Is a £130-140 a week after rent and bills enough to 'live on'?

rageagainstessays

I forgot to include my other costs in the prior calculations.
Can someone check my maths please- I've reworked it including things like emergency money and this is what I've come up with-
Loans and Gifts totalling £11,927 (+ a possible £1250 excellence bursary which is not included in cacls)
minus
Accommodation costs of £4866.00
Phone costs of (£21x12)= £252
Other costs, sort of emergency money (£40x12)= £480
Health and Dental costs of approx £10 p.m (to be put aside)= £120

So thats an income of £11,927 minus fixed costs of £5718= £6209, which when divided by the 52 weeks of the year leaves me with £119 a week, which I'll add another £52 to my income and make it £120 a week.

Tombo

That sort of budget sounds heavenly, you're lucky!

Fag_ash_lil

samc1234 wrote: »

I forgot to include my other costs in the prior calculations.
Can someone check my maths please- I've reworked it including things like emergency money and this is what I've come up with-
Loans and Gifts totalling £11,927 (+ a possible £1250 excellence bursary which is not included in cacls)
minus
Accommodation costs of £4866.00
Phone costs of (£21x12)= £252
Other costs, sort of emergency money (£40x12)= £480
Health and Dental costs of approx £10 p.m (to be put aside)= £120

So thats an income of £11,927 minus fixed costs of £5718= £6209, which when divided by the 52 weeks of the year leaves me with £119 a week, which I'll add another £52 to my income and make it £120 a week.

I've double checked your maths .

I make it the same amount as you .

I am presuming you are staying in " halls " for the 1st year . So that's why you haven't got any bills ?

If you can manage to save a little each week it will help to get you in the swing of budgeting .

Then the 2nd year won't hit you too hard once you have to start paying bills etc if you end up house sharing .

Hope all goes well for you . What course are you hoping to do ?

Poppy9

Blooming hell that sounds a fortune. DD off to uni in Sept and she will have much less than that to live on a week!

CKhalvashi

I agree that this is a lot.

I had 2 small children, and we both worked full-time through Uni, and managed to survive on £80ish a week.

In fairness, we were studying in a country where a bottle of vodka is £1, and cigarettes were about 80p a pack, but living costs in general weren't that much lower.

CK

rageagainstessays

Fag_ash_lil wrote: »

I've double checked your maths .

I make it the same amount as you .

I am presuming you are staying in " halls " for the 1st year . So that's why you haven't got any bills ?

If you can manage to save a little each week it will help to get you in the swing of budgeting .

Then the 2nd year won't hit you too hard once you have to start paying bills etc if you end up house sharing .

Hope all goes well for you . What course are you hoping to do ?

I'm hoping to save for my deposit on a rented house for the second year so I don't have to go begging to mum and dad.
and Philosophy

Cycrow

thats more than alot of working people have available.

When i was at uni i had to survive of a loan of less than £4000 a year, and that included £1500 tuition fees to pay

zugzwang

On the dole (JSA), you'd get £56.80 per week or £71.70 when you're over 25. And you still have bills to pay out of that!

So you should be able to save.

With a Philosophy degree, your ability to earn later may be limited. Presumably, you are funded by loans which are linked to inflation and you only pay if/when you start to earn decent money?

But anyway I don't recommend trying to save every penny because I hope you enjoy uni. A little money spent on whatever should go a long way.

rageagainstessays

zugzwang wrote: »

On the dole (JSA), you'd get £56.80 per week or £71.70 when you're over 25. And you still have bills to pay out of that!

So you should be able to save.

With a Philosophy degree, your ability to earn later may be limited. Presumably, you are funded by loans which are linked to inflation and you only pay if/when you start to earn decent money?

But anyway I don't recommend trying to save every penny because I hope you enjoy uni. A little money spent on whatever should go a long way.

I'm not really sure one could describe the earning potential as 'limited', the average graduate salary at this university for this course is £17,000 after 6 months, which comparably is pretty good- I'd say.

zugzwang

samc1234 wrote: »

I'm not really sure one could describe the earning potential as 'limited', the average graduate salary at this university for this course is £17,000 after 6 months, which comparably is pretty good- I'd say.

Philosophy is not the most marketable degree- unless you can combine it with something else like Business Studies.