Student loan/finance question

[petitdonkey]

Apologies if this has been done to death but I really haven't got a handle on the student finance (have had a very fraught period of time and haven't really given it enough thought!)

DS has applied for a maintenance loan - the amount is pretty much equal to the cost of his accommodation. How much do you expect your teens to have at university?

DH thinks we should pay for his accommodation and let him keep the loan but I think that seems far too much money and that he should pay for halls then we give him an allowance which he subsidises with a part time job.

Please can I ask roughly how much your student children are living on? DS will be going to an outer London uni so accommodation is about 6k and his loan is a similar amount.

Mine is living on £450/mo not counting accommodation + utility bills.

We are just starting y2 ... her load doesn't cover the accommodation, and I've been paying the gap (£200) plus money to live on (£160 a month). she's only just got a job but the expectations is my money won't decrease.

Be careful over summer as I got stung for rent on yr1 halls AND yr2 house rent for the summer. For 4m I was giving her £700 a month to cover all of the rent and living on the basis she would pay me back when she got the loan. It's totally screwed me over and I'm personally in debt now!!!

I think the expectation is if they get minimal loan, parents are expected to give approx 3k a year to help them study

DS1 took the full (Welsh) grant and loan combination, so £10,700 a year. He also has some money from entrance exam bursaries (~£2500 a year), some money from savings (~£2000 a year) and some money from working over the summer (~£2000). So ~£17k altogether. He spent ~£13k last year, so has money left over. We haven't given him any extra.

£17,000 a year is dreamland for most. Why include money from savings at all? It’s not needed.

As a general rule, parents should make their contribution up to the amount of the full maintenance loan level. Our DDs hall fees equalled the minimum loan (12 years ago) and she paid that every term when the loan came into her account at the beginning of each term. Worked well and it’s easier to do this. We then just paid the agreed sum every month for our contribution. We did £450 back then but you need to calculate for now.

You also need to weigh up what you expect DC to pay for. I always suggest building up from £0. Who is paying for his phone, laptop, clothes, (shoes and coat and sportswear cost money!) holidays, toiletries, transport, socialising, insurance, etc? Be realistic. If he’s keen on sport, add in sport club costs. If he’s a social person assume this will continue! Then agree what you should pay, to make it up to the minimum loan, and then agree if he needs more, he earns it.

You are supposed to top up to the £10k total, plus any more I guess if you can afford it

Oh, London loan is more than £10k, so whatever that max is ... that's the minimum you are supposed to be giving

We have paid accommodation and dc live off minimum maintenance loan plus any earnings, both in expensive locations.

I top up to the £10,000, however, I have one in Cardiff paying very low rent, and one in York where it’s very high! So there has to be a bit of flexibility/ fairness. DD in Cardiff worked full time all summer. DD at York is unwell so can’t. It’s very individual, the most important thing is that they understand what their weekly budget is.

They were included because they were savings we put away specifically for university costs, which matured when he turned 18. Lots of parents do this, and it is our only contribution to his costs.

I don't think £17k is dreamland. It is a combination of the grant and loan (that every student from Wales is entitled to apply for), earnings from his holiday job (which anyone can do), an award for doing well in an entrance exam (which anyone could sit) and modest parental savings (which most parents I know do). So fairly average. He certainly isn't swanning around like a lottery winner.

DS is getting tuition fee loan so that's covered. We are paying accommodation fees, he's getting a job and will hopefully be able to cover his day to day but we will top up if needed (I'm thinking, if he is earning less than 500 per month).

£13k spend in the year is considerably more than each of mine spend.

As PPs have said, the "standard" is to top up to the level of the maximum loan. If your DC receives minimum loan, then for a student living away from home and outside London, this is roughly £5200. Add another couple of k for London.

Am surprised at £17k and £13k, that seems really high! The students I know are topped up to the living away but not London figure, around £9,500 I think.

so much useful advice - thank you all!

His first choice was Cardiff but he missed by a grade - I hadn't truly appreciated how much cheaper it was until I looked into his London (ish) university!

DS got the minimum loan (£4200 ish) and accommodation was £5500. Some parents paid the accommodation upfront and the student had the loan to live off but we couldn’t afford to do that. We paid the rest of the accommodation and then gave him £50 a week for food.

when everyone talks about topping up to the 10k, is that just for living or including accommodation? So if his accomodation is 6k and his loan is 6k we should give the 4? That sounds about right (I am thinking it through as I type!!)

DH was thinking we should pay for the accommodation then let him keep the whole loan (6kish) but I thought that was a lot...

Please don't hate on me for not thinking all of this through before now, we've had a strange year!!

We are lucky enough to be able to support him - I just want him to have the 'average' - not too much spare iyswim..

For us the top up was to an amount for accommodation and living.

We are contributing 5k per year to top up from minimum loan to the same level as the maximum maintenance loan. Dd is going to uni outside London and has chosen shared bathroom non catered accommodation which thankfully is around 5k. So that will leave 4k, nearly enough for £100 a week for the 41ish weeks of the university year to cover everything else. Dd has some savings from part time work and will keep her zero hours contract job and work in the holidays. We'll probably get things like a big shop at start of term, bit of cash at Christmas, but it won't do any harm for her to learn to live on a budget.

We are paying the rent on the halls which is a few hundred more than we should be giving dd to make her loan up to the full amount. Then dd will be getting her loan which is about four thousand.

We give our DC £1100 a month to cover rent and expenses

you'd give £4k outside London, but as he is in London you'd need to give £6k+ to make it up to the max student loan amount (£12.6k for London, so that's £6k accommodation plus £6k from you)

I think you should make it up to the fully maintenance loan .

We had planned all of this and have savings to cover both children at university. We topped up to full loan from minimum maintenance loan. From the equivalent loan amount we took off the accommodation cost and what was left we divided over the number of weeks Ds was at uni. This meant that after accommodation cost he was left with £105 per week for 30 weeks.

His supermarket food shop is around £30 per week and laundry is £7 per week meaning he is left with £68 a week for fun stuff. To say that is plenty is an understatement. He can walk to campus so no bus fares. However, he has not spent all of his money and funded himself through all the holidays with camping trips, concerts, seeing friends etc. We have had open and honest discussions about money and he is very sensible. His 2nd year accommodation is more expensive but we have decided with him that £100 per week is more than adequate.

How it works in reality, his loan gets paid into his student account. It isn't enough to cover his rent so we pay the remainder of the rent for that term. We then pay him £105 per week on his Monzo card and he allocates spends into the different pots to keep track of his money.

Our eldest gets the full maintenance loan, he also has a part time job, he'd struggle otherwise. Any spare cash I send his way.

My top up to £10k is to include accommodation, food, sport and any socialising.