What is your average weekly spend at uni?

Hi guys,

Starting uni this September.
Received my declaration from SF, so i know what sort of budget im working on for the academic year, minus part time job etc.

How much is your average weekly/monthly spend?? Where abouts in the UK are you at uni? What do you spend the most on (excluding rent)?

Thanks in advance for any help/advice you can give

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Reply 1

jelly1000

Biggest expense for me is food atm, at £20 a week. Going out is up there as well though, I easily spend £15 a night (on alcohol, taxi fare, club entry and maybe a drink or two in the club) so if I had more than one night out in a week then going out would be a bigger expense, I just don't get the chance to go out often. Then laundry costs- £2.20 per wash and £1 per dry. I'm in Norwich btw.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 2

boba

I spend the most on food and thats between £30 and £40 a fortnight so £15-£20 a week then going out would be my next biggest cost which is between £10 and £20 a week. I spend almost nothing on travel and my only other real expense is when toiletries run out

Reply 3

CantThinkOfaUsername

Excluding £96 a week for accommodation, on average, I probably spend about £45 a week (closer to 30 most weeks but once every 6 weeks or so, I probably spend a good bit more due to things like clothes, textbooks, computer ink or gifts for people).

In a normal week, I spend £15 on bus fares (I go home every weekend), between £6 and £20 on food and toiletries, and then some weeks, maybe another £5-£10 on extra things eg. taxis or donations to charity.

EDIT: slightly confused by the negs. From reading other responses, it seems that what I'm spending is fairly average?

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 4

Manitude

I limit myself to £50 including food, this is living in the north west.
Though I will sometimes spend more on one off payments like gigs.

Reply 5

rachelkeira

Copied from another thread I posted in about a week ago:
Rent: £107 a week
Food: £20 a week
Gym: £4 a week
Phone: £5 a week
Going to the football: £20 a week
Going Out: £50 a week
Make-up/cosmetics/hair products: £10 a week
Cigarettes: £14 a week
Clothes/Misc: £20 a week

I do have a part time job though usually involving about 20-30 hours a week, and get full grant, loan and bursary.
And there's normally a £100 or so spend on textbooks needed each term, I study at Nottingham Trent and live in Nottingham city centre.

EDIT: Not sure why people are so against me spending the money I work hard to earn on enjoying life :s-smilie:

I earn about £125 a week on average, so only really use my grant, loan and bursary for rent, food and textbooks.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 6

emilymay

Original post by sophielouise10

I have £50 a week as my living costs, some weeks its a little less, some a little more but it does balance out by the end of the term to about £50. I'm in Leeds :smile:

I probably spend the most on food, but I tend to do a massive shop every few weeks and then just buy a couple of things in between so it's hard to say how much I spend per week, but I also sometimes buy lunch if I run out of time to make it, which obviously puts costs up! Going out wise, I spend about £3.50 on a bottle of wine for predrinks, then a £4 ticket for entry to a club then I normally buy another 1 or 2 drinks while I'm in there which is about another £4, so 1 night out is about £14 including taxis. I generally only go on one night out a week but occasionally 2 or sometimes even none which is why everything tends to balance out as the weeks I go over budget going out, I make it up to normal on a week where I don't go out. Although tbh, I thought £50 a week was normal, but recently the subject came up and my friends at uni were shocked about how I was managing as most of them are on £70-£100 a week, which I was amazed at, I don't know what I'd spend it on if I had that much!

Reply 7

Ravepixie

£65 a week for rent and all bills.
£5 a week on food.

I live in Newquay so there arent any jobs until spring/summer so it sucks but I have to get by!

Reply 8

JEETI

My accommodation is £100 per week all bills inclusive, i just pay for my food, gym and going out so i would say approx £150.

