Student Budget Calculator
Is your loan actually enough to live on? Compare your weekly income — maintenance loan, family help and any part-time job — against typical weekly outgoings to see your real surplus or shortfall.
Estimate only. This is a general budgeting guide, not financial advice. Figures are illustrative estimates based on the amounts you enter — everyone's loan, living costs and location vary.
Monthly equivalent: −£1,062
£7,350
You'd be £7,350 short across the term.
The shortfall-vs-loan gap
Your outgoings run £245 a week higher than your income — over a 30-week term that's a £7,350 gap you'll need to close with savings, extra work, or a lower-cost outgoing somewhere below.
Your spend vs a typical student
| Category | Yours | Typical | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rent | £120 | £120 | £0 |
| Groceries | £35 | £35 | £0 |
| Transport | £15 | £15 | £0 |
| Going out | £30 | £30 | £0 |
| Subscriptions | £10 | £10 | £0 |
| Course costs | £10 | £10 | £0 |
| Phone | £10 | £10 | £0 |
| Other | £15 | £15 | £0 |
Making student money go further
- A student bank account's 0% overdraft is there for genuine short-term gaps — useful if it smooths a delay between loan instalments, but treat it as a buffer to clear, not free extra spending money.
- Student discount schemes like TOTUM and UNiDAYS knock money off everything from clothes to takeaways to software — always check before paying full price, especially on bigger purchases.
- Cooking in batches and freezing portions is consistently one of the biggest levers on the groceries and going-out lines — a big one-pot meal split across several days costs a fraction of the same number of takeaways.
- If you take on part-time work, most universities suggest capping it at around 15 hours a week during term time — enough to help the budget without it eating into the study time your degree actually depends on.
How this is worked out
Your three income figures (maintenance loan, family contribution and part-time job earnings) are each entered as a lump sum, added together and divided by the number of weeks that money needs to stretch across, giving a weekly income. Your eight outgoing categories are added up to a weekly outgoings total. The difference is your weekly surplus or shortfall, shown as a monthly equivalent and projected across a typical 30-week teaching term so you can see the real scale of a small weekly gap.