How much do your dc spend on food per week?

[mumofanoxonian]

DS is at Oxford. He eats in hall/ or ready meals and rarely has food from a takeout stand. Including about a bottle of wine a week, he's spent £43 a week on food. Does this sound like a reasonable figure? He says that the supermarkets in Oxford are really expensive, which for a tesco I'm inclined to agree.

What do you think? How much do your kids spend on food per week at uni?

[BackforGood]

We send dd £35 pw from mid-September to end of May (she spends quite a bit of her holiday in her University house, and of course most universities have much longer terms than Oxford).
She self caters. She says that is more than enough.
she does have a job - but she runs a car and goes on holiday with the proceeds of that, the 'housekeeping' - so all meals, incl eating out most weeks, all cleaning products, toiletries, toilet rolls, stationery, phone contract, haircuts, etc etc are all easily covered by the £35.

[mumofanoxonian]

She must live a frugal life! Good for her! Although how much extra comes from her job?

Is she up North somewhere? Back in the 80s, I went to university in London whilst my sister went to Manchester. Her entire year of rent and all living costs equalled my rent

[Lobsterquadrille2]

DD spends £20 - £25. I've never given her money and she eats very well but we're naturally quite careful with money.

[Lobsterquadrille2]

She's at York.

[MollyYouInDangerGirl]

I was at uni 2011-2014 and I used to spend less than £20 a week. My mum and dad gave me £20 a week and I'd spend maximum £17. I didn't really buy meat as I couldnt bring myself to spend £4 on chicken breasts.

This was at a uni in the NW and I used to shop at morrisons.

[goodbyestranger]

News to me that the supermarkets in Oxford are more expensive than elsewhere. Also, £43 a week? Including college meals? So for all his food? That sounds incredibly little esp if he's including a bottle of wine. I've no idea how much my DC spent or spend, but I hope more than £6 a day.

[BackforGood]

My ds also had £35 pw (he didn't have a job at University for most of the 3 years).
I asked my nieces and nephews what they used to spend before deciding on amounts and they all said under £20 for all food and groceries. Don't think my dd is particularly frugal or unusual.

(Rent is paid separately, mostly by her loan, and topped up by us - I was just replying re food, as per your question).

[yearinyearout]

My DS spends about £25 a week on food. He does cook proper meals though which I think work out cheaper than ready meals.

[mumofanoxonian]

We live in a poor area of Cornwall, so yes, supermarkets are more expensive than they are here. Sure if you live in London/Home Counties/south east they may be standard.

His college has very cheap food; they're one of the wealthy ones.

Thanks for the replies!

[goodbyestranger]

Well then surely cheap college food balances out the apparently expensive supermarkets. My DC just got their SFE money and I left them to get on with it, and had no idea their college food varied in cost - any comments made concerned the quality of food not the cost :)

[mumofanoxonian]

That would depend on the balance between tesco/hall.
Haha yes indeed. Quality is important! Yes goodbye, cost varies quite significantly between colleges; especially formal hall.

One good thing about Oxford is that it’s so cheap we needn’t worry about SFE

[Stiffasaboard]

He needs to learn to cook!
Ready meals are such an expensive way to eat

Can he bulk buy big packets of pasta and rice from cheaper places?

Also using small Tesco express places is considerably more expensive. We used to bus it to the nearest huge hyper market (an Asda ideally) and get a months worth for the same price as a week. Frozen veg also cheaper if he has freezer space.

[goodbyestranger]

Not quite sure what you mean by Oxford being so cheap you needn't worry about SFE. My Oxford DC all needed SFE, as I'm sure do the vast majority of Oxford students. That said, there's not much point worrying about it.

[Raggerty54]

I graduated in July. I used to spend about £20 a week on food shop. Around £7 on coffees. And probably around £7 on food out- the odd sandwich on campus when I forgot my lunch. I couldn’t really afford to eat out/ get takeaways. I also used to spend a lot on alcohol but I took that out of my “spending/luxury” budget.

[Gingerkittykat]

It's hard to tell without knowing how much food in halls is.

£43 for one person does seem really high though.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I just asked DD who is at Cambridge. She eats in Hall once a day most days and spends around £20-£25 a week. No alcohol. I expect she eats less than a young man would though.

