Foundation students - how much to live on?

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lawn
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Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by lawn »

My 18yo daughter will be taking up a 1 year foundation course in September, (about 30 mins outside London). We'll obviously be paying her course fees and rent, but how much have others sent their foundation children to live on weekly/monthly or have they managed to take on part time work outside of classes and used their wages as additional income?

Same with Dada students too if they don't qualify for any or much of the maintenance part. How much have you found they needed?

Trying to work out a budget in advance.
MygirlsloveMT
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Re: Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by MygirlsloveMT »

We sent dd £200pm when she was on foundation, upped it to £250pm when she moved to degree just so she can try to do it without having to get a job. She works when she’s home (in the big holidays) and between both it seems to keep her going with food, living and running her car (she pays everything on her car) but it’s hard for them to work and do the course as it’s such long hours she has friends on both courses who have worked and they are KNACKERED!! She spends around £30 a week on food so I think it depends how expensive your child eats and how much they need for transport but this amount has worked for us.
Good luck to your dd on Foundation, my dd did this at Performers and loved it, gave her such good training and degree offers the following year x
islandofsodor
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Re: Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by islandofsodor »

Dd is on a DaDa.

For the first two years when she was with a host family she got £35 per week to live on. That has to cover lunches, clothes, toiletries extra to the basics in the house etc

This last year she’s been in private halls. I give her the same amount as a degree student on full loan would get. After rent for her that equates to £327 per month. She has worked but lost one job due to Covid (teaching kids) so she now works for Serve Legal. She makes roughly £20-30 per week but unless you have a car or very good public transport it’s trickier.

She is hopefully going to be doing a post grad in London next year. We are worried about maintenance as her DaDa fees were £900 per term whereas postgrad fees are going to be a LOT more. But I anticipate she’ll need roughly the amount of a London weighting loan to live on including accommodation.
Grace03
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Re: Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by Grace03 »

We had some information from my daughter’s college about this.
Obviously it will vary depending on rent and other outgoings but this is what they suggested as a starting point.
Look up the maximum student maintenance loan available
Eg roughy 11000 in London / 9000 outside of London.
Then see how much your child is able to claim.
Eg for us degree would be 6000 including London weighting (4000 outside London). Dada and foundation for us would be nothing - remembering this is the maintenance loan only not including course fees).
The difference is the approximate amount your child will need to top up to be able to manage.

So we have a 5000 shortfall as my daughter is doing the degree or roughly £415 per month. This £415 could come from a parents contribution, a student’s job or a combination of the two.
(If she was to do a diploma with dada she would be 11000 short for living expenses plus we would have to contribute a smaller amount to her course fees - which we couldn’t afford so we focused on applying for a degree course).

Her rent is not quite covered by the loan she is entitled to so she would have to contribute some of the £415 per month to this.

This is just a rough estimation but it is what we have used to plan for her first year. Once she settles in we may adjust it but it’s been useful to give us an idea.

Hope that helps x

Edited just to add some extra information given to us - slightly off topic but might be useful for someone.
Once you have worked out what you / your child will need to contribute discuss with your child where it will come from and what it will include. Are you giving them it all? Will they need to contribute by getting a job? Does it include their phone contract, train tickets home etc.

And how are you going to pay for it.
Eg for us we will lose child benefit but gain from a reduction in dance fees, petrol, bus fares and lunch at college. The shortfall once we worked all this out is the extra contribution we will need to find compared to what we are paying out now.
Sounds obvious but we feel more prepared now we have worked all this out.
lawn
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Re: Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by lawn »

Thanks you all for the replies

I do have an older one at Uni, who receives the min maintenance loan for studying outside London. We pay his rent in full which includes heating, water, broadband and also pay his contents insurance and phone bill separately. We then leave him his loan to live on. He has no travel costs as he lives within walking distance of his Uni and grocery stores etc.

I had wondered about doing the same sort of scenario for DD, but wasn't sure whether I'd be giving her too much or too little, (Son studies in a cheap part of the UK plus has a shorter academic year of late Sept-Mid May so can come home and live for free for several months of the year) which is why I thought I'd ask what others had found.

Diplomas with Dadas simply don't work for us. Husband has a company car and doesn't pay for petrol. All this means he has to add £10K+ as benefits in kind onto his reported salary. If I return to work (I lost my job in the 1st lockdown) to help out then not only does it up the amount we'd need to pay as parental contribution for tuition, it puts us dangerously close to being ineligible. An unexpected bonus/payrise/being required to work overtime for either of us (all of which has happened in the past) and we'd find ourselves having to pay the whole fees. It's not worth the risk. Daughter knows she can only apply for degree courses due to this and also that us paying for a foundation year means the money isn't available for degrees that require large top up contributions.

Daughter doesn't currently have a job, though she would dearly like one. Our town is not set up well with p-time vacancies and students. I used to find exactly the same thing when the children were small, that the part-time jobs wanted you to have complete flexibility over the days and hours worked. I could no more do that with childcare restrictions than daughter can with college and any extra curricular classes. She finds it very frustrating as her college mates all had jobs (at least until the pandemic) because they live in large cities and/or tourist attractions. She commutes 40 miles to college via train and bus plus me driving her to and from the station which means 3.5 hours of travel each day, simply because the calibre of course nearer to us wasn't at a high enough standard. This all means she's even more unavailable for work with places opening hours. Trying to find a coffee shop open here after 4pm is very limited, after 6pm it's just about non existant! I've passed on the details of Serve Legal islandofsodor - thank you for that. That sounds like a possibility even if she doesn't earn much.

