DD's uni costs

[WarriorWalrus]

DD1 is 17, 18 at the start of August. DH and I can't agree on what costs we should be covering while she is at uni and what she should budget for herself.
Due to our income DD only qualifies for the most basic maintenance loan. We have savings for her, so it won't be out of our monthly income (though I intend to keep putting money into her savings while she is at uni). Her grandparents have offered to pay for her accommodation (£350 a week).
So far we haven't figure out how much her monthly allowance from us will be, but we disagree on what this should cover. DH thinks the amount we set should cover everything, food, clothes, socialising, club fees, holidays etc.
I think food, socialising and day to day clothes sure, but she plans to join one of the sports teams so I think we should pay for the initial registration cost and kit costs, allow her to use money from the savings for travel, she currently gets private coaching in her sport, I think we should pay for this to continue at uni (I know she wants it to) and step in with extra money for more expensive clothes for events or such.
We don't want her to and she doesn't intend to get a job (Uni, Socialising, Sport and extra work to help future career should take up most of her time). But we do want to teach her to budget.
AIBU to think the additional things should be covered by us, anyone with Uni aged kids got a rough idea of how much she will need monthly?

This “she needs to work like we all did when we were in uni” is, these days, mostly bullshit. Many students get less money than we did in the past , many work and still struggle and it is not for not being financially savvy: accommodation prices are soaring, were I live it is fairly standard for a student to pay between £800 and £1200 for a bedroom in shared accommodation a month. £300ish a week won’t be enough to cover accommodation plus food, transport and study related expenses in an expensive area.

OP, calculate what would be the maximum maintenance loan she would get if you were not over the threshold, including London supplements and take off what she will be getting, the resulting amount is the minimum amount you should be contributing as a household that the government believes is an “affluent” household.

if she is going to a highly competitive university, the university will discourage her from working as there wouldn’t be enough time to work and study without her grades suffering. Students attending less demanding universities are normally better placed to work but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be plenty of jobs available were she is.

I work with students and over the years I have seen perfectly committed and sensible students sofasurfing of even sleeping rough more frequently. Jobs are not always available at a time it suits their studies particularly if they are doing lab intense or practice based learning degrees whose schedules tend to change regularly.

Support your DD the best you can, I suggest that the money you give her is not cash but offer to pay for part of her fixed costs like accommodation or services, that way she is still required to budget adequately and learn from the experience to be financially responsible.

If you think you cannot afford to support her if she is studying in London, you need to make her aware of that so she can start contacting universities to see if they have any additional financial support for students in her particular course.

I would say that it is up to the OP how much she chooses to give her DD. Some students will have to scrimp, but by no means all.

When DS went to Oxford we paid for halls and food when the accommodation wasn't catered, plus the mobile phone contracts. The minimum student loan was for everything else. We do the same for DD now. In addition, my parents give them about £100 a month. The reason is that we didn't want them ever to feel like poor relations.

Oxford, Cambridge (and the London universities) have plenty of students from comfortable backgrounds and very wealthy backgrounds. Very few appear to be really hard up. We'd have hated DC to miss out on a night out when everyone else could afford it.

These Answers are brutal, we paid foe everything for ours, she still had to budget, it was a set amount, she was doing a very intensive heavy going degree and we actually wanted to see her as well. And for her to have down time. She’s a perfectly well adjusted and lucratively employed young adult now in her chosen field.

I lived in uni halls in central London, it was a decent location, en suite and a reasonably sized room and it was only £143 a week. I can’t comprehend how your daughters is £350

Ah this interesting, she is a while away from masters yet and luckily her BA will give her some options (History and Political Economy) maybe as she grows a bit her passion will change, she loves politics, maybe the civil service or a think tank might be where she ends up.

This is utter nonsense.😂

Nasty.

I went to uni 10 years ago up north and had £600 a month disposable income. I was comfortable enough with that most of the time but I didn't have sports clubs to be paying for. With her location & extras I'd guess she'd need closer to £1,000 a month if you want her to be able to enjoy everything she wants to!

As a rough guide, she'll need at least the equivalent to the max maintenance loan for living costs (including accommodation) but with the caveat that the reality is it bately covers full costs, hasn't risen in line with inflation etc. Will she want to work, and how many hours etc. The more you can support, the more she can focus on her studies - though perfectly normal for students to need to top up with pt work.

But we do want to teach her to budget

My recommendation would be to hand over the amount you think she needs and let her pay all the bills - rent, sports fees, food, clothes, phone, socialising. Keep an eye on it but that will teach her to budget.

This is Mumsnet, there seems to be resentment of young adults, especially those who's parents don't expect them to work and struggle through uni. I know very few of my DC cohort who worked during term time at uni, none of them from wealthy backgrounds. Lots of summer jobs but uni is for studying and a bit of fun. They could be working for nearly 50 years so I don't feel it's essential to teach them a lesson at 18. Your DD has done work at home and will probably do so every summer. That's enough IMO.

