How much allowance do you give your student dc to live on per week

[FlamingHot]

Or per month? Dd’s halls of residence and course fees will be covered by us and student loads.

We’re not sure how much she’ll need for food/nights out etc. Her halls will be self catered only.

Thanks!

These threads always get confused with people saying "I don't give my dc anything" then it turns out the dc has the full loan from student finance.

The OP's question was how much does it cost to live each week, if in self catered halls.
Depending on the amount of the loan, this might come from student finance or it might come from the parents, but the amount they need to spend would be the same, wherever it comes from.
These threads always get a bit mixed up in terms of people comparing apples and pears.

@BackforGood this is true up to a point, however, some students will have supportive parents who transport them, feed them in the holidays and as this thread highlights pay for some things like phones.
I think I’m general it is better to give the student the money and let them decide how to budget. Back on the day I remember everyone in a queue to pay their hall fees, don’t think any parents paid for them directly. We also coped with getting three lump sums per year, I don’t remember anyone buying anything stupid at the start of term or running out of money towards the end. Saying that we were typical stingy students who never spent much on anything other than booze.

I give my son £50 a week to live on and he does it easily. I think £200 a month is more than enough for food. I can feed a family of 4 for about £400 a month. Granted there is not much social life at the moment but he still has enough to buy alcohol and go out occasionally.
We used the maintenance loan to pay accommodation and paid what was left to pay, and then give him this allowance to live on.
This is living in the midlands area - not London.

Nothing, but I'm on a low income, and DS gets the full loan. I pay all the groceries, etc, when he's home, so he only has to pay termtime food and travel after his rent is paid. He spent the last term at home as wasn't allowed back, so although he still had to pay rent (which I think outrageous), he had no food or entertainment bills at all since Christmas before he went back a few weeks ago. Neither of us are rolling in it, but we both get by.

Bear in mind that at the moment, student jobs in some places are very difficult to get. My DS has been looking for supermarket jobs while he was at home, and for the summer, and had found nothing, and the student jobs at his university are nothing like they were before covid. He'd expected to be able to work and save before starting his degree, and that proved impossible, and it's proving very difficult to find any part-time work now.

Bear in mind, too, that different degrees allow different amounts of flexible time available for jobs. Some degrees have much more teaching time allocated to them than others.

@BackforGood

Yes, this is us, if we earned more we'd have to give dd money to top up.
But because we are lower earners she will get the full amount.
As it's unlikely a term time job will be possible, no way would I leave her with a smaller loan if I earned more.

Back is right. As I said above the full loan is enough at £8300 outside London. Loads of students however due to parental income get about £4300 only and yet parents cannot or will not make up the difference. Labour party was very pleased with the loan system because it does as intended - the not well off have enough money to go. it is those with parents on higher incomes but perhaps massive rents or childcare costs of mortgages to pay who have the problems.

My DC actually qualifies for bursaries totalling around £5K a year, I think, so is very lucky. They get a bursary from the Scottish government and a larger one from the university, based on household income.

I had a thread on this very recently on which I had lots of very useful advice. THe view was that if I was giving DD £100-125 a week over her rent she would be very comfortably off.

A different question, but what is normal for hall fees either with or without food and rent once they move out of halls?

@BayTreey

A different question, but what is normal for hall fees either with or without food and rent once they move out of halls?

I don’t understand the question? What are hall fees once they’ve moved out of halls??

@BayTreey it’s very dependant on where you are in the country. After first year people don’t really stay in halls they find a shared house with friends.

I left uni about 5 years ago and I generally paid about £90 per week for rent in a southern city. A very average house, single beds, non en-suite, away from the main student area but still very convenient for the uni. Bills were about £20 a month each per month.

I’ve had friends in northern cities never pay more than £75 per week.

My brother wanted to pay £145 per week (not in london) for a fancy done up house with en-suites and massive rooms. Partly because that’s what his friends were happy to pay.

He did need quite a lot of guidance on understanding that just because his mates parents were happy to fund that didn’t mean our parents were 😂 he found a house on the same street without the fancy refurb job for about £40 per week less.

In some cities students are pushed to sign rental agreements for the next year very early on in the academic year, I don’t know if covid has had an impact on that. But be prepared for how early the conversation could come up.

We paid my older step sons accommodation in full and his mother's side (grandparents very wealthy) paid his fees and his mother sent £100 a week (which was the same as us doing the accommodation)
He has no debt thankfully 😅 but this is only because his mothers parents are loaded our younger ones might not be as lucky so what we are doing is saving every penny of their child benefit and making it up to £100 a month each (it's £140.60 for both so we add £60) so by the time they are 18 there will be £21600 in each to hopefully help them - every year I transfer the amounts into premium bonds (with the hope of a win!!!)

@Howshouldibehave if you reread my post you’ll see I asked what rent they pay when they move out of halls.

