[Closed] Living expenses at uni

Sex drugs rock and roll...

St Andrews uni...

Not going to be an issue.

🙂

For a worldly wise female student sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, most of your drinks and at least half of your food are free.

Most students live on their loan. We paid accomodation and bills on top so our kids where quite well off as a result. They worked in the summer at least some of the time. My eldest worked in term time too (Sundays in retail as hours where less and money same as a Saturday)

Congrats to #1 thats a fine Uni she has got a place at

The biggest partying expense @ StAndrews Uni will be transport out of StAndrews at start of evening and home again after.

Just make sure you give her a new car and enough money for all that champagne she will be drinking.
Don't get her a bike,she will only leave it chained to a railing,where it will rust to death while she is off doing more important things,like skinny dipping at the West Sands or trying to break in to the Younger hall to have sex on the stage. 🙂

There's probably extra costs for wands, wear and tear on quaffles and the like, at Hogwarts. But we say about £4000 for 40 weeks, not including halls. Surprised they don't have a cost-of-living on their website, there is one for international students here but obviously some costs don't apply

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/students/money/internationalstudents/ugcoa/

If you contact their student support people they should have localised guidance.

fifeandy - Member
The biggest partying expense @ StAndrews Uni will be transport out of StAndrews at start of evening and home again after.

Very much this.

You can just about get a pub crawl in st andrews if you start before 10pm before they shut at 1am.

I lived on £8k a year when I was a student in SE England (2002-4), with inflation that works out to an eye-opening £12k now.. 😯

Very little partying or anything else really.

not a lot of love for St Andrews then and Hogwarts - 🙂
I've seen a bunch of numbers around but STW is of course the correct answer to everything. Just wanted some real life numbers as 100/week ex halls was being bandied around but I didn't know if that was realistic or not. It seems about right once you take into account books

Most students live on their loan.

+1

Caveats:
1) I studied in Sheffield, which is pretty cheap to live in
2) That was 10 years ago now.
3) Parents paid tuition, but that would have just been an extra loan anyway so would have made little difference at the time whether they did or didn't.

If it's catered halls, then the only 'need' after rent is lunch money. Everything else is mostly just booze. £100/week would be more than I have to live on after the mortgage and bills are paid, and I'm 30! I think my budget was about £25/week (plus inflation, say £35) an that included buying food with a rainy day fund of summer earnings to pay for bike stuff an other one off expenses.

Other than that I'd say the budget just expands to take up the money available, I was quite happy living in the same few T-shirts and jeans for 4 years and eating cheaply. Others (in the same house) had all bills paid for by mum and dad, and got a loan on top, but were still skint. Just skint dressed in Tommy Hilfiger bodywarmer and gore-tex snow boots in winter instead of trainers and an old H/H fleece.

@tinas - thanks for that. Did that also include books/'puters
Exactly how smelly did you get? 😉

St Andrews is okay.

I'm a fifer and went to school in Cupar so I'm obliged to slate it.

It is small though the comments about paying to get to dundee are very very real there is very little in the way of nightlife. And none after 1am unless the union stays open later but even that is a tiny place

in defence of st andrews, i had maybe 3 nights out, outside of st andrews, in 4 years. i just had the social skills to make enough friends to have a good time in town (and went riding at weekends in the mountains). if you want to stay out until 3-4 am, you just need to know where the house parties are.

cost wise, she'll spend as much as she has. nobody comes out of uni having saved up money, and if she doesn't have enough, there are means and ways of getting help (either serious, proper help from the uni, or getting a job).

@tinas - thanks for that. Did that also include books/'puters

My parents bought me a PC for my 18th so that was covered.

I was always pretty fiercely independent, I never liked being given money so when I was I went to great lengths to make sure it was accounted for in good ways (my gran gave me about £500 which nominally covered the books for example), my parents money was always the tuition fee amount to the penny etc.

Exactly how smelly did you get?