It sounds like her sport is like a job for her. If you want to make sure she has all the chances in sport maybe you pay for that, then the rest she budgets from her loan/ equivalent. She can work in the holidays if she wants to spend more.

Why? It’s certainly the norm for very many students in the £350pw equivalent accommodation- wealthy people pay to dollar - those with more modest disposable income live in more modest accommodation. Ita certainly the experience of my older child’s friends at KCL and UCL.

If the op is happy bankrolling her child let her get on with it. They can obviously afford it

Spiteful and stupid post, and utterly spurious.

No, a job is where you get paid. It's an expensive hobby.

Yes what @Outdamnspot23 says – she needs to work really hard to get her stuff published and write and write. You don’t say @WarriorWalrus what she has done so far, but if as you say it is her ambition and she knows about it, I am presuming she already has, for example, a blog and a heavy SM presence.

“interested in politics” is great but it is genuinely tough as tough to get an in there. It was me suggested using her sport – like I say, I know people who make a living from using their knowledge of sport and social media. Not sure tennis is as good as football or rugby but there are plenty of fans and there must be a market. But would she like to do that? I agree with PPs, does sound a bit as tho you want her to succeed in her sport and she is not that fussed.

I get it, I do. DS2 is very sporty and has had considerable success in his sport; I think it’s great and it has given him a uni social life and some good team-building and leadership skills for sure. Doubt it will be a career for him tho. Eighteen is old-ish isn’t it to break into professional tennis? I am not an expert on this tho.

My parents are in good financial standing and not extravagant personally but give their grandkids everything and then some. There is no convincing my mum otherwise, she's stubborn !!

That's fair enough, @WarriorWalrus . Thank you for taking my comment calmly (I probably was being a little harsh).

the general gist seems to be that people are pissed that you can afford this and are venting rather than answering the question.

I went to uni in the 80's then again in the 2010's and my observation is that it's taken way more seriously now than it used to be. Probably because of fees I'm guessing for many but I'm in Scotland and have been really surprised by how hard my own daughter is having to work (undergrad at St Andrews) and this seems to be the norm.

There is a balance to be struck but bear in mind that sport at uni is a huge part of integrating. My daughter is state educated and some of her friend group have way more money/went to private school blah blah than she does, doesn't seem to have impacted one iota on outcomes, how they interact or how they see themselves or one another. At this point in time, social capital is more based around how they are doing academically and how socially able you are.

Why do you have to make a decision now? surely better to reach a consensus with your daughter by making a compromise decision now and then reviewing?

Just throw the money at her. You can afford it. What else is it for but your kids?

Provided she doesn't waste it and continues to appreciate that:

You worked hard to get that money
The money is an investment in her, so she needs to do her best with it

Then keep giving it.

I come from a privileged background - my parents earned enough that they could actually have funded me never to work.

But what they did at that point in my life was really helpful for me and helped me to succeed in a career:

They paid for my accommodation and gave me a credit card for textbooks and food.

Then they asked me to come up with a budget and suggest a monthly allowance figure - given inflation, pretty much £500/month in today's money. It was enough to have some fun but if I wanted to travel, I needed to work to fund it

I did various jobs in the vacations (I went to Oxford where it is difficult to work during terms), as did virtually everyone else I knew. Working really taught me a lot about the value of money and gave me a lot of motivation to succeed.

Unless your DD ends up sharing with similarly wealthy students she will be dubbed a princess, no job, everything funded by mum or gran including private tennis coaching, deary me time for her to grow up.
Do you think you're producing a grown up in 4 years time purely because she'll have a degree??

I'm not sure doing a MA in journalism immediately after finishing a BA in history / politics is honestly the best way to go about it. She should work after finishing her degree, get some life experience first, write freelance while working then look at doing the MA in a few years... she might struggle to get a place on a MA without real-world experience.

I understand this. My mum is exactly the same!

But Bojo was a journalist not investigative though. I agree with your post. She is also aiming to compete at national / international level in her sports, so anyways it will be very difficult to be an investigative journalist.

i was in a very similar position to your DD when I went to uni.

my parents paid for my accommodation, I had to do everything else on my maintenance loan - shopping, going out, extracurricular clubs etc.

I paid for a holiday I went on with a friend but my family paid for me when I came on holiday with them. And they paid for my more expensive things I needed occasionally like ballet shoes, special workshops etc (I went to dance school so these things did benefit my education but were expensive)

I do feel it helped me learn to budget without being terrified I couldn’t pay rent

we were all happy with this arrangement and I did also have a part time job.

hope you find a solution that works for you all!