Primrose Kitten

University can be really expensive, and in addition to those expensive, you will also have the added stress of managing your finances, perhaps for the very first time. So, can you afford to go to university?

In this chapter I'm going to talk you through estimated costs for each week at university, extrapolated across each year. We will compare this value to the loan you're going to get for your living fees, and then we’ll talk about what you can do with the difference.

The first thing and most important thing to consider is your accommodation. At university, there is often a wide range of accommodation available, from self-catering shared rooms to en-suite rooms which are fully catered, as well as everything in between. These rooms can go for about £100 a week up to about £200 a week, but for this example I’ve gone for a middle range figure about £140 a week. You can expect to spend about £30 a week on food, about £10 a week on transport, and about £5 a week on your phone. Socializing at university is pretty cheap, often for about £30 a week. And then there are all the other things, like stationary, photocopying, pens, and other items that you will need for your coursework, all of which comes out to about £5 a week. All of this together is going to come to £225 a week of living costs while you're away at university.

Estimated cost each week:

Accommodation £140

Food £30

Transport £10

Phone £5

Social life £30

School supplies £5

Total £225

While the actual length of courses varies, some terms are very short, some are very long, and holidays should be factored in as well. It's roughly 40 weeks that you'll be at university, so £225 pounds a week for 40 weeks brings us out at £9,000 a year.

There are some additional expenses that you should expect as well. For example, at the start of the course you're going to need to buy some books, which will cost a few hundred pounds. For lab-based courses, you might need to buy a lab coat or equipment. You might also want to buy yourself a computer to use in your room.

All of these estimates are going to vary by person. The food cost will range depending on whether you eat meals you've made yourself or whether you eat out. Socializing would depend on how much you drink, how often you go out, and whether you go to student bars or whether you go to ones that make fancy cocktails. The transport costs will depend on whether you're living on campus—which quite a few of you will be doing for your first year, so you'll be able to walk to lectures—or whether you have to get a bus or a train to your lectures. And if some of you are studying in London, the cost of the Tube is actually quite expensive.

A few of the universities have published their estimates for living costs while in attendance. Edinburgh’s estimates are between £7,000 and £13,700 a year, while Manchester’s estimates are about £9,000. The NUS estimate about £13,000 in London and about £12,000 for the rest of the U.K. Birmingham says just below £9,000, and Oxford says a year there will cost you between £12,000 and £18,000.

This money is not including tuition fees. The tuition fees are in addition to these living expenses, but remember, you're going to get your tuition fee loan up to £9,250 to cover your tuition fees. As we discussed earlier, you won't see that money in your bank account, as it just gets paid straight to the university.

The living cost loan, on the other hand, is paid straight to you. For the majority of students, the living cost loan will be about £4,920 per year. This is quite different from my estimate of £9,000 a year for you to live on, which leaves you with £4,080 short over the year, or just over £100 a week, for you to find so that you can afford to go to university. You have three main options for this: parental support, getting a job while you're at university, or saving up during the holidays.

The student loans company often assumes that your parents will be giving you some money. When you apply for your student loan, you tell student finance how much parental support you will be getting, including information such as how much your parents make or whether you're in contact with your parents. If you are not going to be getting any parental support, then the level of loan you will receive will be higher, up to £11,000.

Saving up is also a possibility. You have long summer, Christmas, and Easter breaks, so you have lots of time in there to work really hard and save up money for the term ahead. If you're going to be working during the term time, the minimum wage for 18-year-olds is £5.90 an hour. To make up that £100, this means you're going to have to work 17 hours a week. The advantage of any work that you do while you're at university is that it looks really good on your CV. The disadvantage is that you won't have as much time to study and you won't have as much time to socialize.

For the majority of you, it will be a combination of all three. There might be some parental support involved, you might get a job, and you might have some savings as well. I know that I worked 15 hours a week in the university library sorting out books. It certainly wasn't the most exciting job in the world, but I did love being in the library! And then on top of that, my parents helped me out a little bit as well.

Believe it or not, the other hard part will come for when the loan is paid out to you. Because the loan is paid on a termly basis, this means that at the beginning of the term, you will have loads of money and everyone will go out that night, and the next night, and the next night, and the next night. And then towards the end of term, you won't have any money, which is when frequently my friends and I would eat ‘tuna surprise’—the surprise being that we couldn't afford tuna so it was literally just pasta and a tin of tomatoes!

Budgeting is tricky, and it's especially tricky if you don’t have any help with it or it's something that you've never done before. There are lots of things you can do to influence how much money you spend a university, and if you budget wisely, you can do it.