I did wash them! And it was a bit of an exaggeration. But I did only ever shop at Primark, and kept clothes spending down to a level where it was purely practical rather than satorial.

You could always ask her. Get her to plan out a budget for a week, then agree what you will pay for (food, books, etc) and what's upto her (booze, holidays, clothes, eating out). I'm sure she could easily spend £100 a week, but it wouldn't necessarily be on the virtuous side of being a student!

My first year at uni (in the olden days of £1100/year fees) my parents paid my tuition fees and I paid my rent out of my loan. The loan just over £4k, the rent was just over £70/week over 40 weeks, which left me with £30 per week to buy food, clothes, socialise etc. I got a job over the next summer and worked full time to save up for the next year at uni!

I wasn't going hungry or cold because of a lack of money, the people who had more money just spent it on other stuff but it didn't really make a difference to how they did at uni academically or socially. Your parents send you money every week or pay for your car or rent, that just means you buy takeaways four nights a week (at £15 a go) instead of cooking pasta with a bit of bacon and tinned tomatoes (at £1.50 a go).

Are the halls catered? That makes a big difference to how much extra money she'll need to spend each week above her rent.

instead of [s]cooking pasta with a bit of bacon and tinned tomatoes (at £1.50 a go).[/s] [b]eating your rich housemates takeaway because he always orders too much [/b]

Ironically he turned freegan towards the end of his course when his parents stopped funding him!

in the olden days of £1100/year fees

Halls are catered. Lots of good info here so thanks. Realise she will spend as much as she has, just want to get a feel for the numbers. She's a veggie so pasta and lentils it is - 7gbp a week - done

instead of [s]cooking pasta with a bit of bacon and tinned tomatoes (at £1.50 a go)[/s]. [b]eating your rich housemates takeaway because he always orders too much[/b]

Ironically he turned freegan towards the end of his course when his parents stopped funding him!

We had a housemate who worked at the Three Cooks bakery at the weekends. Every Saturday he used to traipse home with 4 or 5 shopping bags full of cakes and sandwiches. 😆

my son has just completed year one at university, in Glasgow, slightly different but he found things 'ok'

Halls were flats - self-catered. Travel was minimal and he's used to walking.
From what I recall, the bursary, plus student loan, plus a small amount of external income were enough that he was ok. He doesn't drink that much though nor eat out either..

Look at applying for bursaries as well, Iain got one (though with the express purpose of studying abroad so it's in the bank until he needs it).

good luck!!

Good point on bursaries- even if you think "we're too well off", it doesn't follow, there's lots of options out there and not all are income or academia dependent.

I got a bursary based on the course and A-level grades. It was £500 for AAA, £250 for ABB.

I got AAAB because I'd not dropped geography at AS but got a B in chemistry, so was only expecting them to offer £250 as the geography grade wasn't part of the offer (AAB, physics, chemistry and maths). I got the letter and stapled to the bottom was a cheque for £250. All good.

About 3 weeks later I got a phone call from the bank to say I'd made a mistake and paid in a cheque without a slip but they were processing it. Turns out there were 2x cheques stapled together for £250, apparently A-level geography is considered a real subject!

Eldest of the crashes just finished year in catered halls in Nottingham. Lunch was included anywhere on campus as part of the deal. Library is good and all the lecture notes and even videos of the lectures are available online. A copy of MS Office and their firewall/antivirus too.

Most weeks she says she spends practically nothing on top. Non smoker non drinker she socialises with clubs and societies, spent maybe £250 all year.

Possibly not relevant to the question, but I caught the moneysavingexpert Martyn Lewis on the radio (5Live) earlier today and part of it related to students/student loans/ best way to help your kids get on in life.

I didn't actually listen properly as my eldest is 5 years away from it, but if you can track it down, or maybe see what else he has on his website, it may be helpful.

all the lecture notes and even videos of the lectures are available online

So all you need is a onesie and a Wifi connection, never have to leave your room.....

