If you "top up" to the maximum student loan and your DC is in catered halls....

[Africa2go]

is that enough?

Catered halls seem to be about £8,500 - If we did top up to the max loan (and not much more, so about £10k) they'd have £1500 left (after £8,500 hall bill) - over 39 weeks thats about £40 a week. Think catered halls are breakfast, lunch and dinner during the week but nothing at weekends.

Still considering options - uni says it tries to accommodate choices, but can't guarantee it. DC undecided about catered and self catered - just because perception is catered would be more social (and for lots of reasons, what would suit DC).

Would £40 (or maybe push it to £50) a week be enough?

I know DC can get job / use some savings if it isn't enough but just interested in views from parents with children in catered halls.

Spending less than 40 a week on food is about 5 a day. Doesn't seem enough to me to eat a nutritious diet but some clearly manage it.

fwiw, DS's £25/week arises from eating like this (he's tall, skinny & only does about half hour of exercise, walking/cycling per day, doesn't like diet variety):

Everything bought at a Big4 supermarket:

Breakfast: cinnamon raisin bagels toasted with butter
Lunch: chorizo & cucumber sandwiches (brown bread), tangerines
Supper: Chips & veg, sometimes fish fingers, cooked from frozen /or/ veg with pizza cooked from frozen

I reckon he's just about making the "5 a day", even if MN protein obsessives would disapprove. He also consumes cheap sodas & some sweets, has a hot chocolate most days, never has tea or coffee.

He's lucky he has the freezer space! Dd has virtually none, certainly not enough for chips, veg and pizza.

From a financial point of view those on full loan due to parental income get a bursary if the catered halls are expensive. DS1 catered hall was nearly £8k but he got £2k back from the uni in a bursary. Ds2 went for cheapest SC of £6k and still gets £1k bursary. So when making sure not to disadvantage lower income families unis are working on basis that students should have at least £1k a term after food, rent and bills are paid. I feel for those topping up as effectively they are subsidising high hall rents which unis couldn’t justify if they didn’t offer bursaries to those on full or almost full loans. With cost of living you need to be budgeting for £12k a year in places with high rents. It’s also worth looking at private rents for second year as following the Truss budget mortgage hike many private landlords have put rents up hugely next year. Private halls with inclusive bills are actually now often cheaper than private rented in many areas. DS1 is leaving this year and his landlord has put the rent up £30 per student per week for next year. Website info for local rents will be out of date so it’s worth asking current students what they are paying next year for 2nd/3rd year. As ds1 said it’s not as though the landlord has done anything to improve the property for the extra money!

I completely agree that having a freezer is a huge help in cooking on a budget. Hard to find information about that sort of thing in advance of going there!

Yes I agree! Dd has room for a packnofnifsh fingers OR a pack of frozen veg, not both. Its stupid she can't freeze bread or anything

Thank you for comments, all taken on board. Fortunately, DC have all had to cook family meals one night a week each from aged 15 or 16 so they're actually good cooks so have no worries about them cooking for themselves if any of them end up in self-catered.

As above, £40 a week does actually go quite a long way if you're only cooking for one and not buying Meal Deal lunches or ready meals.

Lots of people don't have much money. My son's catered falls at Bristol DID include weekends by the way - the only difference was on Sundays when there was breakfast and then lunch (rather than the usual dinner) so quite often they would sleep late and have breakfast late and then also get down for lunch at the last minute to get their money's worth.

We top up dc’s loan to the full student loan amount . They were in fully catered accommodation last year ( think it was just over 8k for the year) and they actually saved a bit of money over that year. They did have to buy some lunches though as couldn’t get back to college for food in time ( stem course with some full days).
This year they are living in privately rented and have about £50 left per week for food AND everything else. They manage ok. Definitely less money left over this year though and they have really noticed the price increases with food shopping. They cook enough for 4 meals and freeze . We set them up with a big shop /basic cupboard stuff at the beginning of year.
They pay for everything else apart from phone and insurance. They work during summer months to get buffer and so they have something they can dip into for bigger items

Vaping also popular.

I have spent a lot of time around student areas in Newcastle over the last three years and have seen very little vaping going on. Drinking, yes, vaping no.

I often wonder how many students actually bother getting up for breakfast.

DC is in en-suite catered halls at Loughborough Mon - Friday 3 meals a day, not thing on weekends. (Towers does weekend catering). He is topped up to full maintenance loan which gives him £180pm for 9 months of the year. I also send him back with a full shop at the start of each term. He manages just fine on this amount, spending most of it in the pub, very little on food. He does save Christmas/ birthday money & works a few hours in the holidays but this is for luxuries - holidays and computer games mainly.

