How much do you give your Uni student offspring per month: London ?

[MedSchoolRat]

After tuition & accommodation, Is £300/month a good estimate or not, do you reckon, to cover misc. expenses for a London Fresher in catered halls? October-May I guess. I believe that this £300 would cover transport, laundry machines & detergt, lunches, misc. small expenses, a few coffees and ...? DD pays for most of her own clothes, we pay mobile phone contract. Thanks.

I can only afford to give my daughter £100 but she has saved over £4,000 working in a supermarket.

I'd say that was either a little low or far too low, depending on where her halls are and how many days a week she needed a travel card for. If her halls are zone 5 and she's travelling into zone 1 four days a week she'd need a monthly travel card which is £170 a month, leaving her enough for food if she eats frugally but nothing else.

We give our non-London student offspring £400 a month after accommodation costs. And our London one £350 a month but she's living at home and has no food costs.

@titchy it says in the op's post that the halls are catered.

We give ours £400 a month but he is self catering. £300 should be more than enough if they are in a catered hall.

Ahh missed that she was catered! In that case £300 should be ok, though I might tweak it up to £350 depending on travel costs.

Are you paying for mobile, clothes and books? If not then prob not enough.
Let's say 1x travel card, 3 x pints of lager a week (£5 each), 2 x supermarket meal deals per week (£3.50 each since unlikely to get back to halls every day for lunch) and £10 toiletries a month = £270 per month ish.
...so the remaining £30pm he would need to pay mobile phone contract, clothes, return trip home (unless you are in London), course books, printing, snacks, launderette.
So yes, he may just about get by but he will have a very limited experience unless he gets a job (which prior to COVID was easy - post COVID not so likely)

DD pays for own booze bill & clothes (has a wardrobe heaving with stuff from Everything £5 ).

This suggests £80/month after accommodation -- £80 includes food.

She will live in Zone 1 & mostly walk to classes, so travelcard will be purely for socialising which will be limited due to covid anyway, plus some journeys to see us. I think we should split cost on Travelcard 50:50.

We should cover
?£ equipment cost (lab coat = £5?, books, etc)
£10/month toiletries
£60/month laundry (she won't spend less)
£30/week or £120/month for lunches & snacks & coffees
Books seems to be the big unknown. I can't find any info for Medicine courses & then some people say they managed with all library or eBooks anyway (cheaper?). Irk.
I am frugal but DD is not, so delicate negotiation ahead.

I will ask DD to set out what she thinks her budget should be & then we can negotiate from there, probably.

She has a good skill / work experience so could get work but I will try to make it possible for her not to work during term time if she is willing to actually budget.

I wouldn’t bother with a travel card if she will be walking to classes. My DP works in zone 1, we live in zone 4 and even for him a travel card isn’t worth it

It may be worth pumping some numbers into here

www.which.co.uk/money/university-and-student-finance/student-budget-calculator

I agree with @CatToddlerUprising / she can just tap her bank card on the occasion she needs to use a bus/tube.

DS was catered last year and it included lunch so check that!

How come £60 on laundry? If facilities in halls it may work out cheaper anyway?

I would doubt that, if she’s a medical student, she will find time for a part time job. Medics often have placements in the holidays too. She needs to look into this and the expected time commitment. Probably no placement in yr1 though.

Most catered halls are not fully catered. So look at what exactly she is getting in terms of meals and kitchen facilities. What could she cook or prepare?

Also look at just using her bank contactless card for London travel on underground and buses. Student rail card for longer train journeys and always travel off peak. Work our what’s best for inner London travel as she won’t need it much if she’s near the university.

Students do like to socialise and have coffee and meals out. Normally London would offer so much more, snd cost so much more, so I would be flexible with money when things open up again. We used a budgeting formula for DDs. Working up from £0. It climbs to quite a lot if you add in extra accommodation fees above the loan, phones, printing, sports, societies, entertainment, clothes, food and drink, toiletries, haircuts, travel, etc etc etc.

DD has gone for the cheapest shared catered accommodation so we will pay her accommodation C£3,300 a year and DD will live off her 6K maintenance loan. This works out about £200 a week during term time. I expect she will spend about £100 and save the rest for travelling, hopefully next summer.