University budget 2026

[Bk101]

I'd be really grateful to hear from parents of current students what you think a reasonable monthly student budget is excluding accommodation outside London. My daughter is off to cardiff on a very full time course so no opportunity to work part time. All the online sites indicate somewhere around mid £500s a month is reasonable however she's worked out a budget of double that and when I check her assumptions, they are mostly reasonable, I get it down to about £800. Some real life experience appreciated as I don't want her to struggle but equally don't want to be funding a massively extravagant life style.

Mine has about £100 per week, on top of rent & bills. Cardiff is cheaper than a lot of cities - you have chosen well.

Can you break down your £800? That seems a lot.

So what are the reasonable expenses? Halls mostly include WIFI with bills in the package so basic phone should be okay, we have family spotify anyway. What is she budgeting for food, nights out etc? At least she and you are thi king about it so thats a plus.

One daft colleague just let his kids have unfettered access to a credir card “for emergencies” on top of £600 a month and regretted that.

For both of ours we pay accommodation and they keep the minimum maintenance loan. That works out about 100 a week I think term time and they have holiday jobs for spending money out of term time. That seems plenty.

It's amazing how much accommodation costs vary around the country though.

Mine has the minimum loan to live on and we pay the rent. This is a common arrangement so she does not feel disadvantaged compared to peers. I also pay her SIM card, and she's on our family Netflix and Spotify packages. If a bus pass was essential, I would probably pay for that too.

So your dd estimates £1k and your estimate is £800... and that's excluding rent? That is crazy.

It might be helpful if you can post the breakdown? Ours is off to Uni in September, we’re budgeting for around £500 per month in term
time.

That sounds excessive to me. My daughter goes in Sept, catered halls already paid for and we’re giving her £200 per month. We agreed to pay 2 x train fares per month (to home or boyfriend) and also cover the cost of anything she “needs” for her course, eg. Books. We already pay her SIM on a monthly plan, Spotify and Netflix. She is aware any additional going out money needs to come from wages from uni/holiday job. Tbh, I don’t know what students would be spending all this on. I managed on a ridiculously low income like most students at uni with me.

Watching because I’m trying to do the same calculation at the moment. Not helped by DH disagreeing with whatever I suggest

£75 a week here (Durham) spending money - she has a job to earn the rest. £800 a month is bonkers. Food costs her around £35 a week, the rest is for spends. She does well and actually saves a bit.

We pay for accommodation and bills (which is actually higher than the minimum loan on its own!) plus £50 a week spending money. That isn't much, but they work in the holidays to top it up. They don't have term time jobs.

That is extremely generous! DD had around £100 week from us, plus her student loan; that topped her up to what "maximum loan" would have been. She paid rent out of that combined sum and lived off around £75/week when in halls and £50/week when in a private HMO.

Your calculations are off. Minimum maintenance loan for 2025/2026 was £4915 so over 30 weeks for term time only that is £163 and change.

OP think more of what your child will be paying out because everyone spends on different things. We give our child £100 per week term time only. They use their entire loan to pay for their accommodation and we top up to pay the shortfall as their rent is over £8k. They are in private halls of residence so en-suite.

Course materials, very few for my child.
Laundry, 2 loads a week about £7, one for clothes, one for bedding and towels.
Food, supermarket shop is about £40 but he eats very well from that.
We provide some basics like washing pods, toilet roll, toiletries and replenish them them when we are collecting them for holidays.
Mobile phone, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, gym membership, travel costs and the big one; socialising.

My youngest child who is at uni doesn't drink alcohol but my eldest did. He did more £1 cans of fruit cider in the kitchen than £4 pints in the pub. It depends on the friendship groups.

In Liverpool I got by on about £80 per week in the recent past and I went out drinking at least once per week. Fed myself and walked most places.

Right. So both mine had rooms in halls for 38 weeks, and my eldest stayed right up to the end. Maintenance was 4915 so 129. Pretty close to the ball park figure of 100 a week, especially given that holiday work pays at the end of a month so they would generally need money for the first couple of weeks of holidays. But you feel free to tell people they're wrong for working in approximations! And I did say about, not precisely!

