AIBU to think student DS spending £50 on his nights out is ridiculous?

[OwlBabiesAreCute]

Maybe my age but I used to go out with £5 - into a club for free, couple of halves of lager, 10 fags. Admittedly a good few years ago!

DS (2nd year of uni SE England) says he cannot go out with less than £50 for drinks in the pub, then admission and drinks in a club. And possibly an Uber home after.

He does have a job but is saving that money for when he goes back to uni.

AIBU to think this is not a typical amount that uni students / teens spend on a night out?

YABU - £50 is a normal amount and you have no idea of the true cost of a night out

YANBU - he's a student with limited income and should therefore limit nights out / spending

My daughter lives in London (she graduated last year) and it is more expensive there but that just means she goes out less and drinks far less. She might spend about £50 once per month but the rest of the time just nurses one drink in the bar.

I agree. £50 sounds fine. It’s Spoons, a cheap club and a shared taxi home.

People quoting hundreds are unlikely to be living the same life as a student and they may well be quoting the cost for a couple rather than per person. When you are a student you’re going to buy fairly cheap drinks and do “pre-drinking” at home first to reduce the cost.

University's exist in cities typically.

The average cost of a pint is around £5, £10 for a cocktail in any given city.

Even with pre drinking your looking at min £35-40 for club entry (£10), taxi home (£10-15), 2-3 drinks (£15-30)

Comparing it to 'when I were a lass/lad' is stupid. Stuff costs more in comparison to earnings now compared to 20-30 years ago. It's nearly as idiotic as those boasting they were paying 15% interest on their mortgages in the 80's...

I don't see why my spending habits are your business, but £50 is a very cheap night out in this day and age.

I used to often come home with the same money I went out with 😆 but that’s also because I worked in a restaurant and had Mates at all the bars.. or was bought all my drinks 😳 . But even when I was at uni 8 years ago it would have been normal 30-35£ a night out so 50£ doesn’t sound much now x

I think its a reasonable amount to cover what he says its covering.

Id also share OPs view in the sense that when i was a student we:

• rarely went to clubs that charged admission, as we couldn't afford it. We went to cheap student nights, pubs etc.
• did not pay for ubers home - we walked or did cheap buses
• chose venues known for cheap drinks
• had a couple of drinks at the flat beforehand going out to minimise buying expensive stuff out.

This was normal, im in my thirties so not that old. I think some young people are very entitled in terms of their lifestyle expectations.

The average cost of a pint is around £5, £10 for a cocktail in any given city.
Since when do students drink expensive cocktails?! Whats happened to snakebite and cheap lager?

Even with pre drinking your looking at min £35-40 for club entry (£10), taxi home (£10-15), 2-3 drinks (£15-30)

We hardly ever paid for clubs with entry fees. Those were full of young working professionals in their twenties. We went to the student union (free) student nights at cheap clubs (free or very cheap entry eg £2) and never got taxis home!! There are buses in all cities.

OK so my clubbing days are well and truly over buy at a rough guess....
Pub drink £12 for 2 drinks and even that's cheap
Club entrance no idea but would expect ?£15
Club drinks £15 for 2
Cab fare home ? £10

That's £52 and actually low and not even taking into consideration a post Club doner kebab!

I remember spending £30 easily late 80s/90s going clubbing though that would include a packet of fags. But that was 30+ years back. I would expect it to be at least £70 now, with drinks, Club admissions, cab fare and chips or kebab on way home.

I can't believe people think students buying cocktails at £10+ is normal behaviour and that they should accept paying £50-100 for a night out as 'that's just what it costs'.

I bought a cocktail at a leaving do last year that was effectively half a G&T and a thimbleful of cava in a glass of ice and it cost about £11. I thought 'fuck that' and thankfully everyone else in the group thought the same, so we went to a pub around the corner that was much more reasonably priced and we stayed there most of the night as we had a big table we could sit at and there was music/dancing on too.

Beer has gone up to £5 a pint in my DC's student union!

Taking a shared Uber home is quite common. In London, it can sometimes work out cheaper than the tube.

He goes to Wetherspoons so the drinks are cheaper than a regular pub.
Assuming that he's home from uni and can't walk to Wetherspoons, he might not be able to share a taxi there and back where as at uni you can share a can with others making the cab fare less

its actually low, i usually spend about £80-£100 , a drink is roughly £4.50- £6 each.. £15 on an uber.. probably get a kebab after drinking £10 If i had £50 that would only be 4 drinks, if on a proper night out most people have between 6 and 10 depending what it is they are drinking and how long theyre out for.

Also some of our clubs charge £5-£10 for entry

I think there is a big difference between a night out at the Student Union and a general night out in town.

Also fags now are at least £11-£14 a packet so no you wouldnt have even been able to buy fags for £5 now...

Your night out of two half pints of lager and ten cigarettes for a fiver would map onto approx £16 pounds now assuming £8 per pint of standard lagers (SE prices) and cigarettes at about £12-13 for 20 (according to Tesco).

We used to walk/night bus back rather than use taxis and go to places which were free or very cheap to get into. Union bars also tended to be cheaper than night clubs and pubs.

So yes, proportionately he is spending more than you did on a night out. Whether or not he can afford it is the issue - if he can, its up to him.

Even sharing with friends we never took taxis at uni or even in our early twenties. Buses are the cheapest option. Where have younger people got used to this type of thing?

We used to do pretty long walks home after a few drinks too. From central london out to areas like camden, Caledonian road. I once walked from tottenham court road to finsbury park for about an hour and a half with a friend because we'd run out of cash.

Ds and dd don't smoke but his friend who does smoke says he can't afford cigarettes so he vapes instead so £5 would more than cover it.

It's £7 from my DD's accomodation to the city centre. Divide that by 4 then it's cheaper than an adult fare on the bus.

Some universities operate their own night bus service which is free or very low cost.

Mine used to offer one, driven by volunteer drivers, taking people (prioritising women) back from the Strudent Union to halls and rented places near by.

The drink of choice for ds's friends seems to be fruit lager (Koppaberg/Darkfruits/Rekorderlig). Dd has more expensive tastes (whisky/wine/cocktails) but she's working now, as a student she mostly had cider.

Shots are reserved for special occasions.

£5?

Are you living in the Victorian era?

A taxi from town to my house is £25... even back in my teens half my life ago it was £12 just to get there.

That doesn't include drinks or anything else but lets take Spoons for example (one of the cheapest pubs, no entry fee etc... although hardly a club) then £5 will get you 2 drink if that with nothing left over for travel.

Its 10.1 miles home here in the rural sticks, several months of the year in terrible weather (we are up a mountain) and involves traveling along a motorway... of course people aren't walking it.

Not everyone lives in the city.

a 24hr bus service in central london is literally not comparable to the rest of the country.

When I was a student getting a bus home would literally not be an option.

I'm one of the 7% who thinks it is ridiculous.

Then you read of what people are prepared to spend on hen/stag dos, baby showers, 'big birthdays' and no doubt other examples, and it is just another example of the upscaling of events to spend more money. So the spend described is typical.

And if you criticise it no doubt someone will refer to it being 'essential' because of all we have had to endure with the impact of Covid and the last 13 years of Tory misrule.

A student living in the rural sticks up a mountain isn't representative, is it.
Most students live in cities.

I’m doing something I hate and posting without rtft. It’s impossible to vote. Of course the sensible thing to do is never go out and save all your money (YANBU) but that’s so unrealistic! £50 probably is standard and you know you’re being ridiculous with your comparison to your £5 nights out (so YA also BU). HTH 😂