How do people fund PhD and living costs? (without studentship)

I couldn't have done mine without scholarship funding. It's tough enough as it is, but adding London living costs plus children to the mix would've made it totally impossible without funding.

Of the people I know who self-funded, they usually did it via one of two options:

- some had their parents fund it. I know a few people whose parents paid the fees and also a big chunk of their living costs. This is definitely the less-common option in my experience: between the fees and the living costs across 3-4 years it adds up to a lot!

- the other option was to do the PhD part-time and work alongside it. Doing it part-time means the annual fees are lower and people had jobs including some teaching/research-type jobs, one was a PA, office work, and so forth.

I'm in the humanities, so I have no idea how it works in other fields. I know for myself that I could never have done my PhD without a studentship - people do seem to manage, but it's certainly much harder.

You have shedloads of money stashed away from a previous well-paid job or your rich parents, or you work at the same time - either taking a longer time doing it part-time, or busting a gut doing a full-time PhD plus work.

There is a whole debate about the ethics/politics of self-funding PhD study - you can read a lot about it online - I won't go into it in great detail, but as far as I'm concerned you're working for the university producing research and should be paid in kind. Studentships are rare but you can nab yourself one if you give yourself time to prepare and you're strategic about it.

I couldn't have done mine without scholarship funding. It's tough enough as it is, but adding London living costs plus children to the mix would've made it totally impossible without funding.