After rent mine both have £125 a week. It's about right. They have travel which costs about £20 a week, laundry which is about £6/7 a week and then everything else. We don't give them money during the holidays, only during term time plus an extra top up for freshers week

We give our DD £500 a month. Her student loan pays for her accommodation (it’s a cheap city!). She says £500 a month is plenty. She’s in student residence so most bills are covered. So it’s for food, toiletries, clothes, washing, going out, mobile phone. She doesn’t work term time but works in the summer.

£800 a month seems very generous if that doesn’t include accommodation.

It’s worth baring in mind that this site is going to give you a distinctly middle class view, too.

All the kids I lived with at uni (about a dozen over three years) got by with very little parental contribution and either worked, skimped, or both.

My Dad slipped me £20 for going out when they dropped me at halls, and aside from that I didn’t see a penny off them for the remainder of the three years. That is more typical than this forum will tell you.

Thank you for all the helpful replies so far. It sounds like the online numbers are close to most people's experience. Apologies i can't pay break down now as it's at home and I'm in the office however I know food was one area we were way over, she is a rower and I can't imagine how she'll survive on £35 pounds a week?? Note her course is effectively a full time job so only 6 weeks holiday a year and 40 hours a week half if of which will be on shift in hospitals so there is no way she can earn top up money.

Hi OP. Our DC get £850/month (exc rent). We also pay for their phones, any travel home, and give them extra for big one-offs eg new winter coat or May ball ticket This is a lot more than many students get however (and of course less than some get).

You need to think about the following-

• do you expect her to get a job in term time?
• do you expect her to get a job in the holidays with the primary aim of earning money (rather than work experience that might pay much less)
• what do you think is a reasonable lifestyle that you would be willing to fund?
• what can you afford?

Then build it up based on that. For us, we're happy to pay for a decent food budget, a coffee and sandwich out as a regular thing, a few drinks in the evening, a certain amount a month on clothes and toiletries, cinema or a club night every so often etc . Once you start adding all that up, you very easily get to the kinds of figures you're finding. The thing is, a lot of students work part time to fund these things and a lot can't afford things like buying a sandwich out for lunch. You cut your coat according to your cloth.

You will get a lot of people on here telling you these amounts of money are crazy, but plenty of students have them (and some have a lot more), while others have a lot less. The key is to find the amount you can afford and that you feel happy with.

I give my son at Cambridge £500 at the start of term and then I ask him at the end of each month how much he has left and top it up. Sometimes he spends it all and sometimes he has a bit left over. He doesn’t drink so that obviously helps to reduce his living costs.

I think £800 is excessive on top of accommodation, especially in a cheap city like Cardiff. We told DD we'd give her £1000 each month to cover everything except phone contract and it was up to her whether she went for cheap accommodation and more to spend on food or vice versa. She went for cheap accommodation which left just over £500 a month for all her other spending but she kept a close eye on her budget and kept it comfortably below £100 a week. She's saved the rest for next year.

Flatmates make a big difference, DD's were all trying to live cheaply so there were a lot of cheap nights in the flat (again on fruit ciders!) with the odd night at 'spoons.

DD lives off the maintenance loan which is about £500 a month and finds it plenty. She also works in the summer but I would say that is to fund holidays and socialising rather than basic budget. That's covering everything except we do pay for a big food shop when we drop her off.

It does depend what you expect it to cover. Some parents (for example) pay for more food shops and things like phone/gym/transport. They will also help with buying the initial "start up" items.

I agree with others - it would be useful to sense check the budget if you don't mind sharing.

£800 per month seems high.
What is she planning on eating even as a rower??

It wasn't meant to be taken that way and this is a thread about actual budgets from parents. There is always a discussion every time uni posts happen and some parents work on the child using their maintenance loan for their living expenses. The parents then pay for the accommodation in its entirety. With accommodation ranging massively in price this means some parents are paying a lot more than others but the child still has the same money to live on.

Others work on a weekly allowance system. Some pay the entire year some pay for term time only.

You said term time in your post. Terms are usually 10 weeks long (unless Oxbridge) and you have included holiday dates in your 38 week tenancy dates. Mine had 40 week tenancies but were not there all year. They had 4 weeks holiday at Christmas and 5 weeks holiday at Easter. We do not pay them the allowance for these times as they are home and we are covering all their food and laundry costs.

Holiday pay is separate as they may well be working during uni term times too and that doesn't come from the parent.