How much for university maintenance

[Orquid]

How much you/ your child spend on maintenance per month at university: Food, accommodation, transport, entertainment, etc. If they live away from home; and what university or town are they in.

Thinking DD will need at least £900 per month. We only want her to borrow the fees so is not too much debt.

The general consensus seems to be that after rent, they need about £100pw to live on? Is that right?

Covering food, entertainment, hobbies, books, clothes, travel. Is that right?

Yes £100 a week is about right

(first year halls so no rent plus bills or wifi etc)
Loan doesn’t cover rent so we top up

then-

500£ per month which covers

subs/food/travel home/phone/meds/trips etc
Train is 60£
it seems like a lot but is actually just about enough

It is difficult to get a "typical" amount, as there are just so many variables.

Cost of accommodation being hugely different - not only one university to another, but the accommodation chosen (or, in some cases, allocated without being what they chose). Some students want en-suite, which adds at least £50 PER WEEK . Some students choose catered accommodation which adds more than £60 in many places. At some universities they have student villages that are further out which are cheaper than those on campus.

Then the expectations of the student vary hugely.
Are they used to budgeting? Do they like to get a bargain, and hunt down the yellow sticker items, or will they think "I fancy a steak tonight" or "I'm going to order a takeaway" on a regular basis. Do they 'get' cooking a bigger portion and using up over next few days or freezing?
Indeed, can they cook ? Would they expect to use up left overs?
Do they want to wash everything after every wear or are they more sensible ? (Laundry tends to be expensive at University).

Do they think gym membership and coffees out are something they are 'entitled to'? Expensive haircuts ? Make up ? Regular new clothes ?

Will you be taking and fetching them at the start and end of term or do they need to factor in train fares? If transporting themselves, will they get the Megabus for a tiny fraction of the price or only the train ?

She'll be paying that tax anyway. Even tuition fees only will accrue so much interest it won't be paid before written off unless gets a very well paid job very quick. Current interest is 7.8%. It's double most mortgages. It's stealth tax on the workers of future. They encourage as many as possible into these courses, they accrue debt they can't repay which builds so even if end up highly paid they'll be paying this extra tax most if not all their working lives. In 10 years or so I think there will be lots with £100K plus student debts because of interest.

DD's friends mainly worked on coffee chains , pubs or supermarkets; she worked as a nanny for a day a week and did some ad hoc work in galleries. During the hols she worked on cafes. DS did catering jobs eg weddings . DS2 does admin, coat checking, passing round drinks at events type work at a tourist attraction and tops up working for family members.

As well as term time work, you can earn £3K - £5K in the months after A-levels and before starting University in September.
Or some students take a year off to work full time for a year before starting.
So lots of students don't rely on a combination of loans and parents contributions.

If she's taking the maintenance loan this year and tuition fees loan, then she'll be paying 9% regardless of what loan she takes next year. The only difference is when she will finish paying it all off. If she earns well, then the 9% will do her less harm than scrimping and saving will do to you (assuming you're on a relatively low income). If she goes into something low-paid, she might never pay it all off, in which case you'd have scrimped and saved for nothing.

If you can afford to save, it might be more sense just to put that into a decent savings account and be able to help her out with a house deposit later, whilst still having access to that money in the meantime if you have a sudden big expense to deal with. You'd also have the option of helping her pay off the loan early once you know what sort of earnings she's heading for.

Check if there are any bursaries she can claim, ds starts in September & will get just over £5k a year in bursaries as he is a young carer & another for being the first of his generation in our family to go to university in his home city.

Just the thought of being in so much debt so young is depressing. Can’t believe interest are so high. It seems they will be paying the loan for a very long time.

We give our DC 1100 a month
No fees as in Scotland
They don’t take student loans or work term time

Rent in the first year in halls is typically paid termly direct to the university. After that it's just food and spending money so not so much, my dd spent about £60 a week on food, going out etc.

Lucky you.

Dd1 keeps the minimum maintenance loan (around 3.5k I think, can’t actually remember now) and we pay the accommodation- about £900 per month although it’s paid in quarterly installments where she’s going to be living this year.
the maintenance loan is plenty for her to live on considering how short her terms are, she comes home through the holidays as she has a job at home but struggled to find anything where she lives.

When my DC we're at university they used the (minimum) maintenance loan to live on and we paid accommodation. It worked out at £5-6K for us and they had around £80 a week to live on during term time. They got jobs to supplement that. I suspect that rents are higher now 2years on from the older one leaving.

