How much money in total does your student in halls receive?

[WombatChocolate]

I’ve read a number of similar threads. People often talk about ‘paying accommodation’ and then the student living on their minimum maintenance loan, but these don’t give total figures of how much it is costing to live.

Please could people say how much the total to cover everything is. I’m not so interested in whether it comes from parents or loans or grandparents, but the total given and the city/area they study in.

I think this would be really useful info for myself and others with teens setting off in the autumn. We can then work out how much we might need to give them, knowing how much maintenance loan our individual circumstances will mean they get.

I guess I’m interested to know if people are topping up, to the full maintenance loan or significantly beyond this.

DD’s halls cost 7k which we pay for. She then gets the minimum outside of London loan which is about 4.5k from memory.

She also has a job back at home that she works at during the holidays and uses to build up savings which she then uses to top herself up or to use for things that fall outside of her usual weekly expenditure (which she budgeted at about £100ish per week). She uses her savings for big nights out (clubs/DJ’s that have high ticket prices) and train tickets here there and everywhere to visit mates at different unis or to come home to see her boyfriend for the weekend.

Like all students she overspends but she definitely has enough to live on - in a reasonably cheap northernish city.

I was a bit baffled by the amounts but I assume loan amounts must vary in different parts of the country. I’m in Northern Ireland and max maintenance loan is less than 5000. Makes it hard if they are going to England to study as it doesn’t come near covering halls.
Dd got a little over 5000 as she’s on her year abroad.
I think it’s rising a bit next year.
Ds may want to study in England and I don’t honestly think we could top up our level of loan to as much as 10 or 11 thousand.

@WombatChocolate
So £190 x 42 = £7,980 this year, that's bills included as in halls.

From July this year £600 per month = £7,200, but bills will be on top of this, not sure how much that will be.

We'll still pay for Netflix, car insurance etc, etc. Not too sure how much this adds up to.

We'll then also have DD2 at uni, so all the same costs again for her.

It really adds up!

These posts show one thing for sure - it really depends on how much your accom is. £4k for en suite room is v cheap; £200 pw (£10k a year) for a room is a lot, and I assume somewhere like Edinburgh or Bristol? Also catered halls will make a difference.

We covered the accommodation costs 1st year (£7200) and pay rent the second year (currently £400 a month) We buy one big shop a term about £100 frozen food etc.

Daughter gets the minimal loan , but also works so earns around £500 a month, she has to pay towards her house bills, phone and car insurance. She is a saver and during holidays she works as much as possible to earn more money & save. It means she can reduce hours around exams or essay submissions.

Total spend for DS
Rent in halls for the year -£4800 (cheap, and he gets all 4 years in college)
Living costs per whole year averages around-£3000.
He's cheap to run! But has had p/t work during holidays etc to supplement with any luxuries

Room in halls with ensuite and shared kitchen - £6200 (paid by me)
Living, food, travel etc - £3,000 (paid by me)
Gym membership - £130 (paid by grandparents)

He has a maintenance loan of £4500 which he hasn't used yet this year. Also, we give him about £300 at Christmas and £300 for his birthday. I pay for a phone, Netflix etc.

Wow although Education is devolved that is a real difference as compared with England. As you say rising quite a bit for 2023/24 but from a low base. Max maintenance loan away from home and outside London will be £6776, or more than 3k less than the max in England, or £4.5k if you consider where the max should be.

Wales is of course different again - max maintenance loan there for 23/24 outside London is £11,720. With no parental contribution expected irrespective of household income, just more heavily weighted to loan as opposed to grants as household income increases. A student from Wales therefore entitled to nearly £5k more than a student from NI.

Sorry, forgot to say he's in the north.

Dc gets £ 4524 minimum maintenance loan . We top this up to the maximum student loan amount by giving £5182 . So their total amount for 2022/23 academic year is £9706. ( we will need to give slightly more next year as the max loan amount increases)
They are at Durham
They work in summer to get buffer

Catered halls (shared bathroom) are looking like being around £8k, so is £2k (meaning he will have had the £10k max loan amount) enough for spending money for 3 terms? The catering covers all 21 meals, but I know snacks etc will be needed.

So, if you spread the £2K that is left, over 40 weeks (3 terms + Christmas and Easter breaks) they will get £50 just for "spends" every week, which to me, is a lot, if their food, rent and bills are already paid.

If they have to pay for train fare at the start and end of each term, that does then eat into it (we take and fetch mostly)
If they have to pay for travel to and from placements (or even halls to University if placed a long way away), that will eat into it.

But that really should be plenty. If they want to have more spending money than that, then they can get themselves a job, or, of course, choose self catering which will give them more money in their pocket.

