Paying for university living expenses

[Inamuddle36]

Hi — I assumed there would be a thread in this topic but I can’t find one.
All going well, our son will start university in the autumn. We are debating between applying for a loan and self-funding his living costs (room, food, books, social life.) We have no idea what is a reasonable amount of money per month (or per term). Excluding housing (which can vary a lot from city to city), can anyone tell me what is a normal amount for a University student to spend on food, social life, etc? If you self-find, do you give your child a fixed amount per month or a lump sum at the start of term or do you top-up as needed (as long as expenses are reasonable)? I would be grateful for guidance!
(Obviously, I know many people don’t have the option to self-find — but I hope everyone with children at university could offer some insight into typical costs.)

For both our sons, we covered their rent throughout uni. They used, along with income from part time jobs, their student loans for living expenses.
Rent was around £450 per month for each.

My DS is in London, 1st year. We cover his rent and give him £75 a week. He has taken out a loan as well. Next year things will change as he will be privately renting and will need to get a job of some kind.

He's had a lot of mental health issues over the past 5 years, so didn't want added financial pressure during the1st year.

We pay for DC's University rent which includes some food (both live in, in catered accommodation). They get minimum government loan which covers everything else.

The loan is enough for DS, not sure yet for DD - she is making up for a lack of social life in sixth form.

Bear in mind that accommodation varies massively within a university town. DS's term rent in university was £1,550. DD's rent in the same town but different college is £2,200! Wish we had checked.

Remember that the student loan isn't really a proper 'loan'. The majority of students will never pay the full balance back, and it will just come out of your DC's pay cheque automatically once they earn over a certain amount.

(I'm in my 30s and my repayment is

Recent experience from the other side: my parents paid my rent (and a couple regular payment things that weren't bills, like for my contact lenses), I had the minimum loan (from England) for other general life stuff: food/entertainment/bills. I had money left over from that every year, but I'm not a clubber, so bear that in mind. My recollection is that I spent a bit less than 300 a month in undergrad. I'm doing a PhD now and things are more expensive. Hard to say, maybe now I spend more like 400 a month on non-rent expenses.

If he will need to take out SF for his tuition fees, there is little point in not taking out the minimum maintenance loan at the same time, as it's all repaid at a standard % above a certain level of earnings.

Like many others, we pay our DD's rent and she has the minimum loan. I would suggest you look at the website of your DS's likely choice of uni to estimate living & accommodation costs as it will vary wildly based on catering/self catering/ ensuite/ term length etc. Most have a guide.

I was never in a position to fund my DS through uni. He got the loan and grant and also had a part time job.

We give our's £1100 a month to cover their rent and living expenses
Also still pay for things we did before eg contact lenses,phones
They don't have loans or work term time

We are in m Scotland so no tuition fees
I was totally skint when at Uni and don't want that for mine

[quote rbe78]Remember that the student loan isn't really a proper 'loan'. The majority of students will never pay the full balance back, and it will just come out of your DC's pay cheque automatically once they earn over a certain amount.

(I'm in my 30s and my repayment is

My daughter did a DaDa funded course where there was no maintenance element. Her accommodation in the first year included Breakfast & evening meal so we gave her £35 per week for everything else. She had a part time job earning £50 per week. If food/bills was not included I would say you would need to allow for around £80 per week.

I agree with others. Make sure you understand truely how the Graduate tax works.
This is not like any other loan.

The monthly tax (for the years they are earning over the threshold - currently about £28K) is a % of the amount they earn above the threshold. So they will be paying the same amount whether they borrow the £27K+ 'just' for the fees, or whether they borrow the maintenance loan as well.
For most graduates, it doesn't make sense not to borrow the maintenance loan.
Have a look at the way Martin Lewis explains it here

Unless they are going to be a hedge fund manager or corporate lawyer, then it makes more sense for you to put the £9k a year you would be giving them for maintenance into some sort of savings and present them with that money for a deposit on their first home, and let them take the loan.

In terms of spending. Our dc, after accommodation have had £35 - £38 per week which all have managed fine on.
We tend to take and fetch them at start / end of term and we then separately paid the deposit for 2nd yr accommodation. They all managed fine on that.

If you are on Facebook you could look at WIWIKAU (What I wish I knew about University) and there are very regular threads on this. Amounts vary a lot, and many people forget they also still pay phone contracts or Netflix or whatever for their dc, or even car insurance !!
Most students get jobs (either term time or holidays or both) to then save for their 'wants' rather than 'needs'.

Our eldest daughter took the maintenance loan and was also awarded a grant. Her rent (halls) was completely covered by the maintenance loan, although she very sensibly went for the cheaper, less luxurious options. She used the grant money for books, travel costs etc.
She had a (very) part time job so used wages/savings to fund her social life. And we paid for her phone/food shop/ contact lenses/ holidays etc.
She left uni 3 years ago and her loan repayments come directly out of her wages.

DS gets minimum maintenance loan which he uses for living expenses but not rent. We pay his rent which is a good few thousand more than the government expected contribution. He sends me the loan when he receives it each term, I pay the accommodation directly and send him £150 per week which is the maintenance loan divided by the number of term time weeks. I didn't think it was reasonable to expect someone to receive a termly payment and be able to manage it - many adults struggle to budget for a month never mind longer. He has just started working too to prop up his expensive social life. He is never going to live on baked beans and pot noodles in order to be able to spend more on going out and I wouldn't want him to. I didn't spend 18 years feeding him and educating him about food to have him eat poorly at a time when his body and brain really need the fuel. We could have self funded but I thought it was important that the DC understood there was a cost attached to going to uni and that they would make good choices as a result and it also means they can't then take out a maintenance loan as well without you knowing when in your mind you are paying for uni. I have thought about paying off the loans once they finish but it might actually be better to invest the money and know it can cover the loans at any point as there's no point in paying back more than is required.

