How to arrange payments

[deademptyduck]

Just wondering how parents spread their contribution to living costs?

My eldest daughter did nursing so her student loan plus bursary covered her accommodation costs and we gave her a set amount each month on top. Just looking now for my youngest daughter and we need to cover an accommodation shortfall of £1100 in September as soon as she starts, as the student loan alone doesn't cover it. So do we just deal separately with the accomodation payments three times a year. and only give her a set figure each month for living costs? Is this what most parents do?

I quite like the idea of her budgeting herself for all costs including accommodation but can't quite figure out how to work that!!

We paid the accommodation & ours lived on the (minimum) loan + jobs

For my two, I split the total amount we needed to top up according to term length and gave them three lump sums at the beginning of each term (or slightly earlier if that's when their accommodation was due)

As the accommodation bill will be in three parts yes that seems sensible to deal with that separately. Then a monthly stipend further expenses. Not many 18 year olds could easily budget getting a massive amount at the start to last all year.
My DDs loan plus her bursary cover her accommodation which is catered with enough left over that I don't have to give her anything (she's also very frugal). Next year living out and I'll give her a monthly amount to cover food as 52 weeks rent will eat up her maintenance, but again her loan will cover it and I have no worries about her budgeting. If it was her brother however, he'd have to probably pay several months rent up front as he loves to spend!

We paid any accom extras when requested by the Uni for halls and later for private landlords to our kids directly for them to pay on themselves.
In terms of top ups for living we gave a lump sum each term to ours. We didn’t do it monthly as we felt they need to learn to budget for themselves.

Ours had part time jobs and some savings from grandma.

Dd3 is still at uni and without a job. We send her money for food monthly. She is looking for a job. Thankfully she is at a uni where she can manage her rent.with student loan.

Dd2 goes back for her masters next year (hopefully) ds finishes his hopefully this year but I think we have another 3 years of children at uni before we are done. (Thats providing dd3 doesn't go for a phd)

Topped up her accommodation when it was due.

Paid for her season ticket.

DD prefers we pay her food money weekly. She has a part time job that pays for her social life.

My youngest prefers her money for food/living costs weekly on a Monday and accomodation monthly just before it is due.

We split the yearly parental contribution into 3 and give it to them just before each term starts. They have managed like this all the way through ( now in year 4) . They have 2 bank accounts and worked out how much they have to live on ( for food and fun) per week (taking into account accommodation costs for the year and what they estimate for bills). They don’t work during term time but work throughout the holidays so have always had a little buffer built/ topped up

The loan covers my yps rent. We give them money every week for food. Anything else they have to pay for with savings or the rest of their maintenance loan.

This is our plan too. Mine will get the minimum loan too.

When my DD went it was early in the process of government loans and we had to pay full accomodation and living costs for her based on our income. Now my foster child will be going in September. He'll get a full maintenance loan as classed as an independent student. He'll get £2k a year from our local authority as a care leaver. He might be lucky and get a small bursary as a care leaver at his uni. He'll have enough money for his accommodation cost in halls for the first year and a little left over. He has some savings we saved for him too. He still has us to help him. We'll pay him a monthly allowance to cover food, entertainment and any study materials he needs. We were thinking £275 per month. After the first year we would pay each term towards his accommodation and termly payments to him for food, bills and spends if he has shown us he can budget his money, if not it will continue as monthly. He plans to get a PT job over the summer after first year.

Will they be living with you and being fed by you in the university holidays? A monthly budget isn't that helpful if costs are "lumpy" throughout the year.

Each term is going to be 10-12 weeks depending on the institution. A weekly sum that comes term-time-only can be a very helpful way of doing this.

We paid accommodation and they lived off the maintenance loan. Still the case while taking postgrad although we also top up tuition fees. In halls that was three times a year, in flatshare monthly. If your dc needs to use the ml towards accommodation , can they work pt for living costs?

I pay the accommodation fees and DD lives off her student loan. She hasn't asked for any top up money so I have to assume she's managing OK on that.

Ds uses his loan to pay the bulk of his accommodation and we give him a top up each term. We then split the rest of our parental contribution and give it weekly or monthly (term time only). We can't afford to give it termly as as we contribute out of our earned monthly income.

If we were to pay his accommodation in full & letting him live on the minimum loan we would be paying between £7-8k per year. Doing it this way our contribution is a slightly more affordable £5.5k per year.