Mine has just finished at Uni Of Surrey,,an expensive place to live (Guildford) She had the max loan available at £3575 or thereabouts. She had a part time job that paid perhaps £120 a month and we subbed her £400 a month (incl the 3 mths she wasn't there). She got by, not much spare for treats etc but £9000+ for 40 weeks is over £200 a week. (her accom was around £125 a week and she saved a bit for when she was home during holidays.

''So all you need is a onesie and a Wifi connection, never have to leave your room....''

in which case you need never leave your home in the first place..

over £200 a week. (her accom was around £125 a week

Thanks again all - good info

Don't forget to pay for her to come home once or twice a term - if you want 😉

Fisher & Donaldson coffee towers are quite expensive these days but oh so nice.

Teen1 gets £10/day plus accommodation. I looked at the expected living costs and this figure seemed about right. That includes holidays, so he has to save a bit and will work over the summer.

He's out on the town tonight, so I may have to rethink this settlement!

I current live on about £60 a week as a student in Leeds, not including rent. That covers everything else though including gas/electric/broadband/phone contract/any buses or trains/food/going out. I maybe spend ~£20 a week on food, cooking the vast majority from scratch.

Equally I know people who live on less than £30 p/w and others who spend +£200 p/w on God knows what..

The loan covers the living expenses no?

In my day... 😉

Think I lived off £10 for food per week. Down the market, big sack of spuds and few other veg and lasts for ages.

A few quid for beer, bearing in mind it was about a quid a pint in the uni bar 😀 . Well, maybe a few quid a day 😉

£100ish a month on rent in a shared house.

That was with a grant as well. No official student loans in those days.

Skids - the loan amount is set centrally and its only a guesstimate. Clearly it doesn't cost the same to live in Surrey as Yorkshire. From memory my daighter who studied in London paid 60% more for her accomodation than the other two did in Leeds.

Don't forget to pay for her to come home once or twice a term - if you want

I budgeted for my train tickets home each week through term so I wouldn't have a panic at the end. But then, almost every term, my gran would send me the train fare. It was about 1/7th of the week's budget, so that was always very nice.

🙂

Lucky enough to have my parents pay for my accommodation, then the money I earned in the summer + the loan covered me for everything else. Needed a small top up in the final year when my loan was cut from about £400/month down to £120.

Hungry Monkey is right, there's plenty a night life in St Andrews if you know where to look. Sex and drugs are also easier to find than rock and roll :p

My folks paid my rent and gave me £30 a week for food/bills etc. Graduated 2010 in Dundee, so that's probably not too far out of date.

Bikes, beer etc were funded by working. Think a few shifts at Halfords got me £80/week or something during term time. Working full time over summer gave a lump sum each year too.

I thought this was a pretty good deal, I had enough to do what I wanted to do but not so much that it didn't require careful budgeting (read, never buying anything that wasn't food, bike bits or beer).

Mate of mine studied something along the lines of Geo Chemisty at St Andrews. I went up to visit for the weekend and could not believe the amount of BMW and Mazda MX5 parked up at the accommodation.

Would have to be twenty years ago but suspect not much has changed. Got to be hard financing the offspring to the tune of the trustafarian crowd.

My mate managed, although he was was Neil from the young ones incarnate so not really driven by things/money.

Would have to be twenty years ago but suspect not much has changed. Got to be hard financing the offspring to the tune of the trustafarian crowd.

The rich ****s quickly separate themselves out and form their own cliques. Despite the rep there's plenty of normal folk there too. Especially if your studying something other than art history or classics.

Pretty sure I worked on between 50 and 70 quid a week plus rent in Bristol 2009-2011. I think my loan covered rent and my savings from summer jobs covered the rest. Mum n dad covered the tuition in the glory days of 1100 a year. I did graduate with approx 50 quid left in my overdraft mind. Geology had mandatory field trips which crossed into holidays so jobs could be a little trickier.