Ours gets the minimum maintenance loan which pays most of the accommodation. We then give £300 a month on top.

He sends me the loan when he receives it each term, I pay the accommodation directly and send him £150 per week which is the maintenance loan divided by the number of term time weeks. I didn't think it was reasonable to expect someone to receive a termly payment and be able to manage it - many adults struggle to budget for a month never mind longer.

We will be doing something similar with ds. We won't be able to afford to pay a term's hall fees up front so we will ask ds to use his loan to pay those with us topping up if necessary) and we will give him his allowance monthly as we are paid monthly.

I pay the accommodation directly and send him £150 per week which is the maintenance loan divided by the number of term time weeks.

Who has £150 per week to spend on themselves ??

I am totally with you that it makes sense to help them budgeting by sending money weekly or monthly rather than trying to have a lump sum to last them 3 months + but, when the maintenance amount is worked out, that amount is normally expected to cover the rent and bills too, not all be fun money.

Be wary of taking the loan if you don't need it. It's all well and good for people saying "most don't pay it all back", which is true for those who earn relatively low amounts in the future. But, if you're hoping to get a decent job, paying £40-£50k per year after the first few years, you'll end up not only paying the whole amount borrowed back, but a huge amount of interest on top, and you may still not have paid the loan off in full, simply because of the ridiculously high interest rate.

So, you really do have to factor in your salary expectations and working life aspirations before glibly thinking "I'll take the maximum" and that would be a very costly mistake for people who go on to earn fairly decent amounts for most of their working life.

Sadly it's "middle earners" being stung again. The highest earners, i.e. those earning £75k/£100k plus pay off their loans much quicker and so the ruinously high interest rates don't hit them as much and they, perversely, end up paying a lot less interest on their student loans than lower/middle earners!

Mine gets minimum maintenance loan for outside of London which is £4422. His rent is £6335 at Durham. We top him up to the maximum loan amount equivalent so we are expected and do pay £5066 for the year. We broke this down over the 30 weeks he is at university so about £105 per week. Laundry alone is £3.50 per load and it isn't a commercial sized machine. Luckily tumble drying is free. He comes home once a term so the train is around £35 with a young person's railcard.

His supermarket food shop is around £30 per week. He has money left over each week which covers him whilst home when meeting up with his friends. He was home for 4 weeks over Christmas and returns home next week for 5 weeks.

I would agree there is no point not taking the maintenance loan out as it just gets added to their tuition fees which are £9250 per year anyway.

If you have money you can give to save taking out the maintenance loan it would be better to save it for a house deposit for them.

Some uni's put realistic/typical living cost estimates on their webpage. My son's Uni suggests:-

Food & toiletries £45
Travel £7
Books/stationery £15
Clothes £10
Laundry £5
So that's a total of £82 per week for basics.

Then there's rent, mobile phone, socialising, sports/hobbies, which can't be estimated as they're specific to the person.

Looking at my son's actual spending for his first 18 months at Uni, I'd say the £82 for the basics is pretty accurate. His spending averages £100 per week for everything except his phone contract which we pay for directly.

I've calculated that after accommodation (£2,322 per term) if we top up ds to the maximum amount he will have £85 per week left to live on.

[quote rbe78]Remember that the student loan isn't really a proper 'loan'. The majority of students will never pay the full balance back, and it will just come out of your DC's pay cheque automatically once they earn over a certain amount.

(I'm in my 30s and my repayment is

@Kite22

Unless they are going to be a hedge fund manager or corporate lawyer, then it makes more sense for you to put the £9k a year you would be giving them for maintenance into some sort of savings and present them with that money for a deposit on their first home, and let them take the loan.

Not really true. A ultra-highly paid hedge fund manager or corporate lawyer will pay off their student loans very quickly so will incur much less interest. Whereas a more "middle" earner, say £50k per year, will be paying the student loan repayments for the full 30 years, and probably still won't have cleared it because of all the interest added over those years, yet will have still paid back far more than the amount originally "borrowed". The killer is the interest, not the capital amount borrowed. If it was either interest free or if interest rates were more reasonable/normal, then I'd agree with you that taking out the loan regardless would make sense, but with interest rates being so high, taking out full loans if you plan to be a middle income kind of earner doesn't make sense.

DD gets a student loan of £6700 and we give her £400pm, except in August when she's home. Her expenses are higher than most - £6700 just about covers renting a room with a shared kitchen and bathroom (in expensive city, not London), properties in area are very old and draughty so expensive to heat, also she's 600+ miles away - she does shop around for a bargain flight, train ticket but it's often £200 for a return. She has to pay everything else out of the balance, but still manages to look stylish, eat properly (she likes cooking from scratch), buys her books and socialises.

Mine have no student loans. I paid their rent and then each week £150 for the younger ones all year by weekly standing order. The maximum student loan out of London for maintenance is £9706 so the state expects your rent and maintenance to be covered by that. That is a reasonable figure to compare