[Closed] Student's living expenses

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 ****ing 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 ****ing 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!

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.

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

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 ****ing difficult!

Wait till you get a proper job, overtime, deadlines, family, kids and a mortgage, then come back to me and tell me how ****ing 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 ****ing 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.

mastiles_fanylion,

I am afraid that is rather real in certain "posh" end of the student accommodation. Some of the items are standards. i.e. internet but en-ensuite is also in demand. The only thing is they do share kitchen unless you go for studio which can start at £130 per week.

Just finished first year at Manchester.
£200 a month from my dad, + standard unassessed loan.
Loan didn't fully cover accommodation [catered], majority of my dad's money went to cover the rest.
Got £40 a week out the wall to cover going out, busses and food for the weekend.
Student Bank Account with 0% overdraft is a must - I was rarely in the black. Most go for Natwest.

That was scraping by with cheap drinks & entertainment.

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

Hope that clears things up!

Gawd I miss the promiscuity. A girl on my course said she was going to try out those reinforced/extra safe condoms for anal sex. I didnt get the hint, she was asking if I'd stuff her up the ass. Gawd, I was naive 😀

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.

Actually some of the student houses I knew had BB, sky and a phone - the cost split between 5 students is buttons. Few had en-suite I admit 🙂

Some of the students commenting on here about weekly food costs etc were paying as much if not more than me now on living costs, and I've got a decent wage coming in.

Yeah, I know you can go to university to study art courses. The point I was trying to make is that the popular term is 'art college'. I have never known anyone refer to art university, although I have known people to study art at university.

Hope that clears things up!

It does, now I follow you! However I dont remember any of them calling it art college, they just called it "university" at Liverpool. 😆

Come to think of it, Uni was the time my social life and sports virtually halted, and it's only just coming back now.

they just called it "university" at Liverpool

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).

I had about the same amount of contact time. Whilst it doesn't seem like a lot compared to an average working week, the fact that you could have a lecture at 9, then an hour off, then another lecture at 11 etc. meant I had to be in Uni everyday apart from Wednesdays from 9 until 6. It's more hours than I do at work now.

My housemate who did English had between 4 and 6 hours a week, and reading weeks scattered about all over the place. Much easier to fit a job around that sort of timetable.

Accommodation was around 2k a year which my parents paid most of, fees another 1k and which left another 1.5k of my loan to last through the year. I worked in the holidays when I could get a job and did psychology experiments when I desperately needed money for food!

My course conveniently is now one of the most expensive to complete with amongst the lowest graduate salary of any significant course.
There were people who had jobs, however, they tended to be weeded out as the tutors didn't like you having a life outside Sc/Arc. Although the number of hours of lectures was relatively low at about 9hrs/week, attendance at studio was more or less mandatory until 6pm (so that would make it about 40 hours total), and then we got to spend the rest of the week designing, drawing and writing (most nights till about 11pm or midnight) then with work over the weekends that would come to a nice round figure of about 80 hours a week.
However I started in 1986, so almost everything I can remember is woefully out of date.

Right here's the deal:

#1 priority is to make him understand that he needs to live frugally and not piss his loan away. 18 year olds dont fully appreciate the value of money and that it WILL have to be paid back and will feel like a considerable millstone round his neck when he leaves uni and go into work. The overriding aim is to leave uni with the minimum debt he possibly can.

So explain that while he will see all his mates etc going out all the time, using their loans to buy PCs/hifi/games/DVDs/CDS etc, he must resist the urge at all costs and spend as little as possible. This is paramount. By all means, have a fun few weeks constantly on the piss at the start, then it's time to rein it in and budget. Never let fellow students know you have any money and never lend anyone money. Lie and say you're skint if you have to.

Getting a job is beneficial in a number of ways past the obvious financial incentive. I did aerospace engineering at uni so not exactly a 'mickey mouse' degree and I still found the time to work part-time in a cinema which did not have a detrimental effect on my studies. Bit of cash and a great laugh at the same time, met some of my best mates there who I never would have met otherwise.

Of course the stuff about budgeting will probably be in one ear and out the other but you can only try.

Can I just say- those parents on here or parents of STW'ers- I applaud you. I never saw a penny from my Dad to go through Uni. Tight c*nt wanted me to appreciate the value of money the hard way.

But, unless I am much mistaken, you are old enough to have had a grant, non? 😉

I was an undergrad not [i]that[/i] long ago and i'd say £50pw on food and drink + rent. I'm a lecturer now (I ain't ever leaving!) and i'd say that the worse kind of student are those who have parents giving them money. They don't budget their spending and therefore they don't budget their time - why stay in and study when you have money piss up the wall?

I'd recommend to any student to get a job. It teaches you discipline and proper time management as it offers structure to their week. No more than 14 hours though.

byyy 'ekk theres soem yorkshiremen on here today,

ok who was it that slept in the gap in the pavement and survived 4 years smoking asbestos rolled up in their lecture notes to keep warm?

£4k so surive, £5k for some fun, £6k for a good time.

Just because your a student doens't mean you have to live in a damp hovel, some of us had standards!

