How much per month do you give your young person?

[0hno]

I think the loan should cover the accommodation so I'm wondering how much to give them per month to live on? They don't spend much, don't drink (currently!)

I strongly advise against the (popular) pay for their accommodation and leave the student to live on the maintenance loan approach, if you are on a low / fixed budget. Accomodation varies from about £4-£9k. Some includes food, some doesn't. If food is included, the maintenance loan is very, very generous for 'play' money. It is too blunt an approach and doesn't encourage the student to take control of their own budget and choose the accomodation that suits their budget.

Much better to work out how much you can afford and encourage the student to choose accomodation, work and budget within that.

You have not let her down!! My mum was a single mum of 4 kids, I am the oldest. She couldn’t afford to give me anything, and also couldn’t afford to pay my fees. I went in 2003 when fees had to be paid up front. I worked my way through. I know this may not be possible for your DD but I’m sure you can find ways - could she be Oxbridge material? I went to Oxford and accommodation is way cheaper as it’s only for 3 x 8 week terms, the colleges want their rooms back in the holidays so you pay less. They also have a lot more bursaries and scholarships available once you get there.

Dd starts in September. Her loan will just cover her rent for the first year with about £60 left.

She's planning on working as much as possible over the summer to try to save up and will have to get a part time job at uni.

I have managed to save 6k for her over the years so will give her 2k of that each year of her degree to help her out. Works out about £38/week. I was hoping that this wouldn’t be needed but hadn’t realised how expensive student rent was now.

I will also continue to pay for her phone contract as it’s only £7/month and will send her off with a shop of toiletries and non perishables to help her out. I’ve also paid the deposit for her accommodation.

When I was at uni there were loads of us just living off our loans without parental contribution so I naively thought it would be the same now but now that I’ve seen how high accommodation costs are these days I can see that it’s very difficult. I’m quite worried about how dd will afford it all tbh.

Ds commutes to uni. He is in 5 days a week.

We provide roof over head, some evening meals as he is out a lot, car insurance, and £120/month (never stopped allowance he had a school which also covered school lunches). He also gets cash for Christmas and Birthdays from us and family (maybe total £1k a year)

Otherwise he earns around £7k a year working (mostly weekends term time, and more through holidays) and pays for everything else himself - gym membership, phone, fuel for car, clothes, a decent amount of socialising/hobbies and also has paid for 2 x holidays abroad with friends (cheap flights/sharing rooms etc)

I went to uni 12 years ago, no help from parents but my fees were paid for (NHS) I got a maintenance loan of £3K a year and a £650 a month bursary before they did away with it and I had a job doing 10-15 hours a week. I just about got by (in London). I wouldn't of survived on £50 a week, not a chance

Everyone I knew at university had a job - usually retail so most of us worked Sat/Sun and a 5-9 on a Thurs or other week night shifts it it was open.

I don't think anyone I knew didnt work. We all just accepted that was the way it was.

We send dd £100 per week, top up her maintenance loan to cover rent and bills (she gets the minimum loan and it absolutely does not come close to covering the rent), she works when she’s home and did work while at uni during the first year but this was for her to go travelling during May-September last year.
We also pay for her phone and her car but only uses this when home as she has nowhere to park it where she is now.

We are paying DD's accommodation and she is living on the minimum maintenance loan.

I do think this is becoming a huge problem and I suspect will lead to more DC choosing to go to local universities or do distance learning or apprenticeships (although not enough apprenticeships currently available). There is a huge swathe of middle earners that earn too much for their DC to get full maintenance loans but are limited in what they can do to help financially. Getting a job is not always possible depending on course, location and your individual child.

OP - has your DC applied for Disabled Students Allowance? It won't give extra money per se, but will fund "things" to enable them to study that they might otherwise have to pay for themselves.

You haven't let her down OP. Ultimately, people go to uni as adults, and if necessary they need to take some responsibility for paying towards that choice.

When I went to uni student loans had just come in so my parents paid my accommodation and tuition fees and then I used the loan (I think the lowest amount that could be awarded) to live off. But as others have said, a student lifestyle wasn't one of constant spending. I know my first year, when I was in halls, all meals were catered for during the week and at the weekend we lived off cereal and toast. I have fond memories of hanging the milk bottle out of my window in a carrier bag to keep it cold! We occasionally went to the student bar, where drinks were cheap, or met up in each other's rooms.

I hope to be able to do the same for my daughter if she wants to go - pay her accommodation and fees. But she'll have to use student loans or any savings she's built up by then to pay for general living costs. And if for whatever reason I can't afford to pay for fees etc then she'll have to work for a couple of years to save up money to put herself through uni. Or not go. That's just life.

We take DS’s minimum loan and top it up to pay accommodation. Then transfer £500 per month each (we have two DC at uni so it is very hard!)

You haven’t let her down OP . The system means that she can’t borrow enough to live .

Can she take a gap year and work or change her university to one that is commutable ?

We pay for accomodation and phone
He gets his loan to live on.

Okay thanks for all the replies. Still feeling pretty guilty and amazed at how much people are able to help.
I looked up the average amount that parents help each month to and it says £227, so that has made me feel a bit better. I guess some kids get full loans so that brings that down a bit.

Thanks for all the suggestions, she is trying to get work but most jobs for young people are in bars and cafes and she has no eye contact and facial tics so it's difficult. She is very capable though and intelligent.

