that.

A full loan is £9,203 outside London, her halls of residence will be £5,236 so she will have £3,967 to live on.

My DD is starting in sept in London. She has a full loan of £12k but her accommodation will cost £11k.

She will hopefully qualify for a bursary from the uni (£2k) And my ex and I will give her £300 a month extra between us (not each) and I will still pay her phone bill. This should give her around £120 a week for food/toiletries/going out/travel etc. She can get a job if she needs more 😬

I had the minimum loan in London and it didn’t even cover my rent.
My parents gave me absolutely nothing even though they could definitely had afforded to. I spent more time working 3 jobs than I did going to uni and I was doing a law degree so not an “easy” subject.
It gave me an excellent work ethic but I do feel sad they didn’t feel like they wanted to help me.

That is sad turned, especially as their income would have been the reason you only got the minimum.

My husband got nothing from his parents and that was back in the days when it was called a parental contribution. They had minimal outgoings and had pretty much palmed him off onto his grandparents all his childhood so not surprising really.

I got nothing, but most people got a care package 3/4 times a year. But I suppose that won’t be as appreciated in catered.

He gives us his loan, we pay for accommodation and £300pm during term time for living expenses

Last year the loan covered accommodation I think plus a tiny bit left over (they discounted it because they put him in the city due to oversubcription). This year the loan will be nowhere near private rental + bills. So we'll top up

We wanted to do it that way to explicitly have a clear budgeted amount for living expenses so he can learn to budget and see what he spends. If we'd just thrown some money on top and he had to handle the strange rent schedules for first year Uni halls, plus the three times a year but not equal amounts student loans - I can imagine it'd be difficult to know actually how much he has to buy food etc because the money would be going in and out at weird times

We also get the minimum loan and specifically didn't want to do the 'we pay rent, you live off loan' as we thought it was too much - £4168 to live off for 36-40 weeks is a lot

I can't see the difference, as the rent is about the same as the loan, but it's important to him 🤷‍♀️

I can see that - it's managing his money, for day to day expenses not 'getting pocket money from Mum'.

With apologies to the person who posted it on another thread, but I think the worst thing I've seen is the idea of paying the rent for the student, but then getting them to pay their loan payments over to you, to be returned in weekly instalments (and less than the actual weekly amount of the loan, because that would be too much for them to have). Unless there is a genuine reason for both parties to believe that the legal borrower of the money has serious issues with handling the stuff, of course.

For first year, we are in the 'pay the halls fees and leave them to cope on the rest' camp, with topping up of the loan to around the maximum (monthly) and leaving them to get on with it subsequently. But at the end of the day, what one can afford / is willing to contribute and how the arrangements are agreed with one's DC is entirely down to the individual household.

This is a perennial “how long is a piece of string” question and the answer boils down to “whatever you can afford and/or are comfortable giving”.

One main difference this year is potentially the lack of jobs that students usually do to support themselves while studying. Bar work, retail, call centres have all been massively impacted by Covid and with so many people losing their jobs competition will be rife for these sorts of jobs

Minimum loan here so we make it up to the full loan, no more. But I do pay train fares to come home

Yes VanCleef - last year Dd earner £50 per week (minus the £10 travel to get there) from working at an activity that is currently not allowed to open.

DD's accommodation is roughly £2,000 more a year than her loan, so we pay the difference. Her grandparents have set up a direct debit of £200 a month for her to live on, so basically £50 a week for food, going out, toiletries, household stuff etc. She seemed to manage well last year - I occasionally sent her a food delivery for a treat or sent food/cocktails over to their table in Wetherspoons when I knew she was in there - great app for that!

Oh and we visited and took her out for lunch/dinner, bit of shopping, now and then.

Today's minimum loan to up to the maxi mum loan is really the 1980s parental (voluntary) contribution and it is voluntary now and was then which is very unfair on students whose parents choose not to make up the difference.
I thkn from age 11 schools should make it clear at parents' evenings to parents that at 18 there is eg £4300 minimum loan and £8000 maximum and those who only minimum the parents will need to consider how they can raise the £4k+ difference - eg some parents may want to save up form birth for the child so the money is ready there if they have any spare money that is.

Nothing. She worked all summer and saved, then worked part time.
Obviously there is a lot less work available this year so I'd take that into account, certainly it depends on accomodation cost vs loan amount.

Asking around, family & colleagues, 300-600/month were typical figures. Even from very frugal people, but not actually skint people. The skint people smiled & handed the job vacancies list to their kids.

DC1 used her loan to pay rent (has, elec & WiFi included) and we topped up the £300ish shortfall over the year. We then gave her £300 per month for everything else (food, books, drinking etc).

Dh lost his job in March and I went self employed at the end of Jan, we’ve sent in the change of circumstance form as our household income has dropped significantly. Fingers crossed she gets a higher loan because we really can’t afford to top up her loan (which again just about covers her rent).

@MarchingFrogs that might be me?

We aren't paying him 'less than the loan would be weekly'. We're paying an amount we think is reasonable to cover living expenses. That is less than his loan would be if you converted it to weekly - but his loan is supposed to also cover housing which it absolutely doesn't (its a minimum loan). So effectively he's giving us about £1k from his minimum loan towards rent, and we're paying the rest.