Her commuting costs come to £135 per month as we are outside the college's usual catchment area so no college transport (thank goodness for the 16-17 saver railcard!) so we would save there. She still has one MT drama class plus private singing where she'll take her final grade 8 exam this summer, but has now cancelled or won't be returning to her other extra curricular classes, so a saving there too.
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Re: Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by Jofitz »

Hi - we have worked on the same basis for DD in first year at Performers as we did for older daughter at normal uni. We cover the rent with the min student finance plus top up by us, which has worked out similar as uni in private rent even over 12 months. We then worked out roughly if she had loan to live what that would be per week. We then give her money weekly and she tops up from what she managed to save pre lockdown - roughly £80 per week, term time only. She is spending approx £30 per week on food plus travel. Has been ok as there hasn't been the same social side as normal but she will have to work in the summer to top up her savings, there is no way she could work alongside the course. Like others have mentioned we had saved on college travel, dance fees, reduced home food to balance it out but it is tough. Diplomas weren't an option for us and she was only able to apply for degree courses.
Grace03
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Re: Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by Grace03 »

lawn wrote: Tue May 04, 2021 10:18 am Thanks you all for the replies

I do have an older one at Uni, who receives the min maintenance loan for studying outside London. We pay his rent in full which includes heating, water, broadband and also pay his contents insurance and phone bill separately. We then leave him his loan to live on. He has no travel costs as he lives within walking distance of his Uni and grocery stores etc.

I had wondered about doing the same sort of scenario for DD, but wasn't sure whether I'd be giving her too much or too little, (Son studies in a cheap part of the UK plus has a shorter academic year of late Sept-Mid May so can come home and live for free for several months of the year) which is why I thought I'd ask what others had found.

Diplomas with Dadas simply don't work for us. Husband has a company car and doesn't pay for petrol. All this means he has to add £10K+ as benefits in kind onto his reported salary. If I return to work (I lost my job in the 1st lockdown) to help out then not only does it up the amount we'd need to pay as parental contribution for tuition, it puts us dangerously close to being ineligible. An unexpected bonus/payrise/being required to work overtime for either of us (all of which has happened in the past) and we'd find ourselves having to pay the whole fees. It's not worth the risk. Daughter knows she can only apply for degree courses due to this and also that us paying for a foundation year means the money isn't available for degrees that require large top up contributions.

Daughter doesn't currently have a job, though she would dearly like one. Our town is not set up well with p-time vacancies and students. I used to find exactly the same thing when the children were small, that the part-time jobs wanted you to have complete flexibility over the days and hours worked. I could no more do that with childcare restrictions than daughter can with college and any extra curricular classes. She finds it very frustrating as her college mates all had jobs (at least until the pandemic) because they live in large cities and/or tourist attractions. She commutes 40 miles to college via train and bus plus me driving her to and from the station which means 3.5 hours of travel each day, simply because the calibre of course nearer to us wasn't at a high enough standard. This all means she's even more unavailable for work with places opening hours. Trying to find a coffee shop open here after 4pm is very limited, after 6pm it's just about non existant! I've passed on the details of Serve Legal islandofsodor - thank you for that. That sounds like a possibility even if she doesn't earn much.

Her commuting costs come to £135 per month as we are outside the college's usual catchment area so no college transport (thank goodness for the 16-17 saver railcard!) so we would save there. She still has one MT drama class plus private singing where she'll take her final grade 8 exam this summer, but has now cancelled or won't be returning to her other extra curricular classes, so a saving there too.
My daughter was very lucky to find a job pre-covid. Many of her friends have struggled as there just isn’t the work available. She works 1 day each weekend.
However she won’t be working when she goes to uni, at least initially until we see how realistic it is to fit one in.

She knows that we will support her financially with the essentials and a small amount so she can go out when she’s living away. But she also knows she will have to work in the summer to fund any extras such as trips away and nights out when she is at home in the holidays.
For us this seems like a good compromise to start with but we will see how it goes.
islandofsodor
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Re: Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by islandofsodor »

With regards to part time jobs my dd (and now my ds) has encountered the same problems of places wanting total flexibility with regard to working hours. Dd did work at a kids drama class for half a year but then covid hit and she never got her job back.

It's not huge amounts of money and it helps to have good access to public transport, a car or good cycling routes but I an recommend Serve Legal if any of your children are aged 18-19 (they also have some work for 16-17 year olds). There is total flexibility to pick and choose jobs according to your schedule. Dd visits places like shops, betting shops, newsagents and petrol stations and attempts to buy an age restricted product. She is reimbursed for the purchase plus gets an amount on top. (usually £5-7 per job) and she has to fill out a short report on whether they asked her for ID. Sometimes she is asked to get a supermarket delivery or Deliveroo take away which includes alcohol). she gets to keep up to £40 of shopping for a supermarket delivery.

Dd does drive so finds it easier to do more jobs in various different places (they pay mileage or cycling allowance). Some weeks she earns £30-£40, other weeks up to £70. My neice on the other hand just does the odd job maybe £10 per week.
lawn
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Re: Foundation students - how much to live on?

Post by lawn »

Our local theatre had ad hoc/casual vacancies for staff (ushers, program/ice cream sellers etc) which I thought ideal as bar the odd mid-week matinee performance would all be at times she wasn't at college but they only took from age 17 and the first lockdown came in shortly before this birthday and of course they've barely been open since.

We do have money saved from her being young that was always intended for the 16/18+ point of education plus the money in her CTF that will need to subsidise her foundation year. I'm mindful that we have an overlapping year to support her brother too though
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