Finances and accommodation

Hey all,

I start university in September and still haven’t sorted my accommodation due to all this corona. I was wondering, how much student finance did you spend towards rent and did u have enough to live on after??
I’m getting 9.7k and I’ve found this really nice uni halls which is roughly £140 pw. Thing is I wana enjoy the freshers lifestyle too and don’t wanna miss out 😩
Any advice on what price range I should go for 🤔 I’m starting at uni of derby

Thanks, lots of love X

£140 a week! I paid £250 a month for a 4 bed house with 3 other students (£250 each of course). The only experience I've had with the student halls are my friends who lived in them, and none of them liked it. Well, one of them did, but she constantly had no money to do other things and when she moved out and into a house with me and another girl, she said she wished she had gone into a shared house at the start. If you don't mind sharing a house with other students, I'd look into that!
https://www.accommodationforstudents.com/search-results?location=Derby&area=&beds=0&searchType=house&lettingPeriod=academicYear&price=undefined&limit=12
I don't live in Derby so have no idea if these would be any use. Or maybe try facebook? When I couldn't get on campus accommodation/refused to pay £165 a week (at the time), I found others on facebook and we all shared a house.

Omg that’s actually quite a good idea! Thanks for that How much student loan were u on and how much would u reckon u were left with after rent

I think I had £7500-£8000 ish? It was a few years ago so I can't remember exactly and my MA finance is a bit different, but I think I had around £90-£100 a week left over, it was £8 a month for internet, and we paid £80 every 3 months for gas and electric and water wasn't much. But some weeks you'll obviously spend a lot less so the following week you'd have more The biggest cost was the transport to uni which was £3.60 a day but we luckily lived not too far so would sometimes just walk home

Ahhh thanks for that I’m just so worried that’ll end up broke, like I’ve found some nice house shared I’m not exactly worried about making friends and moving in as I’m quite sociable, I’m just worried I’ll end up with nothing at the end of it but it’s so mad how cheap house shares actually are compared to student halls!!! Student halls are genuine rip offs 😩 How did you pay your rent though, like I know student halls take rent through 3 installments, was that the same with the house share or did you have to save money from your SF each month? So sorry for the questions I’m so new to this 😅

oh god, don't feel bad about asking questions! ask away! I was exactly the same and I felt like no-one had answers haha, Yeah it's absolutely ridiculous! A friend of mine was surviving on £38 a week after her rent was taken (though this included food and was on campus accommodation) and she struggled so much that first year. So you'll get student finance in 3 installments, the first one will be 1 week after you register at uni, and then the next is the first week of Jan and then the third is in April (also, the April one is always a tiny bit more). If you private rent, well it depends on the letting agents- the first year, I had to do bank transfers each month through online banking (my bank messed up my student account) but the other people I was sharing with had a direct debit (so the money was just taken) and then for the second and third years I was with a different agency and we had a joint bank account where we would transfer the money each month online (it's really easy) into that bank and the agency would then take the money for the rent So what I did was work out how much money you have from your first instalment to the second, so say it's 9k (and ignoring that the third installment is a little bit more because it's usually around £105 more lol) so you'd get 3k for Sep-Jan, so say it's 4 months that means you get £750 a month (but then you'll start late September/get money then so it may be less months to work out) and then minus your rent so say it's £350, then you know for that month you have £400 to spend? I don't know if that makes sense or if I've complicated it, but it will depend on the dates you get your student finance