How much living allowance do you send them?

[IheartNiles]

DD will get minimum loan.

We’ll need to top up her accommodation (looking like another £3k as she medically needs an ensuite).

How much do you then give them to live on / how much do they need?

She has a Saturday job at home now and my expectation is she should find a part time job while she’s there. I strongly believe in getting lots of work experience and valuing money.

We send dd £100 per week, she says it’s fine and doesn’t need anymore. It goes towards her bus, £16 per week, then food and social. She doesn’t spend the full amount every week, she says she can feed herself for about £15-20 a week (we send her back with all the supplies of basics so she’s never starting from scratch, she doesn’t eat meat so that’s cheaper too) and then the rest on a couple of nights out or taking booze to friends houses. She pays for her gym membership. We pay the rent that her minimum loan doesn’t cover.
works out okay.
she works loads when she’s home and they pay her well so she has access to more money if she needs it.

Oh, and lovely MIL also sends her £150 a month like she did for her other grandchildren which dd is so appreciative of!

This seems loads! Surely most adults don't have £600plus per month of disposable income?

I know lots of students live in luxury now conpared to the old reputation of being scruffy and living on beans but if they get used to loads of extra cash they are going to struggle when they graduate unless they go straight intoa really good job as they'll probably have less disposable income than they did as a student which is a bit depressing when you are knackered from working full time.

I would agree with the poster who said to start with less then top up if needed, or supplement with things you're happy to pay for (train home, books for course, phone bill) and treats every so often, rather than starting high and having to commit to it for the next 3 years, even if your circumstances change, you feel they waste a lot of it or she refuses to get a part time job because she can cope on what you give her.

It's only during term (and to pay for travel). Works out £300 per month.

Dependent on getting into the shorter term uni.

I was skint at Uni and don’t want mine to be

We also top up to maximum loan level. After he has paid his accommodation it gives him £68.50 per week to live on. (term time only).

Just getting to grips with all this in readiness for DD going to uni. All really useful.

I can see from the thread that the maintenance loan is paid at the beginning of each term. Can anyone tell me when the uni accommodation is payable? Does the whole year have to be paid upfront or is that also done term by term too?

Depends on the uni - usually termly or monthly DD I think.
Don't forget though, you often need to pay a deposit for second year private accommodation around Christmas of Y1 too.
That is then usually monthly and in most cases is for a while 12 months not just the uni year.

@Rollergirl11 At nearly every uni, accommodation payments are set to be a week or so after the loan payments, on a termly basis. Things change in second year where landlords normally prefer monthly payments!

We pay the top up on accommodation and give £40 a week (2 dc at uni) and pay for phones, it's not much but what we can afford, they manage, 1 works weekends and the other works occasional events (weddings etc)

Mine is at an RG uni in an expensive area. We were giving her about 75 a week, but she's decided to get a part time job as well, as to be honest, her first year of a humanities degree hasn't been at all intensive. It's been a bit of a waste of time tbh.

£100 weekly, the odd extra £20-£30 for travel home.

PSA that student finance for 2023/4 is now open for both existing students and those starting out (they don't need to know firm choice yet).

The 'top up' to full loan for those on minimum loan, living away from home outside London, works out to £103 per week (over the whole year).

studentfinance.campaign.gov.uk/

what course is this please? If you don’t mind saying.

I do mind sorry but it's a well respected course at a rg uni, dd needed A star AA to get in. She has a very small amount of contact time and the first year is apparently spent trying to get people who didn't do the subject for A level up to speed. As she did do it at A level she's finding it really boring.

Oh I think that’s very common for some subjects (economics for example) where some of the cohort hasn’t studied it at A level. She’s only 5 months in so it’ll hopefully get more interesting soon and not be the whole course that’s a ‘waste of time’!

Oh I'm sure it will improve! I only meant the first year has been a waste of time. She finishes in the first week of May - accommodation needs to be paid for until the end of June. It's a scam really.

Seriously jealous that there's so many of you who can afford to pay for your kids at.uni. I had to.drop out as.I was so skint and parents couldn't afford to contribute

Ds gets the minimum loan based on our family income of £70k so I don't think it is fair that we not top him up even if we have to do without things.

If we were on a low income then he'd get the maximum and we wouldn't be giving him anything.