If she is living off the full minimum loan with accommodation paid in full that should be more than enough if she is budgeting well.. Minimum loan is currently £4,767.

A dc on full loan who pays accommodation of say £7,000 per year has approx £3,200 per year to live on.

After paying for accommodation (catered) DD starts on minus £6500.
She has a small amount of savings and we have given her £5000 and told her to tell us if she needs more. I prefer her to manage it so didn't want to give her a monthly amount
She also has a Credit card on her Dads account (paid off in full every month) that she can use if she needs to , she uses it for Ubers and books or equipment she needs for her course.
She is very good with money

We do this too. They have to budget for the term. That seems a good skill to us.
it recognises there are some things expensive weeks like Freshers and gives a chance to spend more then and they know they might need some lean weeks to balance it.

DC went to uni with some savings in a different account. They know they can draw on that if needed but so far haven’t. They’ve had about £200 left each term. Their aim isn’t to spend all they have but what they need to. They like having some left and building a bigger buffer each term.

I think it’s important for them to pay bills and budget and that we don’t do all the transactions for them, even from money we give.

We do the same a @Comefromaway where we don't pay the entire accommodation costs ourselves. The weekly supermarket food shop is £40 or less for Ds and he eats steak and salmon. His laundry is £8.50 weekly that is 2 loads, one for clothing, the other bedding/towels. That leaves him £50 per week for anything else as we give him £100pwk.

If we paid his self catered accommodation of £8k he would have £4767 to live on, over 30 weeks that is £158.90 a week. That is a lot. We cover him when he is at home.

We pay our share of the accommodation into Ds's student bank account just before the direct debit goes out, his entire student loan goes toward it. We pay him his weekly allowance into his Monzo account as that has pots for budgeting.

Yes, and bearing in mind some accommodation is closer to £10k if catered, students whose parents pay all the accom and then have all the min loan for spending have close to £15k per year which is substantially above a full maintenance loan.

I think lots of MN families say they will pay the accom and then let student have the min maintenance loan for spending, as it seems administratively easier and doesn’t require calculating what needed. I suspect some don’t realise quite how much above the full maintenance loan that gives them.

Personally, we started from a figure we thought they needed and worked back. Using this approach could mean students live on something closer to the full maintenance loan (we used £12.25k as the proper inflationary adjusted maintenance loan figure - covered fully catered halls plus £80 per week term time - has been plenty) and the extra £3k some of them were receiving and didn’t really need, could either save parents money or mean they took a smaller maintenance loan.

I think parents and students need to engage with the numbers - costs of accom, food, socialising and come up with a figure. Then ensure the kids have what is needed - could be all parental contribution or mix of that and student loan and/or money from student work in term time and/or holidays - according to family circumstances.

I’d also plan to review yearly rather than stick with ‘parent pays accom and live off min maintenance loan’ - 2nd and 3rd costs can differ a lot to first year. So what they need/receive can differ too.

Rather than automatically taking whatever loan was available, we look to take as little as possible. It will be paid off sooner. We work on the basis it will be paid back and less loan means paying it off sooner and less accrued interest - good for DC.
Even 3 years if min maintenance loan is an sig debt to be funding across many years when they might have childcare costs etc. What’s the point of having that so they could have £15k per year combined parent and loan contribution, if they could have lived really well on £12-13k?

I was thinking we'd pay our contribution to DSs costs monthly. That is fine for budgeting and is how it'll work for the rest of his life- he'll get a monthly salary and then a monthly pension, so why not monthly from us.

Obviously any top up on accommodation costs will have to be paid to him before it's due, which might be termly.

How much will depend on what accommodation he's allocated. He'll try and go cheap, but it's a gamble on what you get. I was thinking (based on questioning of current students) about £100 pw for food, travel and other costs.

Although we might review and change that if we find he's struggling...

Incidentally...

STUDENT LOAN APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN FOR 2025/26

She's also at a low cost uni - Aberystwyth.

So it definitely should be enough if she's sensible.......

Our contribution works out at about £68 per week.

Mine lives off min loan and we pay accommodation as the accommodation cost around £6000 was only just more than our required contribution.
There’s a mix in her flat inc international, Welsh and Scottish and NI so some have more money due to more generous loan systems outside England.

Mine got £1000 academic scholarship from uni too and I know her uni pays a £3000 scholarship to students on full loan.