Hi, after a 'ball-park' idea of students' cost of living per week/month at University – basic survival(!) as well as having fun etc.
Eldest lad off in Sept so trying to get an idea……

Cheers, dave

How much dope are you budgetting for in the "having fun" part, and how much in the "basic survival" part?

and into which pot do Class A's fall?

🙂

I was at uni in manchester until last year. My parents paid £500 a month to cover rent, bills and food and then I had a loan of approx £1k every term.
I don't drink or smoke but have/developed a 4 bike habit. I lived pretty comfortably.

My girlfriend got her rent paid and 50 quid of her parents once in a blue moon. She managed to survive although her bike habit is only developing!

illicit substances will make up almost all the budget. so around £80 a week for that, and then whatever else is left over will be for trying to exist.

If he gets a part-time bar job that should soften the blow?

Thats a tough one, a lot depends on how mature he is, in my first year a kid ripped through his full loan in about 6 weeks. he bailed not soon after.

I spend around about £25 a week on food, and then maybe £20-£40 on booze, so not much! Only drink on wednesdays (dont want a hangover at the weekend) No substances pour moi 😉 rather spend it on bikes ta.

My mates were in halls at around 60 a week with a packed lunch and main meal. Add a reasonable amount for fun and bus use? The rest they can do a part time job for? Think I'd budget on around 100 a week plus clothes etc, the rest are luxuries?

I go to uni, parents pay for acomadation at get £30 a week. That is enough to live on food wise, but would need more for going out etc. So I save up money over the summer then use it throughout the year for going out, race entries and bike bits.

Live quite comfortably, but i rarely drink now, messes with training…

All depends what yout lad is like really. But first year is a learning curve!

Seriously, I'd make him get a job – a bar job on campus or something. Earning money at the same time everyone else is pissing it up the wall and all the social to go with.

I used to get about £50 a week 10 years ago. I wish I'd had that job ^

I bet most students spend considerably more per week on drink/socialising than most 'responsible' adults do. I reckon my monthly 'free' budget is around £150.

I finished uni this time last year, LEA paid for tuition fees and gave me about 5k to live off rent and food. Managed to just make ends meet. Parents would give me 100 a month to help me out if/when they could.

I suggest each time you drop him to halls you go for a big shop will give you peace of mind he's buying good food etc instead of you worrying he's spending all his money on beer etc… not that that's all students spend money on but most do!

Is your son a biker? He'll find it hard to balance Bike and Drink!

If he can get a job as a student ambassador then that'll see him though uni can't stress how gutted I was for not getting a job as one. Easy work good pay.

You don't need to buy books so if he tries to pull that one on you then don't fall for it!

I would not make him get a job if he intends on doing really well at his degree!

The majority of my mates who had jobs tended to assume that they had the money because they worked and therefore went out a massive amount and then worked the rest of the time. Few of them did really well at their degrees. My dad is a university professor and wasn't prepared to let me get a job for that reason.

You should give your son enough that he can live comfortably and enjoy himself while still teaching him the value of being frugal and budgeting well. If he feels the need to get a job that is his affair.

You don't need to buy books so if he tries to pull that one on you then don't fall for it!

We had to buy books, or share the 20 copies in the library with the 200 students wanting them. Depends on the course.

And I agree on the job front, if you're actually doing well on your course it's unlikely you'll have time to work, unless you're doing something like English Lit with 4 hours a week contact time.

Why not get him to write out a list of his necessities in the food department (and allow some alcohol etc) then order it all for him at Tesco Online and have it delivered – then give him a small weekly allowance for the drugs.

It's about discipline – I got an OK LLB and worked 1-2 days weekly throughout (albeit as a mature student)

how much is he getting in his loans ?

just got back the missus SAAS application for post grad in teaching. She has 25 quid a week to live on ….thats rent – food and other bills …

her sister(new undergraduate) has got less than this.

her parents are not exactly minted but have to shell out 10grand in parental contributions for the pair of them …. the missus only moved back in with the parents to get her feet back on the floor after we got back from nz. This has bitten us in the bum – previous to this she was classed as independant – should have moved in to my parents with me doh.

So apparently your son should be able to live on 25 quid a week … no more – no less !

Its easy enough to SAY get a job, but finding one is another matter, imagine 20,000 students, even a big town doesnt need that many bar staff!

And no one wants to work in tesco, supermarkets are Hell, would you ever work in one?

I got my student loan and thats about it (few quid here and there from parents but nothing big or regular, just for train journeys etc)

Per year thats £4.5k

£3k of that will be on rent (£60pw, 52weeks)

£400 minimum on bills (student houses use a lot of gas as theres no insulation, old inefficient boilers, and lots of people cooking) so £300 of that could well all come at once just after christmass, not good. Averages about £10 a week.

