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.)

Do people save up prior to their children going to university or just afford it from their salary. I feel like I might have to start saving now and my children are 6 and 4!

@sparkle17

Do people save up prior to their children going to university or just afford it from their salary. I feel like I might have to start saving now and my children are 6 and 4!

A mixture of both. We opened ISA's when the children were little and put £100 per month in.

Dd pays her rent with her maintenance loan (it works out about the same amount) and I give her £325 a month year round for food, bills and living expenses. I might have to up that a bit given how much all the bills are rising.
She works in the holidays and gets money from grandparents etc.
I pay for medical expenses - dentist, optician etc, and her SIM only phone contract, and sometimes give her money towards travel between home and her uni city.

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.

The thing is, someone on £50K isn't a "middle earner". They are a high earner. If people are training for something like Nursing, teaching, to be a police officer, a SaLT, a physio, an OT, a social worker, a librarian, etc etc etc they are never going to earn that, (unless a teacher moves to become a HT, which is a tiny fraction of the people who qualify for those roles). I am a senior manager in my (graduate) field, with over 30 years experience but I can't hope to get to £50k, let alone be earning that in any of the first 30 years since graduating. The pay just doesn't go up that high.

Then there are a lot of people who graduate now who are not even able to get "graduate roles" (by 'now' I mean over the last 15 - 20 years).

Then there are the people who work PT for some of those 30 years - parents, other carers, people who become ill or have an accident or mental health breakdown. People who are caring for parents or for people with SEND.

Then people who decide to branch out on their own / start a business / re-train later in life and won't be earning for the next 3 years, or earning a pittance.

It would be only a tiny minority of people at University now who will be earning £50k for 30 years, even those who qualify in professions where they can work up to that.

No other loan / mortgage allows you to just stop paying it when you don't earn enough. I'd rather have £30,000 less on a mortgage than £30,000 less on a student loan.

I pay for contact lenses & medical stuff - prescriptions (once she turns 19) eye test, dentist & SIM card, we’ve also paid her first year of car insurance.
She gets the minimal loan but is in a London Uni so the rent is quite high.

She worked last summer & saved up. She also works PT. I was surprised as not many of them work but we couldn’t afford to if she didn’t work. We give her £100 a month & she gets about £300 from work. Her maintenance loan only just covers the rent, her bills are shared around £70 a month. Though it will go up with the current costs of utilities no doubt !!
So she needs to pay for food & going out with what’s left. She is very good at budgeting & has a good lump of savings from last summer & will work over Easter & summer again.

Food & toiletries £45 Except students only need to spend 1/2 that on food and toiletries (mine spend less than half that, as do thousands of others

Travel £7 Yes, some will spend a lot more than that, and of course, others none at all.

Books/stationery £15 Students rarely have to buy text books now. Everything is on-line or in the library. Even those who do buy text books aren't buying them every week

Clothes £10 Who buys clothes every week ??

Laundry £5 True - this is an expense that comes as a shock to most students...... they do soon learn how to wash less often / share a load with a friend however.

So that's a total of £82 per week for basics. Not what I, or most students would call basics.

I 100% agree anyone who can afford it can give their adult dc however much money they want, however often they want. Totally between them and their dc, but the reason I challenge amounts like this on threads like these is there are lots of parents who do not have that amount of 'spare' money and I don't want them to go away with the impression the students need that kind of funding

We give DS, at one of the more expensive unis in the South , £100 week termtime for food, travel, laundry, socialising etc. He also pays his own mobile phone (£12 a month) but I still pay for his contact lenses.
He mostly manages OK but will suddenly blow his budget with a Summer Ball ticket (£60) or weekend train to see a friend (£55).

I suggest you look at Martin Lewis’s advice from Money Saving Expert who gives good advice and explains how it all works. In my case, we paid both dc’s rent and they lived on the minimum student loan, which seemed to work for them. Rent obviously varies greatly depending on where they are studying. Ds’s private accommodation used to be £85 pw, whereas dd’s is £150!

DD gets minimum student loan. We pay her rent, any big train fares, big shops at beginning of terms. We also top her up £250 a month.
She isn’t able to work due to course commitments but does occasional stuff for student union (open day ambassador type of thing)

Both ours got/get minimum loan.
We paid rent (fortunately cheap cities, approx £500 pcm), phone, occasional food top ups, holidays and car insurance etc but not fuel. They lived/live off loan plus ad hoc part time work. It’s possible tho harder in London or other expensive cities. Managing the loan was useful to learn how to budget properly. They reckon they spend on average £50-100 per week for food, socialising, books etc.

We paid accommodation. They lived off the loan, and got a job for extra money.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the first term is massively more expensive than any other - things like books, bus passes, subs for Clubs/Socs, Freshers Week, kitting out bedroom etc all come in one go in the first few weeks. So a reasonable “float” (we did one month allowance) is a good idea if you can.

