How much money for university?

[MumblesParty]

DS is off to Cardiff uni in 2 weeks.
His loan will cover his rent, and leave him with about £300 per term left over, so obviously he’ll need extra money from me.
How much money are people generally giving their kids per week/month?
thanks

I'd say he should get a part time job for his extra money. It doesn't have to come from you, even if you help him out with certain things.

The most common thing to do is to "top up" to what he would have got on a full loan. For an English student living away from home outside London this is around £10k. If DC is on a minimum loan this works out to a shade over £100 per week. (It's what we and many other MNetters do.)

Mine finished in 2015 and 2018 but it varied as they stayed in different locations and did different courses.

DS did a regular course and lived in cheap city. We gave him £30 a week for food and paid his phone, books, toiletries, clothes. He worked in a petrol station for his socialising money. His maintenance loan covered his rent with a small amount over.

DD did an NHS degree with 50% placement, some placements were 60 miles away with overnight stays, so paid working was difficult. She was also in expensive city. Her loan didn’t cover the rent so we topped that up and gave her £100 a week, but she paid for her own toiletries and clothes and food from that and used the rest for socialising. We paid her phone.

Both were pretty much equally well off and physically “employed” overall.

We paid the accommodation in full for both our sons and they lived on their student loans budgeting themselves. They also worked during the holidays to top up their funds and pay for clothes, festivals, phones etc.

Thank you. DS will get about £6800 per year in his loan, which would mean he was about £3200 short of the full loan. If I made up the difference, it would be about £60 per week across the whole year , but around £85 per week if I only gave him money in term time. Does that sound about right?

That sounds right! We asked our DD which she would prefer and she has her "top up" spread over the whole year (but also worked in the long summer for extra cash). She is going into Year 2 and her rent is for the whole year so that makes sense. Depending on the course and the city, "get a term-time job" can be easier said than done.

DD is in catered halls, so we are giving her 200 per month, so really this is just to go out and bits and pieces. We have already paid for her gym membership and we will be paying for travel home.

She has saved about 1k with a summer job, so can top up also. She wants to get a job at uni but as others said, it's not that easy. She has already applied for a few online but go no response. Might be easier in person or at the uni itself!

Look at the scholarships and bursaries pages of the university. Work out what total amount of money a student would have who qualifies for maximum student loan, plus means-tested bursary, plus merit-based scholarship. That will be the amount that the uni reckons is needed, so top up to that amount.

DC1 going into 3rd year. Student loan covers rent/bills for the year. We then give £90 a week Sept to May for living expenses. They work all summer for additional spending money which gives them about another £60 a week to top up what we contribute.

Mine is going into second year so rent will take virtually everything from loan.

I plan on not giving a specific amount, but paying for a grocery shop here and there, bus pass, various subscriptions etc.

She also earned £6000 between last summer and this, so has a "cushion" that will undoubtedly become thinner and thinner this year.

Worth remembering that for students from England the max maintenance loan is around £1500 lower than the level it would be had it reflected inflation over the past two years.

for a student from England at Cardiff Uni their Welsh counterparts will have a max of £11,720 - and with no reliance on any parental contributions to receive that amount.

the other thing to consider will be second year accommodation - probably living out - hence a deposit plus likely rent over the summer months will need to be funded well ahead of the first maintenance loan for the 2nd year being received.

Yes sounds about right.

We did similar. Son ended up with £100-110 a week from us, and daughter with less expensive habits and cheaper town on £80-90.

Not every student can get a part time job. Some are doing full on courses. Son was doing STEM and daughter was in college every day all day.

For my two DC we paid their accommodation (shared equally with XH). They then lived on their minimum loan and topped up with work.

@Bouledeneige exactly what we’re doing
we pay their halls and their minimum loan ?4500pa is there living /eating money I pay their phone currently and will pay their bus pass probably if I can stretch to that

He gets a pt job, only on MN do I hear of students not being expected to work, he's not going to be in classes 40 hrs pw.

Do you have his timetable then? Useful! Perhaps let OP know so she can pass it on.

My dd moves to Liverpool on Wednesday. He will get £60 a week (he's rubbish at budgeting hence weekly) for food. I've done a big shop of basics for him already. He knows he has to get a job.

I agree they should work if possible but uni timetables can be really awkward to fit round- an hour here and there. They can't generally fit round student work patterns.

https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/studying-during-rises-in-the-cost-of-living/

has some interesting insights and useful links

However circumstances vary widely. Like @Marmitemyway and@Bouledeneige we are in a position to pay accommodation and leave our DCs to live off the minimum maintenance loan. Ours have further supplemented this through holiday working. None of them have worked term time as undergrads because, bluntly put, they had / have no need to. DS3 will be finishing his summer job next week and has probably earned in the region of £4k over the long summer break. He'll have saved a decent proportion of that (I hope!), but equally is able to fund from it a nice european holiday in the latter part of this month before heading back for the new academic year.

We give the maintenance loan and they work for extra cash if they want it. I give it termly so they can pay rent etc at the beginning (still in halls). Dh provides phones because he is a big softy but we’d help if they needed more. Realistically mine spend as little as possible so I think it’s easy. If you’ve got a spender then I’d pay rent and give a weekly allowance.

Dds student loan doesn't cover her accommodation, it's £2k short, so we'll have to find that, we'll also need to send her money for food each week (not sure how much yet though) we've said to dd that she'll need to get a job to pay for her social life.

I'm paying for DD's accommodation and her phone and she's using her maintenance loan (minimum) to live on plus some spending money from Grandparents. She should have about £130/week to live on. Her course is very full on and hands on, so I'm supportive of her not getting a job in term time, but I'll expect her to work in the summer.

My DC finished uni two years ago, I used to give them £85 per week term time only and pay their phone, any big items such as ball tickets, sports team kits, a bus pass etc.

I have a DS going into second year - last year we gave him the equivalent of the full maintenance loan, paying the accommodation from this and then giving him the balance as a monthly payment - worked out at £300 pcm so roughly £70 per week. However I think we will need to increase it this year to nearer £100 per week due to the increase in cost of living.

Agree with others that the blithe 'well, they just need to get a term-time job!' ideal is not always as easy as some posters make it sound. DS actually found it incredibly hard to get even a summer job this year - he applied for everything going but didn't even get a reply from most, aside from 'we are inundated with applications so we'll come back to you ASAP' type responses. Everywhere wanted permanent employees and many adverts stated 'please do not apply if you only want summer work'.

He is going to try and get a term time job at uni this year (non STEM course so relatively low contact hours) but even then it may not be straightforward. He has severe ADHD along with ASD so just juggling the demands of the course and social aspects of uni is pretty demanding for him.

@Teapleasebobb if it helps Ds spends about £37 a week on food, don't forget laundry costs about £3.60 ish for a wash, tumble drying is around £1.80 but some uni halls have free tumble drying. Then things like Amazon Prime, Netflix, phone.

@MumblesParty We give Ds £100 per week term time only which was plenty and they need to learn to live within their budget. We frontloaded an extra £100 for Fresher's week as they tend to go out to clubs etc.

Jobs wise it depends on their timetable and their workload. Ds had a 9 hour day with 8 hours of back to back lectures/tutorials/practicals in one day alone with a 1 hour for lunch. He was doing uni work during Christmas and Easter holidays too. STEM subject so in terms of workload probably 40 hours a week.