£900 on food and shopping, thats £25 a week, so nealry all eaten at home with the occasional 2for£6 pub lunch.

£200 on clothes (thats only 2 pairs of jeans, 2 trainers, 1 pair of shoes and some T's from TKMax)

£300 on travel (busses and trains add up)

Insurance £100

So before you've even bought (spending per week, absolute minimum average to have fun/get by);
Beer (£15)
Textbooks (£5)
Bikes (££££££££££)
house stuff – bedding, clothes airers, pots'n'pans etc (£5)
Gig tickets/cinema/bolwing/skateing/hobbies (£15)

Think in total I got away with about £5.5k a year. But the difference between spending £4k and being miserable/bored and getting a summer job and having monney to actualy do stuff is hugggggggggggeeeeeeeeee.

not a lot!

student rent is cheap cheap cheap, food can be done on 30quid a week.
i didnt do any "work" so wouldnt know about the cost of books and stuff im afraid.

then its a toss up between spending your spare readys on beer or bikes (or drugs if your that way inclined)

all mine went on Bikes.

i also got ran over in the last week of the last year, and had my Overdraft paid off by Churchill insurance

Ohhhhh Yesss!

I'd say fifty quid a week living, plus whatever digs cost (self catering, bedsit) would be more than fair – part of student life is about scrimping by on a pittance, and in the early nineties I lived on £30 a week with ease.

(cue cries of "£30 a week? you were lucky, we had to get up in the morning half an hour befo…")

Of course, the lazy workshy scrounging bastards could always do a part time job to pay their way like what we had to! 😀

Edited to add:

And no one wants to work in tesco, supermarkets are Hell, would you ever work in one?

I worked in **** Mcdonalds for a year doing weekends, its a job, it pays you money, work is hell, tough shite, thats life, call it an education in the ways of the world! MTFU and crack on!

I worked in **** Mcdonalds for a year doing weekends, its a job, it pays you money, work is hell, tough shite, thats life, call it an education in the ways of the world! MTFU and crack on!

Precisely – all these molly-coddled kids need a reality check. I peeled chips, washed up, counted cash from bus drivers, manual laboured, worked in a pub, delivered leaflets, worked in a crappy themepark, cooked on an all-day barbeque etc to make money as a student and after graduation. None of them jobs I wanted to do, but that is all part of growing up.

be prepared for an expensive first fortnight, after that it settles with the realisation of caning it every night is a killer

accommodation is easily worked out, after that about £25 pw for food – anything else is extras

I worked the summers whilst at uni', huuuge hours meant lot of money and no time to spend it then, so was pretty comfortable at uni', comfortable enough for a new ride each year and to run a car and go places, probably used about £4-5k of summer earnings for interesting stuff – never spent anything on the course

LEA coughed up for my tuition and majority of accomm.

A friend is going back to do a masters, worked out 1 year F/T would be £11k for everything (accomm., tuition, living costs) so is doing it 2 years P/T to earn at the same time

Precisely – all these molly-coddled kids need a reality check.

I worked during the summer, no way I could work during the term time – physically impossible (28 hours lectures/labs per week plus home studying). There's no need to work during term and it is counter-productive unless it's so few hours as to make no difference financially.

I probably spent about £100 a week and that was 10years ago.

There's no need to work during term and it is counter-productive unless it's so few hours as to make no difference financially.

Whilst I would like to believe that was actually true, I have known enough students (through my own student life and afterwards whilst still dating students) that most students have lots and lots of free time and spend most of it in bars, not studying.

My time at Uni included the end of full grants and the introduction of loans. I got by fine without working in term time though worked as much as possible in the holidays. I thought students are supposed to be too poor these days to drink too much and do drugs?! Suppose nothing changes….

For what it is worth, for the majority of my actual student days (sixth form then college) I reckon I did a couple of evening shifts and one full day at the weekends.

Towards deadline times (art student so no exams) I recall dropping the evening shifts but still worked all day Saturday.

I have known enough students (through my own student life and afterwards whilst still dating students) that most students have lots and lots of free time and spend most of it in bars, not studying.

Depends on the course, of course, and the uni. Mickey mouse courses and some uni's do fewer hours and their exams are easier – they have appropriately lower standing in industry. All the chaps I knew that did my course and had other jobs more than a few hours a week, or went out drinking a lot failed early on. Our course started with 28 students and was down to 8 in the final year! 🙂

But you cant really classify going to college as being a student, my A-level days at college were a joke, spent more time driving around and sitting in the pub than doing A-levels.

