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How much money will I need to live at uni?

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£20 a week is certainly doable - I'm lucky that at the moment that I don't need to budget my food shop and can and do just buy what I want.

To give an idea, I just spent £95 on an internet shop that'll last me at least a month. I expect I'll probably spend around an extra £20 - £30 supplementing it with additional fresh products like milk etc.

And that £95 includes.... £12 on ice cream, £15 on fizzy drinks, £6 on crisps, £1.50 on my favourite bag of cookies etc... so lots of overspend on non-essentials/treat items I could do without! :tongue:

Being disabled most of my meals are of the frozen and ready to just throw in the oven variety as I can't really cook things with fresh ingredients from scratch, which likely would work out cheaper. I bulk buy things on offer when I can (3 of us sharing so have to be mindful of space!), and always keep a stock of cheap essentials in the cupboard (tins, pasta, noodles, sauce mix etc.)
Original post by henryf8
I've just taken a student finance calculator and found I would have -2000 a year. So then I refilled it out and tried to reduce costs. Is £20 a week enough money for food? I changed my costs to £20 a week for food and virtually removed most other costs as I know I wouldn't be able to afford the, however I still am -1,300 a year. Any suggestion on how much money I will need weekly/monthly for certain things and how I am supposed to live on minus funds?
Thanks

Have you asked your parents? The point of the student loans is that the parents would have to contribute, in addition to the government.

It is just that poeple will higher income would have to contribute more than other families as they are more able to do so.
(edited 5 years ago)
I realised my mistake just after I posted. I updated m post.
Original post by henryf8
I've just taken a student finance calculator and found I would have -2000 a year. So then I refilled it out and tried to reduce costs. Is £20 a week enough money for food? I changed my costs to £20 a week for food and virtually removed most other costs as I know I wouldn't be able to afford the, however I still am -1,300 a year. Any suggestion on how much money I will need weekly/monthly for certain things and how I am supposed to live on minus funds?
Thanks

Go to your local asian shop, buy a big sack of rice like the massive ones, buy a rice bin, empty the rice into a bin. Problem solved
But yeh £20 on food a week is definitely doable if you dont eat out often. But yeh get a part time job, get your parents to divorce so you can get a bigger loan, apply for scholarships, sell pics of your feet to creeps on the internet (my friend sold a pic of her foot for £35 lol)
You can more or less self-fund through university by working over the summers + loan. I typically worked up to 55hrs a week between semesters. With min wage+time and a half after 40 hours, earned about £4-5k whilst not spending a lot living at home.

Lived in halls>went back to parents and worked >back to uni>rented out my room to an exchange student>studied abroad>back to summer job etc

Might not work if you have an unpaid placement year, or are unable to sublet idk.

Gets tricky nearer the end of your degree when you're expected to gain experience. Ironically the summer I worked as an undergraduate engineer I didn't have enough money to live on the rest of the year, had to get bailed out by parents for the difference in rent + transport for that summer. If I'd not gone abroad I probably would have had a couple grand more savings/leftover loan to last the final year.
Blimey Danny, you are living like a king!
Original post by Dannyboy2015
Lol, I'm a food snob I think. I spend £50-70 a week on food.
Would recommend all students watch eat well for less! Buy the basics brands, buy in bulk, meal prep, make a lot and freeze it for later 20 quid is completely doable if you dont eat out a lot.
Original post by stoyfan
It is just that poeple will higher income would have to contribute more than other families as they are more able to do so

In theoorrryy but as it only takes income and not expenses into account this isn't always how it works. You might not have the disposable income available to yeet to your kids if a lot of your income is going on credit card debt, for example.
Reply 48
I was in a similar situation. I didn't get the maintenance loan at all, because I'm from the EU. My parents couldn't help me either. I only received a scholarship from my uni worth £2000/year. And that was it.

Throughout the whole summer before my first year I was working. Firstly in KFC (but was not getting enough hours - around 10-15 per week, so I quit), and later in a factory (doing 40-50 hours a week). Getting a job in my uni town was *not* easy, there were plenty of students who also wanted a job. That's why I had to resort to working in a factory (I basically went to a job agency to get that job). I saved around 2-3K before the uni began.

Later on (after the uni started) I managed to get a job on campus. I was really lucky to get selected from a large pool of students, and I was really grateful that I could just be a cashier and not a factory worker lol. I was working around 10-15 hours a week during uni (including night shifts)

I was eating rice/pasta with cheap sauces from Aldi. Plenty of frozen food as well (usually cheaper than fresh stuff). I was tracking my spending with an app and I made sure that I don't spend more than £25 a week (on both food and 'special' items such as a toothpaste).

It's all doable. You just have to discipline yourself and be ready to work harder than your friends (sometimes missing out on parties). There's a virtue in that... I definitely had something to talk about in interviews afterwards.

And for the record, I had an equivalent of A*A*A*. Kinda felt that I deserve to go to uni as well, so I feel you... (but still, I ended up at a uni that offered the scholarship, and not, say, Oxbridge).
Reply 49
I worked a part time job - 16 hours minimum a week but I got a first last year and have been getting 2:1s and 1sts this year too - it’s doable! I’m sorry about your situation, mine was different as I got more loan as my parents are in a lower income bracket- but they couldn’t help me at all. I managed to just cover my rent with the loan and then had to pick up shifts to fun my living costs and bills etc! Good luck!
Ignoring other costs, £20/week is absolutely doable. Across your first few weeks, stock up slowly on bases and basic things like pasta (40-60p), rice and couscous (£1-2), oats (50-70p), pasta sauce (usually a few portions' worth for 50p-£2), dry noodles (£1-2) and tinned beans/tomatoes/chickpeas/kidney beans/other tinned foods like tuna (anywhere 10p-£1). Keeping things like this in your cupboard is super important since it lets you have simple, easy-to-make meals at any time - and if you get these over the course of a few grocery shops, you're barely spending anything.

Frozen fruit and veg are also some of the greatest things ever for students. Grab a frozen stir fry mix, something like a broccoli/cauliflower/carrot mix, and some peas and/or sweetcorn, and you'll be sorted for a pretty decent amount of time. I buy my frozen and cupboard things probably not even once a month and they last me well. Week-to-week, you only need to stock up on any fresh dairy, fruit/veg (which you won't need so much if you have frozen), and flavourings and such. I tend to just buy bananas, oranges, potatoes, milk, and anything meal-specific throughout the week.

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