We’ve paid everything for our kids, youngest about to graduate. We give £600pcm allowance and pay rent (much cheaper after first year) and fees. This is very generous!

We don't pay for anything, nor do we ask DD to pay her loan over to us so we can drip-feed it to her. She's an adult FFS and more than capable of handling her own financial affairs. For the first 2 years of her degree our earnings weren't enough for us to need to pay anything.

We will probably have to pay towards her 3rd & 4th years as DH quit his self-employed NMW role for a salary, although I'm not sure how much longer he will stick it. DD gets her loan and immediately pays her rent for the term. She then divides the remainder by the number of weeks it is set to cover and that is her budget. She self-caters and is pretty frugal, although not averse to regular nights out or meals out with friends. I think DD spends around £25 per week on food and socialising. She makes use of her unidays card, happy hours, reductions for paying cash and the like. She works in summer holidays. She pays her SIM only phone deal & I bought her glasses and her handset

@Comefromaway

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'm genuinely shocked by this! I had no idea anyone did this and don't really understand how the young adult benefits.

In the real world the majority of people are paid monthly. They don’t get a lump sum three times per year.

In Scotland so student loan obtained will be the minimum. That will be used towards halls but we'll still need to contribute nearly £200 per month for rent to cover the short fall. We'll also give around £75 per week for food and partying. Mobile phone, car insurance and gym membership will also be covered by us.

@Comefromaway

In the real world the majority of people are paid monthly. They don’t get a lump sum three times per year.

But many students pay their rents “per term” instead of monthly, hence why student maintenance loans are paid termly instead of monthly. Likewise many students return home between each term so their spending patterns during terms are very different to when they’re at home.

Which is why the poster who said she gave her child the monthly allowance used the loan to pay the rent.

I will be getting my son to pay his rent direct. But if a top up is required sometimes it’s easier for the parent to pay.

Once accommodation is paid I think most students can manage on £300 per month to cover food, laundry and active social life. £400 would cover extras such as end of term balls and society memberships.

I pay my DD a monthly allowance and also her phone.

The full student finance maintenance loan is about 9500 outside London. Dc doesn’t get a full one but we make it up to that amount.
We give them a third of our contribution every term so they have that and their loan every term. They pay their accommodation and then divide what they’ve got left by the number of weeks until the next term begins. So, they know how much they’ve got for every week. If they overspend some weeks then they know they've got to rein it in. They seem to have managed this ok. They are quite thrifty so dont spend a lot and use an app to keep track . Train tickets and a ball ticket have been quite big expenses that they moaned about factoring in but apart from that I think it works fine .

I usually let them tap me for a bag of groceries in the local supermarket when we drop them off every term and I still pay 10 quid a month for their phone. They worked all last summer and will probably do the same again.

I find it quite amusing that they now talk with consternation about the cost of basic food items or how the cost of something has risen when they didn’t have a blimmin clue before

Yes, even when I went to university in the 1980s the state included a statement on the local authority form which said parens are expected to make the minimum (in those days grant not loan) up to the maximum and that every year they were told some parents were not doing so and that they wanted parents to do so. Then and now there was no legal obligation in England to force parents to do so., I got a very very small minimum grant and could only to go university because my parents chose to make it up to the full sum.

So I would suggest parents start by looking at the maximum maintenance loan for that year and place and try to make up the minimum which is about £4300 up to the maximum of £9500 or whatever it is which is what the less well off receive.

I think the state should do a better job on these amounts - eg they could send every home a letter who has applies to UCAS once you accept a place saying this is the maximum loan for this place, your child is getting the minimum and we therefore expect if you can afford it it that you pay exactly this £ xxx annual sum to make up the difference.

My sons father is intending to pay for the DC’s Uni, he’s saved for this, and made sacrifices to do it as he feels it’s important. Of course not everyone can do this and I certainly couldn’t afford to do it. Yes I’d contribute but my DC would have to take the loans if I was paying alone. I think he intends to pay the rent and give him a set amount per week, and if he wants more he will get a job.

@sparkle17

Do people save up prior to their children going to university or just afford it from their salary. I feel like I might have to start saving now and my children are 6 and 4!

My DC’s father has been saving for many years to help them through Uni. Not everyone can afford what he can put aside though, but I do recommend you start early. I think many parents don’t realise that the amount students can borrow is dependant on parents salary and they are expected to top it up

I absolutely agree @Xenia. They should be upfront about what they expect parents to pay.

blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2020/09/martin-lewis--how-much-the-govt-expects-parents-to-give-their-ch/?_ga=2.155522107.1210858736.1614716935-519021623.1614716935