Free calculator
Student budget calculator
Your maintenance loan arrives in a few big lumps. Your rent and your food do not. Put your real figures in and see the whole academic year month by month, including the month the money runs out.
Money coming in
These start empty on purpose. Maintenance funding changes every academic year and depends on where you live and on household income, so we will not guess it for you. Copy the figures off your Student Finance award letter or your university bursary email.
The total for the year, not per term.
Scholarships and hardship awards too, for the year.
Your award letter says which.
Whatever parents or family send you.
Take-home, after any tax.
Money you already have and plan to spend this year.
Rent
Student tenancies are often 39, 44 or 51 weeks rather than a full year, which is why a rent quoted per week is so easy to misjudge.
Check the tenancy, not the term dates.
Halls often bill termly. Private lets are usually monthly.
Everything else
These are illustrative placeholders to get you started, not research or averages. Replace every one of them with what you actually expect to spend.
Pick fewer if you go home over the summer.
Leave at 0 if bills are included in your rent.
Charged at the start of each term.
Deposit, laptop, moving in. Charged in September.
Your year costs
£11,950
Add your funding above to see whether it covers this, and when it runs out if it does not.
Term by term
The question that matters is not what you have per month. It is how long each payment has to last.
Autumn instalment
September to December. About 17 weeks.
Spring instalment
January to March. About 13 weeks.
Summer instalment
April to August. About 22 weeks.
Month by month
A negative figure in red is the month you would need an overdraft, a bigger job, or help from home. The academic year here runs from September to August.
Why a monthly average is the wrong answer
Almost every budget calculator asks for your income per month. Student funding does not work that way. For most students it lands in three instalments, one near the start of each term, so a very large sum arrives in September and then nothing arrives until January. Divide the year by twelve and the budget looks comfortable. Live it in order and you can be empty by November with a rent payment still due.
So this calculator runs the year in sequence. It starts with whatever savings you have, adds each payment in the month it actually arrives, takes off what you spend, and carries the balance into the next month. The month it first goes below zero is the answer you came for.
How the maths works
The academic year here runs from September to August. Funding is spread according to the pattern you pick: three termly instalments landing in September, January and April, monthly payments, or a single payment at the start. Your own award letter will give you the exact dates.
Rent is handled from the contract rather than the calendar. If your room is quoted per week, the total is the weekly rate multiplied by the contract length, so a 44 week tenancy costs 44 weeks of rent and not twelve months of it. That total is then split across the number of payments you really make, or into three instalments if your accommodation bills termly like most halls do.
Living costs are charged every month for as long as you say you are living there. Books and course kit are charged in three parts at the start of each term, because that is when you buy them. One-off costs such as a deposit or a laptop land in September. Everything is in today's money with no inflation and no interest, which for a single academic year makes almost no difference.
Where to find your real numbers
Your maintenance loan and any grant are on your Student Finance award letter, and you can check what you are entitled to on gov.uk. Bursaries and scholarships usually come direct from the university, so look at the funding pages on their site or email the student funding team. Rent, contract length and whether bills are included are all on the tenancy agreement or the accommodation offer.
If you are a parent working through this alongside your son or daughter, the figure worth agreeing early is the one labelled 'from family'. Maintenance funding is means tested against household income, so a larger family income produces a smaller loan, and the difference is expected to come from you.
The month it runs out is the start of the decision
A shortfall in month five is a deadline rather than a verdict. What decides the year is which levers are still open by then, and they close in a very particular order.
Rent is the largest one and it is chosen earliest. A room £20 a week cheaper is roughly £880 over a 44 week contract, which is more than most people can find by economising on food for a whole year, and the choice is usually signed in the spring before the term it pays for. So if the calculator shows the year failing, the rent line is the first to change, and it has to change months before the problem arrives.
Next, turn the gap into hours rather than pounds. Divide the shortfall by a realistic hourly rate and see whether it is four hours a week or eighteen. Those are completely different answers for a course with timetabled labs or placements, and knowing which one you are looking at before September is what makes it a plan instead of a scramble. Bursaries and hardship funds belong in the same exercise: they are generally applied for rather than awarded automatically, and the university funding team is the place to ask.
