Roughly how much do students spend a month

kittiwoz

My parents paid my rent and fees when I was undergrad. Student loan and Summer jobs paid for the rest. In my experience this is very common so I don't think £1000 per term is overly excessive. (To clarify to some of the other posters we are talking per term and not per month)

However it does sound like your daughter does not manage her money well so I can understand your being reluctant to give her a large lump sump. It would be more sensible to pay her rent and /or give her money as a weekly allowance or set up a regular shopping delivery.

aurora_borealis_2

I have two daughters at uni.
I pay their rent - about £1000 per term each. They pay fees and living expenses from student loans and overdrafts. Both are broke but learning. DD2 reads the OS boards and eats well for minimum outlay. DD1 is a healthy eating freak anyway, which is much cheaper.

They have enough money to socialise carefully but not for clothes etc. so I buy them some outfits for Christmas and birthdays. They both work in their hols to make up more money.

Your daughter should certainly take out a student loan and overdraft to pay her fees and living expenses, if nothing else.

Ytaya

I'm a mature university student. I moved back in with my parents to go to uni, but I also have existing debts (see my sig!) and pay the petrol for a 30-mile round-trip commute, so I reckon my reduced rent is balanced out by my loan repayments and fuel bill. Here's my expenditure:

Income: £557 per month
£4074.38 - annual, student loan and grant. I get the parental home rate of loan, which is about £1000 less than the regular rate.
£50.38 - weekly, benefits (I'm disabled)

Outgoings: £510 per month
£65 - monthly, rent (nominal), landline (my own), net access (split with parents)
£15 - monthly, mobile phone
£100 - monthly, petrol and campus parking
£120 - monthly, groceries and 'pocket money' - if I want to go out, I have to eat economy beans. If I want to eat salmon, I don't go out!
£200 - monthly, debt repayments
£100 - annual, textbooks etc, highly variable by year (haven't bought any this year)

I work during the summer vacation - that money supports me during the summer and pays for things like my car tax and insurance. I don't pay tuition fees (I'm on the old tuition scheme).

I reckon your daughter needs to sit down with you and come up with a budget. If she wants you to give her money, it's not unreasonable that you ask her where it's going, after all! Maybe compromise with her: you'll cover any shortfall between her loan/grant and essentials (food, rent, books), but she has to get a job to pay for luxuries (haircut, clothes, car - they're absolutely not necessary for most students!).

djhworld

I don't really have this budget thing sorted, but I'm very frugal with my spending. My mates think I'm weird when I refuse to go out with a coat because I don't want to pay the (ridiculous) £1 coat hanging fee.

My parents give me £100 a month (£25 a week) for food and so forth

Money_saving_Martyn

I can’t believe how many in this thread are saying “my parents pay this this and this for me” or indeed “I pay all of this for my son/daughter”. I support myself at uni completely with no financial help from parents or anyone else. This is through choice; I simply wanted the satisfaction of standing on my own two feet – something I think going to uni is also about. You can’t be there never ending bank account for ever! I know my parents are there if I’m really really really really stuck, but with a money saving brain I’m balancing my budget perfectly. I budget weekly :money: but I’ll have a go at monthly for this thread!

I earn about £80 per week (so £320 per month)

(In a house share)
Rent: £160
Bills: £18 (gas n leccy)
Internet: £3.75

This leaves me £138 (£34 per week)

Food: £60 (A weekly shop can be anything from £9 - £15 but I always budget for the maximum) :money:

Montly essential spending, around £242

Someone said a term is 3 months, so my **essential** spending is around £730 per term.

This leaves me £78 (around £19 per week) to spend and save as I see fit.

£19 per week is enough to go out on (so long as you don’t intend on binge drinking – if I were a parent, I’d want to know where every penny went if I was donating money to my son/daughter. Why work hard yourself to fund pub crawls?:beer: ) If I need books/clothes or have something special coming up, I plan for it, save and work more hours at work. As Martin reminds up that Christmas WILL happen, so will needing to buy books at the start of next term/semester etc. A lot of money can be saved by buying second hand (e.g. amazon market place):money: The uni book shop wanted £20 for one of my books and £18 for the other (cheap to some people anyway) but I got the same book, as new condition for £9 and £7 respectively. Don’t forget as well, the library probably has a few reference copies of the core books for each subject.:T

Back to the original post, if your daughter’s going to live at home, she’ll need a lot less! Why not get a job? Everyone has to eventually. Maybe it’s time to remind her she’s now an adult and should be taking charge of her own finances?

Hope these figures help.

PS. I manage not to touch my loan – that’s safely tucked away in an ISA!:money:

djhworld

Money_saving_Martyn wrote:

I can’t believe how many in this thread are saying “my parents pay this this and this for me” or indeed “I pay all of this for my son/daughter”.

Like I've said above, my parents subsidise what they would pay for me if I were living at home, i.e. Food/essentials.

Rent/Uni tuition fees and everything else I've had to sort out myself.

ihatechoosingnames

Money_saving_Martyn wrote:

I can’t believe how many in this thread are saying “my parents pay this this and this for me” or indeed “I pay all of this for my son/daughter”. I support myself at uni completely with no financial help from parents or anyone else. This is through choice; I simply wanted the satisfaction of standing on my own two feet – something I think going to uni is also about. You can’t be there never ending bank account for ever! I know my parents are there if I’m really really really really stuck, but with a money saving brain I’m balancing my budget perfectly. I budget weekly :money: but I’ll have a go at monthly for this thread!

I earn about £80 per week (so £320 per month)

(In a house share)
Rent: £160
Bills: £18 (gas n leccy)
Internet: £3.75

This leaves me £138 (£34 per week)

Food: £60 (A weekly shop can be anything from £9 - £15 but I always budget for the maximum) :money:

Montly essential spending, around £242

Someone said a term is 3 months, so my **essential** spending is around £730 per term.

This leaves me £78 (around £19 per week) to spend and save as I see fit.

it's great that you can support yourself but i think you should bear in mind that you are lucky to be living where you are and thus paying very little rent. i pay £400 pm on rent alone and i'm not living in luxury at all!

slowlyfading

£100 a week?! What's she spending that on?! If she carries on like that, it wont be good. As everyone else has said, its depends on what you're contributing towards. If you're helping out with rent, that normally goes out termly, so at the beginning of each term. But dont pay £1000 - she doesn't need that, not at all. Rent normally costs around £3500 for the year, a lot of people pay this with their student loan. I'm lucky enough to have my parents pay for my rent, and I pay my tuition fees, although you can get another loan to cover these. I aim to spend £40 a week, and this includes food and going out. If she's careful and not too extravegent, then she wont need a lot to get by

jimbob_3

Thanks for everybody who has posted so far,

ive not yet had the 'discussion' with my daughter, but have said i cant work out what the contribution will be (if any) until the csa have decided what my new payment will be once she leaves home.

I have advised her to try and get the full loan but i wondered if anybody knew some of the tricky details about the assessed part ie

i know she will get the full amount if her family earns less than £17,500, but

a) does that take into account my income (i dont live with her?)
b) If it does, is it simply my gross income or disposable after csa, mortgage etc?
c) Is the income of her mothers long term (civil partnership) partner included?
d) Do my Csa payments (ie approx £5000 pa ) count as their income?

I think a few years ago it used to take into account married step parents incomes, but not live in partners or real, separated parents.

thanks

jennifernil

Can't help much there, but I do know there is no allowance for mortgages anymore.