Dn has £100 per week after rent has been paid. We will do the same for ds.

At my DDs uni - catered costs £92 extra per week - cost of meals for a week if self catered £25-40 depending what is bought and cooked. So unless its Oxford/Cambridge

Blimey!

DS's catered hall is the cheapest option at his uni. The 'rent' includes meal credits of around £42 a week. Overall he pays around £155 a week for rent and meal plan combined. Cheapest self-catered halls are around £170 a week (obviously no meals included in that). DS's accommodation is pretty basic and self-catered is generally much nicer but not £40+ a week nicer in DS's opinion.

DD would have hated catered. She is vegetarian and an excellent cook. Cooking is her way of winding down. She would have felt far too nervous to go on her own into a large canteen style dining area, so being in a flat of 8 suited her far more. She was lucky that she had some nice flatmates and she often ate with some of the others.

She used to get together with some of her coursemates for meals in halls as well where they all contributed something to the meal.

The only catered halls in Newcastle has set meals times which is a problem if you have a late lecture or play sport. Apparently the food isn't great either.

@DontMakeMeShushYou most catering packages are not 7 days per week and 3 meals per day (the £92 option is that) - I assume your DCs £42 for meals isn’t for 21 meals per week - is it 10 or 15 meals per week. Most catered options do not represent value for money over self catering. £155 per week is extremely cheap do you mind sharing where this is?

@Changeau my DD can cook very well for £25-40 per week spend. Carefully budgeted with menu that takes advantage of discounts. Often they cook in 2-3s and she is an amazing cook. So she has chicken and mushroom risotto with focaccia bread, chilli con carne, chicken and leek pie etc;

I won't say which uni as I'm posting under my usual username but it's in the south of England.

I double checked as I started to doubt myself. Actually there are a handful of self-catered rooms which are £12 cheaper per week than DS's but obviously don't include the meal plan in the price (they also don't have a washbasin in the room). There are also some self-catered rooms at the same price he pays for his catered room. DS can have a main meal each day, unlimited hot/cold drinks and a small extra credit to spend in some campus shops/food outlets. It's 7 days a week in term time. So, no, not every meal - he does need to buy stuff for breakfast and some lunches.

As I said upthread, this wasn't his plan when he went to uni. He likes cooking and is good at it but he could only get a catered room and has now decided he quite likes this option.

I'd avoid catered halls. Students frequently don't get up early to eat breakfast. Some lectures are timetabled over lunch. The food is not that great. Let them have a budget for buying what they want to eat. Teach them to cook.

Catered halls were brilliant for my children. So each to their own. It certainly was almost the cement on their first year friendships - friendships for life and then who they shared in private houses i years 2 and 3. For mine it all flowed from those relatinships - of course also the people you meet on your corridor etc too but going to breakfast or dinner with your friends each day was something they liked. Even my vegan son at Wills hall in Bristol said the catering staff were lovely to him and always had loads of vegan options there.

DD found that being in self catered she knew who she didn't want to share with from year 2

Realistically you need to work out a budget so that after their rent is paid they can then afford to buy food and drink for the week (catered or self catered) and then socialise plus get hair cuts, do laundry, pay travel expenses, buy toiletries, pay club/sports fees.

Food for one person should be doable for £45 a week if they eat like students and not like middle class wage earners.

So after that I think they need at least £50-£60 a week for everything else.

The reality is that if you can't afford that then they should be deferring for a year to earn some money first so that they can then afford to go.

Yes agree. 400 a month tops up the minimum loan to the maximum loan which is what we did.

If they get maximum loan and subtract average accommodation fees from that (say circa £6500) then they're left with around £110 a week. That's roughly what they need as a minimum.

If their accommodation is more then they will need more (and of course catered accommodation already includes some of the food so will be more expensive). But if you give them less than £110 a week for food and other spending that means they will be worse off than those who get full maintenance loans and those who are being topped up to full maintenance loan (plus some) by their parents.

If they get minimum loan then the easiest thing to do is to work out how much it will be to top that up to cover accommodation fees, pay that and then add a minimum of £110 a week (or about £60 a week if catered).

Whatever MN might like to say, most students don't work significant hours during term time nowadays. During holidays, of course but not during term time.

University isn't a cheap experience.

Isn't the max loan around 9500? 3000 is 110 a week for only 27 weeks. Term is 40 weeks.