If the maintenance loan had risen with inflation, it would be about £12.25k.
Our DS is fully funded by us. We start from £12.25k and work backwards. He picks his accommodation and if he goes for more expensive there is less for other things and vice versa.
Given accommodation can be £8/9/10k in halls (upper end if catered) parents who pay the accom and then tell their DC to live on maintenance loan are looking at their DC having £13.5/14.5/15.5k per year. For most, this is in excess of what’s needed. Why not have less and either less parental contribution or less loan? The only reason I can see for ‘live off the maintenance loan and we pay accom’ is that it requires no real calculations.
In yr1 DS starting from the 12.25k figure had uni accom costing £9.75k £
(fully catered) and then had £2.5k on top. That gave him about £800 per term or £80 per week if a 10 week term. Given he had no bills or little food to pay for, it was plenty.
In yr2, rent is £715 per month or about £8.5k. He will then have £3.75k to cover bills, food and socialising.
He has more than many who have the full maintenance loan or whose parents give about £10k or top up to that. He has less than some. But it’s been fine.
He will have no debt as we pay. He doesn’t work term time, but has worked in summers and maybe a week at Easter/Christmas and already had savings from a 6th form job. This means he has several £k in the bank as back-up.
As parents, we paid a deposit for yr2 house, early in autumn term of 1st yr. We also started giving him yr2 money in July of yr1 as his rent agreement started from then. Of course anyone fully reliant on maintenance lon won’t get that money until Sept/Oct but will be making rent payments for 3 months before.
So parents budgeting, consider deposits for the 2nd/3rd year if they will be in private accom and also that rent payments begin in private 2nd/3rd accom in July at end of yr1 not in Sept/Oct yr2. These things mean they might need chunks of cash (hundreds for deposit, thousands for 3 months rent and bills) at times you might not have expected.
We give money termly. This allows them to budget for expensive weeks (ie freshers) and cheaper weeks, whereas monthly or certainly weekly makes thus harder as spending isn’t evenly spread. But DC can cope with this and he won’t blow the lot as some might.