The cost of living is at the top of our agenda, we know how difficult this year is for everyone. As part of our ongoing Cost-of-Living campaign, we’re working on how we can help you financially amidst the ongoing crisis. This week, we took to Instagram to get a better idea of how you’re doing financially and what you’re struggling with so we develop the right policies to help you.

This week we ran a series of polls on our Instagram - nearly 1,000 students shared feedback, either in comments or through multiple-choice questions. 82% of students said they were more worried about their finances than they were at the start of the term, many students are worried about the cost of food, energy, accommodation, travel, and study materials.

"Rent and bills are considerably more than they were last year, but my loan is basically the same"

83% of respondents said that they had made everyday life changes because of money concerns, including walking long distances to university to avoid travel fees, spending less time at home to minimise spending on energy bills, missing lectures for paid work and socialising less to save cash.

"Walking 1 hour 30 to school instead of underground"

Response to the question "what changes have you made to your everyday life?"

We asked, "how much money do you live off a week, after paying rent and bills?", and found more than half of students surveyed (55%) live off £40 or less a week- which is just £5.71 per day. Nearly one-fifth of students surveyed live off £20 or less a week, or £2.85 a day.

Accessing support

We found that nearly half of students (46%) felt uncomfortable accessing financial support.

We've recently launched a significantly increased package of support for students - now we need to make sure students feel comfortable coming forward to access this support.

In the comments students made on our polls, many expressed that they are feeling lonely because they can’t afford to socialise. We know how important it is to prioritise your well-being by participating in student life. That's why we created the Participation Fund. This is £150k of funding available to use towards memberships, equipment or travel related to our clubs and societies, voluntary activities, international projects, and conferences.

If you’re finding yourself in a financial emergency and unable to afford urgent living expenses such as groceries or travel, don’t wait until things get worse to seek help – speak to our Advice Service and apply for an emergency non-repayable cash grant of up to £150 to help.  

Larger grants can be applied for via UCL’s Financial Assistance Fund and we have added £400,000 of funding to our union-specific scheme: the ‘Sarah Douglas Hardship Fund’ – where you can apply for money for one-off urgent expenses of up to £1,000 (or 1 months living expenses) and in exceptional circumstances, up to £3,000 of funding.