I think £40 is enough for food anyway, we are a family of four and spend £110 at the moment.

Hopefully there will be other kids who don't have lots of money from parents so they can do cheaper things.

She only buys charity shop clothes anyway and not interested in brands etc

I may have to try and find a better paid job in time for number two child!!

I agree, paying ds's accommodation would mean we would have to find £7,600 per year, meanwhile ds would be living the highlife on his minimum loan.

As it is we pay just over £5,400 per year which for us is more manageable and gives ds enough for the basics and an incentive to earn more. He knows that if he chooses cheaper accommodation he has more to spend and vice versa.

Just to say don't discount part time hospitality work. My autistic dd (with no eye contact) has held down jobs as a theatre usher and coffee shop barista. Some places are more accommodating than others.

Assuming financially able this always seemed a reasonable approach.

past tense as the max maintenance loan in England has fallen badly behind inflation over the past couple of years to the tune of a near £2000 shortfall. Max maintenance loan in England for 24-25 (not London) is £10,227; for a student from Wales it is £12,150 by way of comparison. So topping up the the current English max loan stills leaves a student potentially short.

To add to the funding challenge for many households food inflation of course went far higher than core CPI, and as for gas and electric….add to that the mortgage rates climbing more quickly than might have been anticipated a perfect financial storm unfortunately now faced. I suppose we should all be thankful that accommodation cost costs have been frozen……….sorry of course they’ve continued their upward trajectory as well.

as a slight digression for students from Wales the max loan effectively has no upper household income threshold. The only household income impact is the mix between grant and loan components.

and whilst I’m having a general rant (to be clear not in any way at @Comefromawayor the OP ) there is the small matter in England of the income threshold for the maximum loan being frozen at £25k since 2007 / 2008, and the upper threshold only moving marginally. Tracking inflation a household income of c36-37k should now be the max loan threshold and nearer the £90k mark for the minimum.

I think she'll need £100/week during term time, could possibly survive on £75, but it would be stressful and probably detract from her uni experience.

Does her uni have any grants or bursaries she might be able to access?

Can she get extra funding as a disabled student?

If it comes to it, use her savings. It's what they're for.

No offence taken. In fact I had a rant about it myself about a year ago. We were lucky in that our income had been stable for about 6-7 years before ds went to university so we were able to plan however last year dh lost his job. He now has another but is on about £10k less. So we have had to tighten our belts (we are still just over the threshold.)

But for a student on maximum loan (and this is still what we do for ds) whose parents are not in a position to give any extra the figures are frightening. In his first year in halls on site ds paid £7,037 per year. The following year the exact same halls had gone up to £7,800 per year and this year the same room is £8,256 (for 43 weeks, not even the full year).

But the student loan didn't anywhere near increase by that amount.

Twins at Uni here
Both get the minimum loan
It doesn’t cover the halls this year or their shared rentals next year.
As with our eldest ( now finished Uni)
They use their loan to pay rent and we top up to cover the full amount. ( this allows for ridiculous rents increases that SLC hasn’t really taken account of)
We give them £ to equal the full maintenance loan then, because SLC haven’t accounted for food etc price rises, we pay for travel to and from us ( or drive them ) and give them food packs of expensive stuff like marmite, oil, etc each time they come home.

Ours have secured summer jobs.

I think Unis will continue to do this as parents continue to top up.
Also some Unis don’t have their own halls, they are private.

they are all taking the p…!

The SLoan shouldn’t increase it just means more to pay back with ever increasing and unknown interest. The rent for students needs to go down.

Let’s be fair to the Student Loans Company. All they do is administer the loans. All policy decisions are taken by Governments - plural as education is devolved. SLC is a non-profit making government owned organisation, not a private business.

Dd gets minimum loan which this year covers her accommodation. We pay the bills (I'm guessing about £25 a month but I haven't kept track, we pay for her phone and gym membership (£25 each monthly) and we also pay for her car insurance (£100pm). So if your child doesn't have a car or a gym pass those things are irrelevant! Other than that, we give her £60 a week in term time to cover food and petrol. She comes home fairly often and we seem to end up buying her food shops!

She works 12 hours a week in term time and a different zero hours job in the holidays. She tends to buy and sell all her clothes on Vinted, so there's no extra expense there. She manages to go on quite a few holidays each year and she has an active social life... She's managing on what we're giving her, plus her earnings, although she didn't pay herself for the car repairs needed recently. On the other hand, she's paid for 2 parking tickets and a speed awareness course herself!

Wow.
Thats quite inexpensive accommodation. She’s very lucky.

@GivePeaceAChance we gave her a budget and she and her friends managed to find a house for £80 a week in Nottingham - most of her other friends are paying £120 plus. Unfortunately they've had to move to a bigger house for year 3, which is going to be £105 per week - still really cheap compared to the average, but we'll have to top up. I think the cheap houses are there if you look for them, it's just that most students aren't sticking to a budget so they go for the nicer ones (there is quite a difference in the standard of accommodation dd is living with, compared to some friends in more expensive houses).

I think the cheap houses are there if you look for them,

I think it depends where you are at university. In some areas "cheap" is still pretty expensive! We were fortunately in a position to tell DD she should pick the university with her preferred course, regardless of cost, but not all parents can do this. We are going to end up with a situation where many students go to their local uni, or cheaper areas rather than being able to choose the university on merit. Although Oxford and Cambridge can be cheaper due to shorter terms and more money coming in.