How often do you give your DC top-up money for university?

[llamalines]

If your DC don't get the full grant, how often do you give them your contribution?

Do you give them it fairly often e.g. weekly or monthly, or do you give them a larger sum and let them manage it e.g. termly or yearly?

Thanks :)

I think in recent years it has become more common sadly - and I'm not saying that to guilt parents.

The cut off bands for the level of loans a student is eligible for haven't changed since 2008. The cost of living crisis coupled with the pandemic (where lots of households lost money through lockdowns etc) means that many - especially those with younger children and drastically increased mortgage payments simply cannot afford to top up the loan their DC receives to the maximum level.
It's not a case of just giving up the weekly takeaway to find the money - many just do not have anything to cutback.

Equally, student loans have not kept up with inflation, meaning that even the max amount barely covers rent in some places.

In many student towns, finding part time work is no where near as easy as it used to be.

@Comefromaway even the max available maintenance will not cover my DDs halls (catered). Working part time (and/or full time over the summer) could go a ways to pay for extras (if one considers personal hygiene products , train/bus fares and the odd book 'extras'), but as her course will be full on I don't want her exhausted (she has MS). As it is she will get near the max but will be £1000 short for accommodation, so I'll make that up.
OP I'll be giving her a monthly allowance which she doesn't get now living at home. This will help pay for societies, clubs, personal items, train/bus etc. Items like clothes she can pay for herself (she's very frugal on this). I'll pay for her phone. The big difference is she's catered so shouldn't need any food, but I'm sure the odd hot chocolate and socialising will require some money spent!
I also look at it that she can always save it uf she doesn't need it. Hopefully between the two of us we will save enough so she'll only need the minimum loan next year (I don't care what Mr Lewis says, 7% interest accruing from day one and even my accountant thinks borrowing less up front is a better idea).

My DD liked fortnightly. She found it easier to keep on top of her spending that way.

I did it every Monday morning for the first year, then moved to monthly for the rest.

DC get minimum loan which goes towards rent, we paid the balance of rent termly as it became due.

We then paid living expenses - gave them £200 for Freshers Week (to cover quite expenseive freshers' trips / ball / club subscriptions) and then they get a weekly allowance (term time only) every Monday.

There were no big spends after Freshers Week (other than Christmas / Summer Ball tickets which they covered by budgeting).

They work during holidays to supplement what we give them - one DC cannot work in term time due to the course, the other DC has applied for several jobs and not found anything - as a couple of posts have mentioned, its not always easy for DC to find PT jobs in uni towns / cities.

@mondaytosunday as an aside, just checking to make sure your DD has applied for DSA (Disabled Students Allowance). It doesn't usually provide monay ( although sometimes it will reimburse taxis etc), but aims to provide equipment and support to assist students with extra needs. It is excellent. Additionally, it is a good idea to make contact with the Student Support Services at the uni before your DD arrives so that any assistance can already be in place.

I echo what Seeline says about applying for DSA which may help towards some of the extras specifically related to her condition. My son was offered taxi fayres but he was honest and said that buses and trains not only didn't phase him but it was one of his obsessions!

My daughter turned down one place on the basis of there being a high possibility of only being offered catered accommodation and another place on the basis of higher accommodation costs than usual in that particular area.

It’s a real issue in England as lots of parents don’t consider themselves high earners or have high outgoings but it’s enough to only get min loan. Required top up of £5500 a year is a huge amount especially if more than one child at uni.
Both parents earning min wage are required to top up £3000 a year. I bet if you did a straw poll most people would think a child of a couple on minimum wage would get a full loan.
If you aren’t going to pay expected top up then I do think you need to be clear early on before they have started looking at universities so they can look locally or take a gap year to work.

True.
People on here sometimes talk about parents having to financially support their children at University as though it's something new, but it isn't. I was at University in the 80s and my brother in the late 70s and our parents definitely contributed. Grants, as loans now, were means tested. We weren't well off so a good proportion of our funding was from the grant but my parents still had to top it up. The income threshold to be eligible for a 100% grant was pretty low even then so most families that I knew were paying at least something. My best friend was quite well off so she only got the minimum grant and her parents were basically funding everything. Far fewer students seemed to work in those days too.
From the students' perspective things are much worse now of course as in those days there were no tuition fees and the grant wasn't repayable, but I don't feel that as a parent I am being asked to do anything different to what my parents were doing 40 -50 years ago.

You're right that the concept of parental assistance has not changed, its the level of contribution that is much more onerous that it was in the 70s or 80s. I was at uni in the 1990s and there was still a means tested "grant" that could be topped up with a student loan. That more than covered my rent with some left over, and my parents topped me up for food / living costs. Everyone, including me, had part time jobs are uni which were easy to find and we had student jobs in the uni holidays.

The vast majority of students now are only eligible for the minimum student loan which in 99.9% of cases, will not even cover rent. That means that parents are having to top up rent (often in the thousands of pounds) and then pay living expenses on top of that. Add to that the difficulty in lots of places of students finding part time jobs at uni / holiday jobs and the burden on parents to fund the "gap", in the main, is far, far higher than it was in the 70s / 80s / 90s.

Yes my parents funded me in 90s and I worked in holidays.
Costs were lower. accommodation costs and length of contract is vastly different now. Term time only isn’t a thing at most places and contracts stretch into July when they finish weeks before. My catered halls in 90s were term time only. I didn’t start until October (not Oxbridge)
Summer before I went I worked ft shifts in a factory min wage type job, 1 weeks wage covered 2 fully catered weeks at uni with money to spare.
If parents had split only mums income counted even if lived with a new partner. My dh got a full grant despite his mum being remarried.

