Advice for first time uni mum

[amandajane123]

Dear son off to uni in September. Student loan sorted.how do I apply for maintenance loan and any other tips and advice please. Eg how much a week for food etc ??

I thought this post was going to be about managing your budget as a parent attending uni themselves!

Your son needs to be googling this stuff and thinking about his good budget himself. I know as a parent you want to help them, but he needs to learn to manage his money now!

He can start by working out what he eats in a week and what that will cost him - and whether he'll need to change his habits to make the budget work!

I'd make him do the leg work in the first instance, the sooner he's responsible - the better!

Congratulations to you both - proud times

DS2 has just finished his first year at uni. He's a student nurse so his funding is different.

However, we buy his food every 10/14 days, or when he asks. I have a Tesco delivery pass so he sends me a list and I order the food to be sent to his flat. We prefer that to giving him money because we know that he's eating.

He's got a part time job, too. Most of his friends have.

There have been a couple of threads on this subject in the Higher Ed section recently and what's clear is the amounts offered by parents vary wildly from nothing to quite a lot! Bottom line is it depends on a number of factors:

1. Is your son having to cater all his meals himself or just lunch?
2. What facilities are available to him for cooking?
3. Will the demands of his course give him the time to get a part time job?
4. How easy is it for students to find part time work in the uni city and if he has to stay on in holidays to keep the job will he have somewhere to stay?
5. How much can you afford?
6. What's the total sum he will have coming in from maintenance loan/ grants and will that cover his rent?

I agree that he should have sorted out loans/ etc by now. We are in Scotland and they guarantee your funding will be sorted by September if you apply by end June, but the final date is not until a March. Not sure about England.
In terms of budgeting, my DS is also off to uni in September and he's just now learning the cost of food! He's been testing out value items in the supermarket and I've shown him how to make a few things like curries to go alongside the things he can already do like spaghetti bolognaise, a fry up etc.

He's learnt from his sister who is about to go into her third year that the cheapest way to live is to cook with others and share basics. DD shares with two others in a private flat now and she loves to cook so she does quite interesting recipes and her flat mates pay her per meal if she cooks for them all- usually about £3 a meal, sometime more if the meat or whatever is more expensive.

As a guide DDs rent is £400 a month which we pay and that is our contribution. She gets 4700 per year in maint loan which she divides by 12 and pays herself each month ( it's paid monthly by loan agency over 10 months with the first being a double payment). Out of that she pays bills like elec and Internet and mobile plus all food books etc. She has a part time job of 15 hours per week and she uses that for savings towards Christmas, summer holidays,clothes entertainment etc. She reckons if she were very careful she could manage without the job, but she enjoys the luxuries the job brings and she is doing very well on her course so she continues to work.