One of the most common money problems facing students is running out of loan money before the next instalment is due to arrive. Often this problem is caused by simple maths errors rather than bad luck. This article shows how to extend the amount of your Maintenance Loan to cover the duration of your term.
Check What You’re Actually Getting
Note: The maximum amount of student maintenance loan for 2026 to 2027 is £10,830 for students outside of London away from home and £14,135 for students in London. The actual amount a student can receive is worked out using the household income of the student’s parents, where the student is studying and where their family home is. The student and parents can check the amount a student will receive on the government’s student finance web pages. It’s best to check your actual award in your student finance account.
Work Out The Weeks Per Instalment
The loan does not arrive in one lump sum. Instead the Maintenance Loan is usually distributed in three instalments throughout the year. For many students this means the first instalment is paid for around 40% of the term and then the following two are paid in equal amounts for the remaining 30% of each term. It’s therefore sensible to work out the weeks of each instalment and budget accordingly for the whole term, including holidays. UCAS work out living costs for students at university and recommend that students work out how much they will need to live for the whole of the year and then work out how the three payments will cover this.
Take Rent And Bills Off First
As soon as the loan payment lands in your account, you should pay the important fixed payments such as your rent and your bills first. This will help to ensure that you don’t run the risk of your cheques for things like your rent bouncing off weeks later. For student budget, see https://budgetingtips.co.uk/art/the-tap-that-was-designed-to-feel-like-nothing/.
Turn What’s Left Into A Weekly Figure
Divide the remaining money by the number of weeks until your next payment. This will give you an estimate of how much you can spend each week. Transfer this amount of money into a separate account as soon as your payment arrives, then only use this account for occasional spending. Use your main account for fixed costs such as rent and bill payments, so you can clearly see how much you have left to spend each week. This is how you create a budget and is described by Citizens Advice as working by ‘taking the headache out of everyday spending’.
A Worked Example Outside London
For our example here we have used the maximum Maintenance Loan for a student living away from home outside of London of £10,830. For the first payment of around £4,332 this needs to last for 17 weeks. ) this will leave our student with approximately £146 per week for food, travel, phone etc. for the spring term.
A Worked Example In London
Whilst the maximum amount of Maintenance Loan for students living at home in London is £14,135, the amount of loan that most students actually receive will be less than this. Using the maximum amount for this example, the first payment of £5,654 will last for approximately 17 weeks until the next payment in January. The rent for a typical £700 a month room share in London for a 3 year university course would be £2,800 for the first 3 years (approximately £500 per month for 9 months a year). This would leave £2,854 for the first 17 weeks of the academic year, which is approximately £168 per week for food, nights out, travel, phones, TV etc. This is slightly more than the outside London figure but not by the amount of the Maximum Loan.
Costs That Often Get Missed
It’s easy to forget smaller fixed costs that eat into your living costs each week. For example, you may have budgeted for rent, food and nights out but have forgotten about course materials such as textbooks, printing credit, train tickets for holidays between terms, phone contracts and TV licenses if you watch live TV as opposed to catch-up. Look for sites which provide budgeting tips for students and ensure you factor in the costs of specific course materials and city specific costs.
Leave A Buffer For Summer
Leave a little buffer of money for the time after the last payment of the academic year until the start of the following academic year’s first payment in September. This can be several months where no more loan money will be paid, and you will have to live off the money you earned from work etc during the academic year. Take a small amount from each of the 3 payments throughout the year (i.e. even £10 or £15 a week from each of the 3 payments) and put it to one side.
A Quick Checklist
Check your actual loan amount in your online student finance account. The maximum loan amounts for new full-time students published on the gov.uk website are higher than the amount that most students actually receive.
Remember, pay the fixed costs (like rent) first – the loan will get paid at the start of each term, so budget each payment out till the next instalment.
Turn the remainder of your loan into a weekly amount and deposit this into a special ‘spending’ account.
This should also include costs of materials for your course (textbooks etc), travel for home holidays, phone contract(s), and whether you need a TV licence (even if you watch everything on catch-up).
Keep a small buffer for the gap between the last instalment and summer.
Get your weekly amount right at the start of term and the rest of your budget will fall into place!