The benefit of this approach is that they learn to be responsible for their living and going out expenses rather than us as parents directly paying for them (and being looked to for top ups).

I went to Warwick open day with my Dd a couple of weeks ago and was amazed to see a Pret on campus - I can barely afford Pret, let alone if I was a student! I did wonder what kids today think is reasonable to spend on a sandwich. Some of their halls were nearly 1k a month (not catered) - it’s a racket. We don’t even pay that on our mortgage. one of the students told us a lot of kids take Nespresso machines etc into their rooms. I think their standards of living are far more inflated than our were in the 90s!
It’s going to cost a fortune, basically… i will have two there at once and dreading the costs.

Thank you all. I think DD will need around 10k per year for maintenance plus the university fees. I didn’t realise how high the interest were and that they started accumulating them straight away.

DH grandparents were from Scotland and emigrated to Australia many years ago. DH got UK ancestry visa. Could we potentially get some Scottish documents for the kids to free them from these fees.Maybe a question for another thread? Just the thought of so much debt is depressing me.

Take the full loan-it doesn’t affect the amount they’ll pay monthly. Save your money to give them a property deposit, that’s far more useful. And they have to get a job, I worked throughout uni, and it really helped my career. I never even think about my student loan

https://www.savethestudent.org/student-finance/maintenance-loans.html

I am shocked that you haven't been invited into your child's sixth form to tell you all about the uni application process and finances. Shame on them for not doing this.

The above link will show you that the current full loan for living away from home outside of London is £10,227 and depending on your household income how much of that the gov funds and how much you are expected to fund to support your child.

The minimum maintenance loan a student can take out is £4767 if the household income is above £62,347. There is also a link to tuition fees on that link too.

The whole how much to fund your child depends on how much their accommodation costs will be and what lifestyle they and you expect them to have. Some require course materials, some will want or need to travel home, some will party party others won't, some will eat brunch every weekend at some chi chi cafe. Some students will work to support themselves, some are on courses that make working difficult due to contact time commitments.

Have a look at other threads on here for different unis and start looking ahead now at uni accommodation costs, Ds2's are around £7k for first year on campus costs. You can google the uni and accommodation and it will list their options giving you a good idea. Some places are incredibly expensive (Exeter, Bristol) others are much cheaper.

Ask any questions you have, this is a supportive board.

Ds has worked all the way through uni, in his uni city and when home. It has made a huge difference to us financially. He has worked in pubs, a food factory and a golf course. He has managed it around his course.

We paid the accomodation and they used the minimum maintenance loan to live on. Big difference in accommodations costs, DD1 was at Warwick which had some very cheap options, and also seems quite easy to get affordable accomodation for second and third years.

We’ve looked into this.
DS is hopefully going to a uni that has 3 meals a day, 7 days a week catered accommodation. It costs just shy of £10k.

On the basis that he won’t be needing much for food, beyond snacks and occasional meals not taken in his accommodation, we are factoring in £80 per week in term time on top - so £800 per term. We are not planning to give him money in the hols.

That works out at about £12.5k for the year.

He has a job over the summer now and will earn a couple of £k, plus has some saved from his Saturday job during sixth form. He won’t work in term time, but can return to his job to do a few shifts in holidays when at home and that should fund his holiday spending.

Nope they need to have spent a minimum amount of time in scottish schooling system to get it. Speaking as a fellow English dwelling Scot.

My son is at Reading. He gets minimum student loan, and lives off that to pay for food (about £20 a week), occasional take away, nights out and he has to pay for some of his bills from it too. We pay his rent, plus £20 extra per month to help with bills.

He doesn't work at Uni, but works FT when home during the holidays. He's about to go back for his third year and is hoping to get a PT job this year as he'd like to start saving for his own place post Uni

We have figured that we already pay for food and essential toiletries, laundry, essential transport and phone, so we will continue to do so monthly. If DC is in catered accommodation we will pay the difference between that and self-catered.

DC get a monthly allowance for clothing etc, so we will continue that too.

Accommodation will have to come out of the maintenance loan plus DC’s own savings. That may impact which university they choose.
Both DC have personal savings which were set up from birth, in order to contribute to university cost. DC2 has been putting half her pocket money/allowance in there every month since the age of 11.
DC1 doesn’t add anything extra in there. That possibly means more expensive university cities are out of reach unless working alongside or taking a gap year to earn first. DC1 will be applying next term and is aware of this - current favourite and likely insurance choice are both affordable. DC is working on the basis that maximum accommodation budget is £170 per week, which will leave a modest amount over for entertainment.