I caned it every night for the whole of my degree and still can't manage my budget 10 yrs on

I finished uni in 2006 .. did plenty alright with a 2:1 .. My parents paid the fees but my 3k loan all went on my accomodation and then some!

Every penny I had to spend, I earned it working part-time .. if memory serves I did a couple of shifts to earn 70 quid per week .. never felt flush but did just fine .. (and this was canterbury .. so it ain't cheap rent or booze).

coffeeking - Member

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.

Comedy!

Just graduated from my PhD today, and currently work as a research officer at the same uni. Worked all the way through undergrad as bar staff, and ASDA nights during vacations, and I'd guess I managed reasonably well academically, otherwise I wouldn't have got so far. Got bugger all from parents, drank most nights I wasn't working, but still managed OK. Even learnt to drive from entirely my own funds in my 3rd year. Reading this thread has made me realise why students are so hated by most of the population - it seems most get it given to them....

wasn't there a guy who managed to cream about 40k out the banks in loans and student whatevers

dont get a student loan

screw the banks...eventually they will return the favour

get through UNi comfortably on banks money

petition for bankruptcy at court the morning you graduate...

potter round oz for a year till bankruptcy is up (only a year now)

come back to job (maybe)save money till economy is back on its feet will take about 5 years and by then credit record will be clean

unlike some folks who are still bending over for the pleasure of their education

if i had known then what i know now??

problem is its very hard to go bankrupt on student debt,

overdrafts (however many you have) are intrest free for about 4 years after you graduate usualy. And theres not much chance of getting a loan as a student (not a home owner, no job, no prosepct of either till you graduate).

Sorry to put a spanner in your plan composite, but it just wont work! Even if you did apply for bancrupcy, doesnt the court have the chance to say no, given that they can resnobly expect you to find a job soonish, and then your just lumped with 20k of debt at the market rate, where us students get it at 3%?

And how do you intend on getting to Oz, if your bancrupt you wont have any cash (the banks will make sure of that)................

And when you get back you'd be living with your parents, one of my hosuemates went bancrupt to avoid paying his ex wife anything out of the divorce (hes a contractor effectively working for himself) so she was entitled to half the company (i.e. his earnings). He went bacrupt, is now working for his dad's company (same job, new company name). But can't even rent a room in a house despite earning in excess of £50k after tax!

[i]Can I just say- those parents on here or parents of STW'ers- I applaud you. I never saw a penny from my Dad to go through Uni. Tight c*nt wanted me to appreciate the value of money the hard way.[/i]

My parents didn't give me anything either, and i graduated in 2005. Quite right too - you're a grown up, and between 4k student loan and a decent summer job there's no reason to need any further support.

Is there still a recommended parental contribution for better off parents? One year my Dad was 'supposed' to give me a few hundred but I said I didn't need it - I seem to remember later saying that actually it would be useful but he said I'd made my decision! A bit harsh perhaps but I managed my money well and have been pretty good with money ever since - I do wonder if I could have had more of a laugh though If I'd been willing to go into debt!

Doing a decent engineering degree properly is a full-time job

??

I had far more free time as a student (doing a 'decent' engineering degree and getting a result that suggests I did it 'properly') than I've had at any point since.

it was more tongue in cheek spoon i deleted the rest of this post as it sounds like i was condoning working the system ..

yep, the recomended contribuion is on the loan/fee's paperwork, essentialy your supposed ot get £4.5k plus top up fees, either through the SLC & LEA or your parents (based on for every £9 you earn over the threshold (£20k ish) you should be able to afford to part with £1 to your offspring.

IIRC Cambrige recomends about another grand or so, but they prohibit working in term time, and make it affordable by charging pitence in rent.

Its odd, for all the "I'm an engineer" posts, a lot of people clearly didnt do an engineering degree as they had free time (im sure by the time i'd done my writeups and tutorials it ws easily 40+ hours a week some terms).

My MSc (IT for Manufacture at Warwick Uni) was a bit odd really. We did 12 subjects, each one done in a week 9am to 6pm, then there were 12 weeks in which to do an assignment for that subject which was supposed to take 40 hours to do. Finally we had a project worth 1/2 the course which was supposed to take 24 weeks to do. On top of that were a couple of weeks of other things which we were supposed to attend so this came to 50 weeks for a 1 year course which is fine really but not a lot of time for holidays....

Got a nice grant from some sort of government body to pay for it all - EPSRC?

Getting a job is beneficial in a number of ways past the obvious financial incentive. ... which did not have a detrimental effect on my studies. Bit of cash and a great laugh at the same time, met some of my best mates there who I never would have met otherwise.

Thats exactly my point. Some jobs are as good if not better than going out on the sauce all the time with the bonus of earning not spending. And working in a Uni bar will get you loads of free drinks anyway + recognition and access to all the fitties... etc Working in bars was always way more fun than getting leathered and forgetting most the night.

Doing a decent engineering degree properly is a full-time job

LOL - doing any degree properly is a full time job. Students are supposed to spend 38 hours a week on their studies (contact time in lectures, seminars, labs etc and private/self-direct study), that is why there are full- and part-time classifications for degree programmes.