In Bristol pre-covid they tended to have to find the year 2 private house in the first term (ie before Christmas) as otherwise places got booked up. Usually the group of friends would look at what they could all afford and always there will be someone who has an upper cap and they will all try to stick to that. This year in Bristol my son is paying about £143 a week but he is post grad and only has one flat mate (although his room is so small you cannot even fit a desk in it - which is quite an issue in covid 19 times).

@Xenia

Back is right. As I said above the full loan is enough at £8300 outside London. Loads of students however due to parental income get about £4300 only and yet parents cannot or will not make up the difference. Labour party was very pleased with the loan system because it does as intended - the not well off have enough money to go. it is those with parents on higher incomes but perhaps massive rents or childcare costs of mortgages to pay who have the problems.

Or if you have more than one child at university at once.

Getting good accommodation for year two onwards is tricky. They need to make friends quickly and book flats/houses by Christmas with deposits paid. There is always a risk one of the friends will change their mind or not carry on at Uni.
We have a property rental company and bought houses in the cities DT’s were at. They, and friends lived in the houses for years two and three. We have now sold the houses as we don’t usually have student properties (too much trouble according to our property manager). DS is just about to finish his masters and is (other than lockdown times) in self catering post grad halls. He’s in a flat of six. The building is almost new and a mini studio with shared kitchen. I think we’re paying £160 a week.

@omgthepain

We paid my older step sons accommodation in full and his mother's side (grandparents very wealthy) paid his fees and his mother sent £100 a week (which was the same as us doing the accommodation) He has no debt thankfully 😅 but this is only because his mothers parents are loaded our younger ones might not be as lucky so what we are doing is saving every penny of their child benefit and making it up to £100 a month each (it's £140.60 for both so we add £60) so by the time they are 18 there will be £21600 in each to hopefully help them - every year I transfer the amounts into premium bonds (with the hope of a win!!!)

You'd be better giving them that money to put towards a deposit when they want to buy somewhere. They should get the loans. What people can't understand is that the repayments are the same if you owe £10K or £100K. Its a percentage of their salary over a certain amount (about £26K). Most will never pay it off.

@omgthepain I agree with @Cookerhood, that kind of amount would get them on the property ladder and make a bigger difference to their future than saving them the graduate tax of repaying loans. If god forbid they suffered ill health in their 20s they would have a secure roof over their heads. The repayments only kick in above a certain salary and come out before they get their salary so they shouldn’t miss it. I know there are other posters talking about their children being free from student debt but I suspect those families are also buying them their first houses. If you can only do one or the other I would buy the house.

Bear in mind that at the moment, student jobs in some places are very difficult to get. My DS has been looking for supermarket jobs while he was at home, and for the summer, and had found nothing, and the student jobs at his university are nothing like they were before covid. He'd expected to be able to work and save before starting his degree, and that proved impossible, and it's proving very difficult to find any part-time work now.

They have been whilst retail, leisure and hospitality have been closed, but are all opening back up now. However, whilst they have all been closed, students haven't been spending their money either.

I thought the hospitality industry was crying out for people? Where DS works they certainly are.

They are according to two other threads running this evening......

Cooker I agree in many cases it makes sense to get the loans but not with most of my children. As I said above or on another thread if the child earns £100k+ the loan is quite expensive as the interest rate can be about 13% of £50k on a high salary but a tiny tiny % on a low one (as you pay the 9% graduate tax).; Also I have now as of Jan 2021 helped all 5 children buy a first property too so it wasn't a choice of one or the other. I just saw the university years as a continuation of paying school fees for a few more years which by the way for my 4 lawyer or soon to lawyer children is five years at university, not just the usual 3.

The main point however for most parents is look at what the maximum loan is for where they are going and look at what they will get based on your wages and try to make up the difference, just in my day int he 1980s of parents being requested to make up the difference between minimum and maximum maintenance grant.

£300pm, taking it just over maximum maintenance loan. In expensive city, room plus shared kitchen and bathroom £7500 plus bills and food, 600+ from home, so extra transport costs.

@Xenia

Cooker I agree in many cases it makes sense to get the loans but not with most of my children. As I said above or on another thread if the child earns £100k+ the loan is quite expensive as the interest rate can be about 13% of £50k on a high salary but a tiny tiny % on a low one (as you pay the 9% graduate tax).; Also I have now as of Jan 2021 helped all 5 children buy a first property too so it wasn't a choice of one or the other. I just saw the university years as a continuation of paying school fees for a few more years which by the way for my 4 lawyer or soon to lawyer children is five years at university, not just the usual 3.

The main point however for most parents is look at what the maximum loan is for where they are going and look at what they will get based on your wages and try to make up the difference, just in my day int he 1980s of parents being requested to make up the difference between minimum and maximum maintenance grant.

But can't you pay it off more quickly on £100K pa? If DC move into a £100k job I'd suggest they gritted their teeth for a year and treated it as a £35k job which is what most of their peers would be on, and pay off the loan in one go.