[Justanothermile]

£20 a week for DS. It's his mission to stay within this, he doesn't need to, but he seems to manage. He was miffed about the cost of Dominos pizzas the other week, when his flat had a take out. Yes - eats a lot of pasta and rice etc but buys a lot on offer and will genuinely snack on celery/raw carrots rather than buying apples etc if required.

[Sgtmajormummy]

We give ours €100 to cover weekly living expenses, so transport entertainment and food.
He does cook (roast chicken/mixed salad/chili con carne/fruit crumble style) and says about €40 of that goes on food but he’s always appreciative of food parcels and home cooking when he’s here!

[Fifthtimelucky]

We have a daughter at Exeter (University, not the Oxford college) and send her daughter £30 a week for food. She self caters and she usually spends less than that (we don't aim to cover drink or takeaways which come out of her loan).

The older one was at Oxford and we paid her battels when she lived in hall, and also gave her something extra for food when she lived out and ate in hall less. I also used to stock her up in Tesco at the beginning of every term (and didn't find the Oxford branch any more expensive than our local one, but then I live in the south east.)

[adrinkofwater]

Did is in her first year at Cardiff uni. She is self catering and spends about £15 a week on her food shop. But she has a proper kitchen to cook in, so bulk cooks and freezes portions. This includes food she uses to make packed lunches, but not if she eats out/ has a pizza with others which doesn't happen that often, but more than she thought! (Which I take to mean more than we did at home!)

[Xenia]

My twins have £150 a week each (this year, 2nd, self catering) but that covers food, going out, travel, clothes, just about everything other than rent. They say it is about average for their university but I think it's quite generous. When they are home in holidays I pay for food but the allowance continues.

I don't know how much of it goes on food whether eatent at home or eating out.

[Stiffasaboard]

@Xenia so all through the holiday they still get £150 but have no outgoings on food or bills etc at all? Do they get a job as well?

Wow that is very generous and lovely but the fact they don’t seem to realise that is a bit worrying

Suspect some of these students will get a shock if/when they finally have to actually budget on a small wage and their food allowance isn’t half as good as it is as students.

Gone are the days of surviving half a term on rice and peas whilst waiting for the grant to arrive!

[ifonly4]

DD has seen somewhere the budget for one of her uni choices is £30.

£43 does seem a bit steep, although it's shops like Tesco Express in Oxford centre which will be more. Obviously he could cut back and not have so many ready meals. If he can cook a homemade tomato pasta sauce could be used over two days, very cheap and he an just add something cheap, ie kidney beans and chilli one day, grated cheese on top another, any sweetcorn, peppers he has that needs using up. Obviously keeping a close eye on offers for stuff he regularly uses etc.

[Needmoresleep]

DD probably spends £30.00 a week on food, perhaps less. But she cooks, eats relatively little meat and has a car so her flat do a weekly Lidl shop.

One of her flatmates, whose family are not well off, spends a lot more. Takeaways and ready meals do a lot of damage to any budget. Rather than compare with others it might be worth a zero based budgeting approach, going through what he spends and seeing if all of it is necessary, and perhaps practising fast and simple meals (pasta, stir fry, noodles, baked potatoes etc) whilst he is at home.

DD does not spend much at all. We gave her £100 a week, which she needed in her first term - sports kit, gym membership, various initiations and balls, but last term she probably only spend half.

I think a lot depends on who you hang out with. If your friends don't have much money and are happy to nurse a pint in Spoons all night, or come over to your flat for risotto, you don't spend much.

[Xenia]

Stiff, yes they are very lucky at £150 a week, but they do have some friends with very little and some with a lot more.
I am hoping they might go into high paid work (their sisters are London lawyers) so may be there will not be too much of a jump into poverty but that will be their choice.

They can get a job if they want. One worked last summer. They applied to Wimbledon this summer but didn't get it. I think they've been accepted to work at Hampton Court but the terms are vague and I am not sure if they are going to do it.

One of mine says he often pays for a friend's lunch if they both want to go to a cafe but the other doesn't have the money for a sandwich. I think that's a bit unfair that I am working full time to fund them whereas some other mothers don't work at all and as a result I in effect pay for two but that's up to him and they are afairly generous. I remember when one was in the sixth form he gave loads of money to a tramp on the street one day - I would rather that than they were mean with the money they have (within reason - I don't want to fund other impoverished friend's drinks bills). One did say last week that sometimes when he feels lazy he will say will you make me a bagel and if you do you can have one free (lazy so and so.....) and I joked he was putting capitalism into practice.