Each of my dc (at 3 different Universities) have all commented as different times that it is the students who are on full loans who are always the most well off, in terms of having money to spend.

Rent plus £550 a month. Plus phone contract and contact lenses plus a couple of supermarket deliveries a term.

a couple of hundred extra during the first term which is expensive

We give £6000 ish for halls

£200 spending money plus flights home and occasional boost - she may ask for something like paying the prepaid NHS prescriptions.

She works 6 hours on a Saturday - £240 a month for treats.

She worked since she was 14 and saved £7,000 for Uni.

They need to work!! Unit attendance varies but when it’s 16 hours a week she has a lot of spare time.

Living, food, travel etc - £3,000 (paid by me)

Why are you doing that if he's not touching his loan?

*@boys3 Quite shocking really. I think I wish I didn’t know!!
Didn’t really matter so much with dd as she decided to live at home (apart from year abroad) so her costs were minimal and she was able to save for this year.

Ds will probably go away so I better get prepared for it to cost us a lot!

it was back in Oct when we did our first open days to York and Liverpool that I realised that us getting away with giving dd what we were obligated to give her the £4.5k min was an absolute pile of bollocks and it makes me angry that it’s not being highlighted by Martin Lewis etc particularly when I see kids applying to any uni they fancy with no family discussion about cost

it was seeing the Halls price list that made me realise I was in bother you can easily have to pay £8k on a self catered hall so then I asked around about 2&3 year housing cost and yes in Liverpool if your happy to get a 20min bus ride out you can get cheaper accommodation but York it’s doesn’t appear to be the case it’s possible to pay £10k for accommodation and let’s face it COL rises aren’t stopping anytime soon

long story short I’m expecting going away to Uni to cost £12/13k a year DD will get her min loan to live on and I’ll be giving her £8k a year but less if she gets a job but if she ends up in York there’s a possibility I’ll have to give her £8k and she’ll have to work as my £8k and her min loan won’t be enough

Martin Lewis has enough on his hands trying to convince middle class parents to pay anything at all towards their kids uni costs!

If you compare with full loan students, a lot of those students also get £1-3k top up bursaries, which reflects the real costs of uni in many cities.

I definitely agree that accommodation costs and living costs when choosing a uni should be more widely discussed as part of the process.

I had no idea low income students had access to more money but all students needing 12k not 9k wherever it comes from is way more realistic

DD get the minimum loan. We pay accommodation, around £6.5k. DD also has a part time job during the holidays. DD manages to live very well.

My two boys had the maximum loan plus a bursary each of £2K. That was way more than sufficient and they both had money left over at the end. They were both in cheap self catered uni accommodation in first year, then a cheap house share in Yrs 2 and 3 for DS1 and a cheap private self catered hall for DS3. In DS3's case 'cheap' was £6k for his private hall, £135 x 44 weeks.

TBF, DS1 fell in with a group who were into competitive frugality and DS3 is a bit of a loner who doesn't do partying. DS1 worked each summer for around £1500.

Giving kids on full loans top up bursaries likely means they’ll have a lot more disposable income than kids on minimal loans who will have to work. Doesn’t seem fair.

Would you like to swap to having more than £60K student loan to pay off? I have a disabled DS2 and their 'D' F has fucked off, which means my earning potential is restricted so I can't support them myself. There's no belt tightening I can do to help them. You really begrudge DC from low income families getting a bursary? Have you researched the eligibility criteria?

DD's student loan just about covered the cost of halls (£6700 2020/21). We gave her £300pm to cover transport home (330 miles away so not cheap), summer storage, personal essentials (and clothes, socialising and buying food for lunch (not included in her halls). Her laptop packed up, so she had to buy another out of her personal money/our monthly payment).

In fourth year now, rent is £6800 plus gas/electric, personal insurance, food etc, so it's more expensive.

Couldn't get a job first year for love nor money. Luckily she found a lockdown job at home and they continue to find her hours on her return home and final year she got a job for uni.

DS in halls, gets loan of about 4k pa, which has to be topped up by about 1.5k to cover fees. Then he gets about another £200 pm while he is away from home to cover food and everything else. I do sometimes pay for eg new boots/ coat if needed. But he is very cheap, rarely goes out, doesn't really drink. He is in a basic room, no en-suite, not catered , in Norwich.
Halls for another family member in Liverpool were more expensive, t think £140-170 pw.

Ds gets the minimum loan of just over £4,500

His rent this year was £7,036 (£163 per week)

We top up to the amount of the maximum loan which means paying the balance of his rent plus giving him £68 per week during term time.