Just don't do what my parents did with my brother – gave him an allowance and a copy of my mother's credit card. At the end of the year, they looked at the card bills and realised that the allowance had all gone on drink and drugs, and they had also been feeding all the students in his house…

After that, I got accommodation and an allowance, but they didn't realise that if I ate in college it went on the accommodation bill at the end of term!

nice stealthcat – sounds like a cracking pair of honest sons your parents have!

But you cant really classify going to college as being a student

? I did 6th Form (exam retakes) then four further years at Diploma and HND level at Art College. You don't go to Art University.

Granted, the amount of work required varies from Uni/Poly to Uni/Poly and from course to course, but I do not believe, for a single moment, that there is a single student out there that couldn't possibly spend one session a week less on the sauce and one session a week doing some work. They just pretend they are always too busy.

I worked during the summer, no way I could work during the term time – physically impossible (28 hours lectures/labs per week plus home studying). There's no need to work during term and it is counter-productive unless it's so few hours as to make no difference financially.

Excuse me, I may have just thrown something through a window!

28 hours per week plus homework, Ah diddums, how **** difficult!

Wait till you get a proper job, overtime, deadlines, family, kids and a mortgage, then come back to me and tell me how **** tough it was at Uni!

stealthcat – my parents would have made me pay them back I'm sure! Not that I'd have done it as would have felt like I was stealing from my parents. People really can vary a lot at 18 – I was boringly sensible I suppose. I worked out what I needed to spend on accommodation and food then could see what I had spare for drink and CDs – no drugs for me…!

My lot will have to work I guess
I've got 2 starting this year & the other 1 next year

Roughly around £6,000 – £8,000 per year inclusive of meals, beer(not drinking silly), bills, sky channels, telephone, broadband internet and nice reasonable size en-suite bedroom depending on location. Single room starts at lower end of the scale and this is in the North East.

Sky?
Telephone?
Broadband?
En-suite

FFS – the Uni will have broadband, there are still payphones should the student need to make a call, en-suite is just a joke and Sky – well I have just realised you are trolling.

My accommodation this year was about £80pw, and i budgeted £50pw for groceries, lunches, booze. Parents set up a bank transfer of £25 a week, which meant I could have a bit of a social life when the course allowed it, and have some extra spending money for bike bits and
Had little time to work as the course was over 30 hours contact time plus insane amounts of coursework. Some coursemates had jobs and regretted it. Currently sat about £800 overdrawn after two years.

One thing I wish the parents had done when filling out the loan form was put a big fat zero in their estimated weekly contribution. As they earn over the threshold i get no grant and the minimum possible loan amount, then a sum was deducted from that loan amount for their estimated contribution. It would have been nice to have the extra bit of loan money even if it was just for bike bits 😆

There's no need to work during term and it is counter-productive unless it's so few hours as to make no difference financially.

I had to work part time in Woolies partly to make ends meet but also as we had a stupid amount of free time. Otherwise I would have been drunk or **** around the clock 7 days a week. A rock stars life on the cheap is how I would describe it.

If I was studying now there is no way that I would have survived without a part time job.

You don't go to Art University.

Errr, tell that to the Arts departments at all the major red-brick universities?

I do not believe, for a single moment, that there is a single student out there that couldn't possibly spend one session a week less on the sauce and one session a week doing some work. They just pretend they are always too busy.

As an (ex) engineering student (undergrad, then postgrad) I'd happily say that, while I could have worked some evenings a week during SOME of the term weeks, I'd have been knackered and performed less well during the day. I rarely went out more than once a week, 2-3 nights a week usually ended up in having to beg for extensions to deadlines. Doing a decent engineering degree properly is a full-time job, doing extra part time work in the evenings of course could be done, but it is the same as saying anyone doing an office 9-5 could really work evenings too.

Without wishing to berate the arts students in any way, though a little inter-course banter is innevitable :-), they were lucky to see 6 hours a week lecture time and would spend their days lying in the park. While I was postgrad I had a view over the arts students "quad"/park where they sat literally all day, occasionally drawing, usually playing soccer. I knew one chap who had a *full time* job and was doing a *full time* arts degree, because he could work flexitime and he had few enough lectures to fit it around his full time job. I'm afraid you simply can't generalise that all students are lazy, have loads of free time and get drunk all the time. Well you can, but you're wrong.

Sure you can waste your time at uni by being drunk constantly, or trade off marks for spare cash, but whats the point in going if you're going to compromise. I made 4-7K during summer months (7k later on work placements) and that was more than enough to live on when added to my student loan.