If part of the answer is family support, the useful thing to agree is not just the amount but the month. Help of the same size lands very differently in September than in January, and putting the real timing into the calculator shows which version actually clears the shortfall. Left vague, it is usually assumed by both sides to be the other one.
And if the plan ends up leaning on borrowing, be clear which kind. A student account's interest-free overdraft and a credit card are different products with very different costs, and the overdraft stops being free some time after you graduate. Running the balance you expect to end on through the debt payoff calculator at a card rate is a quick way to see what that difference is worth.
For a parent working through this, the gap has a second life on your side of it. A monthly top-up is a commitment that runs for three or four years, arrives alongside the mortgage and everything else, and often overlaps with a second child starting. The version of this exercise worth doing at home is the same one: put the contribution on a timeline against every other commitment and find the months where they collide. CrestCast forecasts a whole family that way, so supporting a student can be planned rather than absorbed.
Common questions
›How much money do I need at uni?
There is no single figure, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. It turns on your rent, whether bills are included, your city, and how much you eat out. The reliable way to answer it is to add up your own costs for the year and put your own funding next to them, which is what this calculator does. Start with the rent, because for most students it is the largest cost by a wide margin.
›When is the maintenance loan paid?
Most students are paid in three instalments, one near the start of each term, so a large sum arrives and then nothing arrives for months. Some funding is paid monthly instead. Your award letter from Student Finance is the only reliable source for your own dates and amounts, and the calculator lets you set whichever pattern applies to you.
›Why does my maintenance loan not cover my rent?
Maintenance funding is means tested against household income, so students whose parents earn more are given less on the assumption that the family makes up the difference. Rent is not means tested. Where those two facts collide, the loan can be swallowed whole by the tenancy before any food is bought. If that is your position, the gap has to be filled from work, family, or savings, and it is far better to see the size of it in July than in November.
›What does a 39 or 44 week tenancy mean for my budget?
Student rooms are usually let by the week for a fixed contract length rather than by the calendar month. A 44 week contract at the same weekly rate costs less over the year than a 51 week one, but you have to leave over the summer. Dividing the total by twelve gives you a monthly figure you will never actually pay, so this calculator works from the weekly rate and the contract length and spreads it over the payments you really make.
›Does this calculator know my maintenance loan amount?
No, deliberately. Maintenance amounts and thresholds change every academic year and differ between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as by household income. A figure baked into a web page goes stale and misleads people. Check gov.uk or your own Student Finance award letter and type in the real number.
›What can I do if I run out before the next instalment?
Knowing the month is most of the battle, because it gives you time to act. Common options are a hardship or access fund from your university, an interest free student overdraft, more part-time hours in the stretch where the gap appears, or moving some spending forward into a term where you have room. Speak to your university money advice team early rather than at the point the account is empty. They deal with this every week and the funds they hold are often underclaimed.
Where to go next
- How much does a child actually cost? →
University is one expensive stretch in a much longer run of costs. See how the whole picture adds up, not just one term.
- Financial planning for families →
If a parent is topping up the gap between the loan and the rent, that is a family decision, not just a student one.
- Should I open a Junior ISA for my child? →
Still years away from the first term? This is the pot that closes the gap a maintenance loan leaves behind.
- Savings goal calculator →
If you need a buffer before the next instalment lands, this works out what to set aside each month to get there in time.
This is not advice
This calculator is for illustration only and is not financial advice. It does no more than add up the figures you type in and put them in date order. It contains no loan amounts, thresholds or rates, because those change every academic year and differ by nation and by household income. Always check gov.uk and your own Student Finance award letter for your entitlement, and speak to your university money advice team about your own circumstances.
One year is a start. The degree is three.
This calculator covers a single academic year. CrestCast forecasts a whole household over years, so parents can see what supporting a student actually does to the family cashflow, and students can see the whole course rather than one term at a time.
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