Mumsnet Talk

DSD will be 18 in June, finishing Alevels (humph another thread that one) and works PT. She's pretty self sufficient ie buys own toiletries, going out gear etc we rig her out couple of times a year on the essentials. Also pay her bloody phone contract which is now 35 a month (more than mine and DH) but that also finishes in June.
Her plan is to go to Uni, whether remaining at home or going away remains to be seen. So what do you do for your 18yr olds remaining at home? DH thinks I'm a tightarse (I'm not we're just skint now I'm part time) so thought i'd check

DS is 18.5. I've only quite recently stopped giving him £20 a week pocket money (read beer money) as he's only started being paid for being in the TA a few months ago. So he buys clothes, stuff for his car, aftershave, taxis, nights out etc.

I still pay his phone (£15 a month), lunch money £80 a month, petrol £100 a month, car insurance, MOT and servicing (don't ask!).

When he goes to Uni I'll be paying his accomodation at £5k per annum, but he'll get the minimum loan for food etc and top ups from the TA (averaging £200 a month) for other stuff.

stop everything except food and accommodation. She already has enough clothes for a lifetime anyway.

My son is 20 ,in his second year at uni but lives at home . He has a part time job that pays better than mine! He pays £100 a month towards his car insurance and buys his own clothes ( mainly) . I pay his phone contract ( cheap) and all the toiletries / shopping . We use his car as well so we take it in turns to put petrol in it . He has no intention of moving out , why would he , however I know that he saves a lot and he doesn't drink / smoke or do drugs so we are all happy with the situation. He does finance his own social life .

My DS is 18 in a few weeks. Hadnt really thought about it. He doesnt get much anyway as never wants to go shopping and doesnt go out much. He has a You Tube partnership which generates around £200 a month on average. Never gets pocket money as refuses to earn it.

This is a question that is much on my mind, so I'm watching and reading with interest. My DS1 will be 18 in a couple of months, is at FE college and lives at home. He currently gets £20/wk 'allowance' which is all spent on beer/smokes . He is constantly short of cash, but not short enough that it has motivated him to look for a job.

I am torn between stopping the allowance to spur him on... And leaving it and just waiting for his social life to 'gear up' to the point where he want more than £20. If he was studying harder, I'd probably find the decision easier, because I can afford it and would be happy to keep giving it to encourage him to study... But he's just cruising along, and having life too easy IMO!

DD was 18 in November and is in year 13 finishing A levels. We currently give her the FA (@£20 p/w) but she does household chores in exchange. She currently has a pt job. When she starts Uni in Oct she will apply for a maintenance loan and pay for everything herself except her phone contract which we will continue to pay (though the loan will just cover halls fees). The FA will have stopped by then but we will contribute somewhere between £25 & £50 p/w (depending on where she goes as if she is further away, we will need to retain some money for visits) but this will be nowehere near enough and she will HAVE to get a job

That's the thing, amum, if they're only eligible for the minimum loan, as DS is, I think it's about £3,200 per annum. The halls are going to be a minimum of £4,200, more likely £5,700 if he can't get the shared bathroom ones.

So we'll have to shell out £2,500 to meet the gap between the loan and the accommodation costs before he's eaten, bought a book, a bus fare or anything else.

The simplest thing I think is for us just to pay the accommodation in one go, and the loan will have to cover everything else, plus his PT earnings, which are sporadic, will have to pay for any holidays, festivals etc.

My plan is to keep things the same for each of my dc until the end of the 6th form, not on their 18th birthdays - as that puts them in the same position for time to up their earnings, but, that said, I'm not expecting to be giving any of them pocket money once they are 18 / end of school. If they want "spending money" then they need to earn it. I would, however feed and house them at that age.

Following this thread with interest as dd will be 18 in a couple of months and isn't going to uni, but has no concrete plans for an alternative. I give her £20 a week at the moment, but I also pay her phone £7 a month, lunches and buy a lot of her clothes. I don't want her to get a job now as she struggles with her A level workload without one. I guess I won't have to make a decision until July, but it's a tough one.

dd is 19 and lives at home she is at college she works I really dont buy her anything major the occasional pair of jeans and maybe petrol money if she is short I stopped giving her money for her phone when she started working . she eats and sleeps here for free and gets her washing done I see her buying her own stuff as rent money

Oh blimey, I reckon DSD will only get the minimum loan, I had no idea she wouldn't have enough to fund her accommodation, bugger I really hadn't given that much thought. I also think she needs to rethink her iphone at 35 quid a month, I dont think she can afford it and we def cant

When DD was living at home in the last school year prior to Uni, we gave her £110 a month. We didnt pay for anything on top, so it was in her best interests to research phone contracts etc to make sure she got the best deal. She had a part time job which funded her social life. It worked very well for her and us and although she will always be a spender it did help her to organise herself.

When she went to Uni, she specifically chose the cheapest accommodation to make sure she had some disposable income. We send her what we can towards her rent. She also works part time to support herself.