Standards/expectations have changed as well though.
Obviously the world changes and there are things like phones,laptops and WiFi that are more or less essential now that didn't even exist in my day (much less spend on books though) but I think sometimes wants get confused as needs. When looking at accommodation for my DC I thought some of the halls looked more like hotels with their en suites and on site gyms etc. I shared a room, never mind a bathroom in my first year at University and so did loads of other people at my University.
And hardly anyone had a car. A much higher proportion of my DC's friends run cars and they're generally quite new too.
I know the accommodation isn't necessarily a choice - sometimes you have to take whatever is left - but presumably this change was driven my demand? My DC picked accommodation with shared facilities and it was fine - 2 showers and 2 toilets between 7 so a lot better than halls in my day. However, when we were looking around at the offer holders' day there were several families who walked in and walked straight out commenting that their DC wouldn't consider anywhere that wasn't en suite! That accommodation was several thousand pounds a year cheaper than the one with the en suites and the gym. Student life doesn't have to be extortionately expensive. I've just calculated how what I give my DC compares to the maximum loan and to my surprise it's quite a bit less - not because we can't afford more but because they don't need it. It was ever thus though. I graduated with thousands of pounds in the bank that I'd saved. Other people on my course had overdrafts of the same or more. You do have some control over what you spend.

We pay the rent/hall bills termly and then they live on their (min) loans. DS is at Oxbridge doing a STEM subject so can't work in the term time and doesn't really find time in the holidays, but it's significantly cheaper for him to live in college so he manages to pay to ski and go to May Balls and things without additional help.

DD is going into her second year - first year seemed expensive but included all meals as well as accommodation. She is able to work in the holidays though and this upcoming year, has a lease where her bills are included (up to a cap) so we will see how well they manage to budget!

Monthly
No loans

We paid all the rent for both children.
They had their maintenance loan and we topped them up.
It's paid off as both of them got great degrees and post graduate qualifications and have solid careers.
The sneering at parents helping their kids is ridiculous. We are late fifties and could probably be retired by now but chose to help them.

Another one who pays rent while dd lives off minimum loan. Rent is 8K/year so total is way over the max loan as that is only about 9.5K. Dd is pretty frugal but I don't think even she would manage on 1.5 K/year. Loans are totally out of date now and I hear a lot of shock from parents who had know idea about the shortfall.

My only one still at uni prefers her money weekly on a Monday.

and I hear a lot of shock from parents who had know idea about the shortfall

Me, too. I have also read a lot of smugness on some posts over the years from people proudly stating they haven’t given their child a penny and their loan was enough to live on (insinuating those students who couldn’t live off theirs were being extravagant or the opposite parents indulgent). It invariably turns out that they had the maximum loan.

I saw this reply whilst I was at work and it has really angered me. I have flipped back and forth between responding or ignoring it but I have to answer. Our DD never asked for us to pay off her overdraft, she was reducing it. We came into some money and we decided to help her by paying it off. If we could have afforded to give her an allowance we would have but we are not huge earners, our joint income was under £45k (2018-2021) after the monthly commitments there wasn’t a huge amount left for food, clothing etc. we also have a younger son. To say that we haven’t accepted our parental responsibility is really offensive. Just because your DHs parents spent their money in obvious ways doesn’t mean that we behaved like them. Unlike your DH there is no resentment towards us from our daughter.

We paid their rent. They used the student loan and wages from part time jobs to live on. I’d send them the odd £100 here and there and do a food shop delivery every now and then. .

Yes, you're right, I was thinking of the money parents give to top up the loan - but the other stuff is really interesting too.

I agree. Lots of people (students or sometimes their families) see optional extras as essentials and therefore these have to be funded.

The thing that surprises me is how many parents say they pay the rent and then their DC lives off the minimum loan. If the minimum loan is about £5k, that’s giving them £166 per week in university term time…..seems an awful lot. Even if divided by the whole year it’s basically £100 per year. Given lots of university towns will have rent of close to £10k, that means their maintenance is £15k, which is significantly in excess of the full maintenance loan.

But of course, everyone is free to do what they like with their money and if they can afford that then fine. Personally, if I was giving them that much, I’d encourage them to take less loan and live on a smaller amount so there was less debt. But often people seem to think that if they’re taking on debt, they might as well have the maximum amount….and then they can the en-suites and all the takeaways etc. And yes I know that the total borrowed has no impact in the mo they payments as they are determined by salary. But the more borrowed, the more compound interest and more years it will be being paid back,Maddy I g you work and earn enough.

One thing I wonder about is how many parents do detailed calculations….do they look carefully at costs of different accommodations, loan amounts and start with a budget in mind. Or do they simply decide to go for what seems straightforward in terms if they will pay the rent and often phone and contact keneses and the minimum maintenance loan can be used by the student for living. Are they aware when they do this that they are giving significantly in excess of the full maintenance loan? Do they know or consider it something to even consider? I suppose essentially I’m wondering if people start with a budget in mind and work from there, look at the costs and then calculate what they will give, or have simply decided they will pay the rent and student take full maintenance loan regardless of what the costs locally might be.

The firm and insurance dd has picked the full yr accommodation costs are pretty much our expected contribution (£5500) so I think we will pay accommodation. If she ends up somewhere else or in more expensive accommodation then rethink.