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.

I just went onto the website and DD can get £4,700 if studying away from London, £6,700 if studying in London and not living at home; and £3,700 if studying in London and living at home. Rounded figures. She will definitely have to borrow the maintenance loan

Ours recently had around 6000-7000 per year, to supplement the student loan and tuition fees package. It does depend on whether they are doing a course which allows free time to work.

BBC News - Student loans: Almost 1.8 million owe more than £50,000 - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2xxp2gv4d1o

I would suggest most students don’t need the minimum maintenance loan as ‘live-on’ money if that’s beyond rent, which parents pay.

In many universities halls cost close to £10k. If parents pay that and the. Give their kids the maintenance loan of close to £5k, they have £15k per year. They really don’t need that much.

It might be a simple calculation to do it like this, but it is more costly than it needs to be.

In my view, better to work out what is needed based on rent, food and then other expenses. Subtract the maintenance loan achieved and then parents give the rest, or parents give some and students earn rest.

We have calculated based on nearly £10k hall costs for fully catered which is 7 days a week, plus an extra £80 per week in term time. That brings total to about £12.5k.

Leave the issue of rent to one side. It differs dramatically and it is what it is. In some ares rent will "only" be £6k.

Leaving that aside if your dc gets the minimum maintenance loan that is £4767 for 24/25. Spread over 30 weeks that is £158.90 a week term time only. For those at Oxford or Cambridge it will be a very high weekly amount - almost £200 since they're only there for 24 weeks.

We personally think that is too much and allow £500 a month during term time only which equates to just under £17 a day (£117 per week). For DS that is sufficient and he certainly hasn't scrimped in any way. We then put the maintenance loan towards rent and then top it up. Its also then fair for all University attending children in a family since they all get their rent topped up and then the same weekly living amount.

However lots of families do simply allow their child to live off the minimum maintenance loan because it's a simple way of managing it all and then they pay their rent for them. Remember also that in the second term they also need to pay a deposit for second year housing.

Mine will get the minimum maintenance, so I'll make up accommodation (which covers bill). I'll prepay the one meal a day plan for mine and they'll have £60 spends. I pay their car, insurance petrol, parking permit, phone etc. They have a new laptop and access to my Amazon account. Of course bank of mum is always open for emergencies, but I think its important for them to be encouraged to learn to budget and get have a part time job for extras. I'll have 5 years of uni to fund for my two dc, with an overlap, so I'm looking at a total of £32,000.

DD's halls in Brighton are £192 per week, plus food/living of £80 a week. She has a part time retail job which keeps her in clothes/make-up etc.

Maintenance loans are supposed to cover the whole 52 weeks, not just term time. That is why final year students get less - it only covers until the course finish date, not through to September.
On that basis, they get about £90 a week on minimum loan which doesn't seem excessive if self catering.

There are no right answers as to what to give other than that the state expects parents to make up the minimum to the maintenance element that would go to a student with parents on the breadline - ie making up minimum to maximum as indeed my parents had to do in the 1980s to make my tiny minimum grant up to the maximum much bigger one.

I chose to pay the fees for my 5 children and the rent and their maintenance on top but work full time and could afford it but that is quite rare and even richer parents tend to have their chidlren take out the loans. For me it felt a similar amount to what day school fees had been so I just continued the pain a bit - 5 years in the case of the last two who did 2 years post grad law after their initial degree. As 4 of the 5 children are London lawyers they would have had quite a bit to repay as fairly high salaries but even the one who is not a lawyer is glad he has no student loan.

Your child needs to be resident in Scotland for three years ( not for the purposes of education ) to qualify. It’s to do with residence not ancestry.

One of my kids is useless at managing money so I transfer it weekly on a Monday.

I plan to give the money for a term ahead. I want them to have the experience of budgeting and that some weeks are more expensive than others. I know Freshers will be expensive, for example. Some weeks might be much cheaper. Also planning to have the house deposit for 2nd year ready for when they need it, separate to their termly money.

DS is going in September and we are paying his accomodation and he is having the maintenance loan to live on.
However he has worked full time since last June and has saved most of that money (he’s used some of it for holidays this year and paid car insurance etc).
This job will also be here for him when he comes home in the summer and also at Easter/Christmas as well if he wants some hours.

@JOS I think that’s very sensible. 👍