As well as the maintenance loan, there is the maintenance grant, are you including that in your calculations Swivel?

swivel probably won't get a grant if her DSD is only entitled to the minimum loan.

The students who are only entitled to the minimum loan are presumed to have parents who can afford to top them up.

Ah OK Mumblechum thanks. Have just had a play on the student finance calculator - the loan seems to start to go down at between £45 and £50k, and the grant seems to stop at between £42 and £43k.

Yes, that's my understanding too.

As the interest rate seems to be creeping up, another option is just to pay for everything up front and hope that our DCs will repay our generosity by putting us into a nice retirement home when the time comes

I know a lot of parents who pay for accommodation, books and return home travel. The loan is then used for day to day living. One mum has an ocado shop delivered every Monday to her 2nd year uni dd which includes lots of fruit, veg, eggs and a bottle of Smirnoff.

happily I wonder which of those items actually gets consumed

Yep the iPhone will have to go. No brainer.

This thread has made me realise I need to start planning now for when DD goes to Uni. I hadn't really given any thought about the fact the loan may not be enough to pay for accommodation. What the govt thinks I should be able to contribute and what I actually can afford to contribute are likely to be very different.

Finding this thread interesting too

Going to put our situation down here to get a handle on it myself

DD is in 1st year of a level 3 BTEC. She says she doesn't want to go to Uni at the end of it (but still has time to change her mind)

We currently give her 40 quid on college weeks to cover bus fares, lunches and "spends" that she does (a few) chores for. On weeks off college she just gets 20. We pay for compulsory college trips and give her extra spending money for them.

We pay her mob phone at 25 quid/month.

I buy basic toiletries for her out of the weekly shop. I buy her the occasional large clothing item (coat, shoes, essentials). Any extras she has to fund herself. Any socialising she pays out of her allowance.

Have tried to keep the bankrolling to a minimum to encourage her to get a PT job, but she is showing little interest and is an intrinsically very lazy bugger. However, DH thinks I am mean because she is doing very well at college and has had somewhat of a turnaround academically as the GCSE yr was a fucking nightmare. He thinks we should let her just concentrate on studies for these 2 years.

I dunno what will happen next year, tbh.

I wasn't a teenager terribly long ago- so this was my set up.

Never got any pocket money, always had to ask if I could go to the cinema of have some bus fare to meet friends, and even then I'd be given bare minimum (ie- fiver for a child's ticket and I'd take a drink in, exact £££ for a bus fare to town and a sausage roll ) I thought it was so unfair at the time but asking my parents for money was so bloody demeaning even at 13 that I got myself on a paper round waiting list until I got a slot, then moved onto working in a local cafe. Since then I've been never out of work, part time during term and full time during holidays- I work in a supermarket now as a masters student.

Throughout uni my minimum (3500) loan paid for the bulk of my accommodation and I worked to raise the extra, my parents sent me £50 a week once I got a job at uni as an incentive to work, and they still do it today.

It may sound mean, but the way I see it, and it was the case for a lot of my friends who are students of 22/23 who have never had a job, that when their bus fare and lunch was paid for and they had 20 quid left from their allowance to go down the pub on Friday after college- there was simply no incentive to work.

If you can afford it- maybe suggest when she gets a job, you'll top up her wages as a way of encouraging work ethic. I'm sure once they see the satisfaction of earning your own money and all of the delicious overtime dolla that you can splurge in Topshop over the summer, they wouldn't go back. Once they've done it a few months you could wean them off the top up.

As you can tell from the 50 quid pw I get from the bank of mum and dad while I study, they are certainly comfortable and throughout college and uni could have just foot the bill- and even though I hated it at the time, they really did teach me the value of money and how good it feels to earn my own money

hmm, Euro, you are certainly giving me food for thought

I know all this, of course and started out with my MrsScrimpy "I am not prepared to fund a teenager when they could get a job" etc but got worn down with feeling a bit sorry for her, and by my much softer DH.

bah

Am not going to suddenly withdraw anything, but am determined not to buy a full wardrobe of holiday clothes for her (she is coming with us again, or no hols, innit), fund a car/insurance and give her any extras for socialising.

When I found myself dipping into my purse for a birthday present for her mate the other week, I had to give myself a shake

Picking up on a few of the comments about DC getting jobs vs being funded while they concentrate purely on their studies, this is such a fine line to get right and I'm not sure we have. DD has been doing her job for 15 months(every Sat & Sun and usually one night in the week). On top of that she has picked up a bit of modelling for a photographer that teaches photography (very good/easy money). So this week she has worked the weekend + 4 hours tonight + another 2 hours Thursday. While this gives her the money to pay for pretty much what she wants, I worry constantly that her school work suffers. She has just done mocks and got an A* in one subject and a D in another, which just won't do for her Uni entry . Either way, it's so tricky getting it just right....do they spend this time learning the value of money and having a good work ethic, or do they focus purely on their studies and not have the money for a social life?

I agree, a tricky one.