Reply 9

Louise_x

My SF gives me £50/week to live on, and that is more than enough. I buy food with my entire flat, so that def reduces cost a bit, but I know this isn't an option for more. Here's a break down of what I spend:

- £15/week on food
- £7.50/week on travel (this is probably more than most, I travel to Perth from Glasgow every other weekend)
- £10/week on day things, so lunch out with friends when I'm not eating at my flat, sneaky drink at the union, stuff like that
- remaining £17.50 on nights out, be it a cheap one at the local comedy club or going into town.

As I said, travel is higher for me than it is for my friends because I do it quite a lot. But then, my food bill is probably lower than most - that £15 is at the higher end, usually it's just over £10, which includes 7 evening meals, plus breakfasts and *most* lunches.

Reply 10

the666thmessiah

I spend about £150 a week. The new clothes, eating out, take outs, travelling, dvd's, cd's, gigs, etc arent gonna pay for themselves.. So I hung onto my job over the weekend.

Reply 11

Megaross

Rent - £82
Food - £40-50
Phone - £7 odd a week (contract)
Going out - £0 because I'm always ****ing working.
Smoking - £8 a week
Drinking - £30-50 a week but I don't drink cheap spirits
Drugs - Probably average of £2 a week, I smoke pot from time to time, grown out of harder stuff.
Random ****/ hobbies/ band - Insert huge arbitraty amount because I work such crappy hours I have no time to go out drinking or go home but I do get paid a lot so I tend to buy a lot of crap. Just bought an £80 record from america to give to a friend because I've nowhere else to spend my money :biggrin:

Let me put it this way though, before I found this job I lived on £5000 a year to pay for everything. Basically my rent + £20 a week to eat, drink, smoke, see friends, travel home, pay for toiletries.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 12

lymantria

£80 for rent, about £10-15 for food. I'm okay with that. I try to keep below £20 for anything not rent-related.

Reply 13

SOZLAD

probably the sum of every amount posted in this thread so far haha fml

Reply 14

DontWantYourBloodMoney

Food: £30
Bus fare: £8
Train Tickets: £7.20

Occasionally buy a new game or go out or whatever.

Reply 15

The99Call

How does everyone have such cheap nights out? I end up spending 25/30 quid absolute minimum on a night out!

Reply 16

green chica

Original post by The99Call

How does everyone have such cheap nights out? I end up spending 25/30 quid absolute minimum on a night out!

That's exactly what I was wondering!

Reply 17

The99Call

I know, its normally around 10 on predrinks. 5 quid ticket. 5 quid in taxis there and back. Then 7/8 quid on drinks in the club! Thats the same for everyone i know at the minimum.

Reply 18

paulbridger

I just got my student finance quote, and it seems pretty good! I'll be going to UCL (hopefully) and so will be living in London. I have been quoted:

£3275 - Government maintenance grant
£6025 - maintenance loan
£3500 - University maintenance grant

Total: 12, 800

Would it be possible to live of this for a year? Bearing in mind I will hopefully have catered accommodation which will take a large chunk of this money. I won't be getting any money from my parents either. I would have assumed this was enough to live off. But I haven't lived away from home, so am pretty ignorant, and I just want to make sure it will be enough, otherwise I will look into getting a part-time job (:

Edit: there is no need for this to be negged. I appreciate that this post may appear a bit ignorant to the little amounts of money some people struggle with. The only reason I have this amount of money to spend is because of my poor background. I have had part-time jobs since I was 12, and therefore do appreciate the value of money. I haven't been to university, and therefore don't fully understand the costs involved and was just wanting to gauge whether this amount of money would be sufficient.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 19

ihaveyourcat

Original post by The99Call

How does everyone have such cheap nights out? I end up spending 25/30 quid absolute minimum on a night out!

Being a lightweight helps. I spend about £5-6 quid on pre drinks, £4-5 to get in (depending on the club/what night it is)
Sometimes £2 on the taxi home but we live very close to most places so usually we just walk. I never buy drinks inside the club because they are ridiculously expensive.