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?

Reading this thread, I worry we are giving too little. We pay for DD’s rent and utilities. She gets the minimum maintenance loan. She has a part time job as a barrista during term time and pulls pints during the summer. I am very pleased for her to work and feel that the money she earns is relevant snd makes a difference. However, I don’t want to put her under undue pressure. Now wondering, if we should give her an extra £100 month.

Having graduated a LSE last year I think I'm in a position to clear up some things here:

• Accommodation: £350pw is extremely expensive, even by London standards. For central London £220pw (uncatered, shared bathroom), £260pw (catered, shared bathroom) are reasonable. Add £20 for per week for a private bathroom.
• First year hall choice is very important with regards to socialising. Going for the most expensive hall will mean ending up with a crowd of extremely wealthy international students with no clue about what normal life looks like (I had a friend in one of those halls who in her first week had to explain to someone who to press a button on a lift since they were used to butlers in their home country). Being in a hall like this will involve hanging out with people who will have a very expensive when it comes to eating out or going out partying.
• Food, Going out & everything else: London is expensive, no question. Having food provided by the uni on campus will be £5-£6, cooking a large meal with protein won't be much cheaper (I'm a rower so my perspective on how much food you need for a meal might be a bit skewed for this). Overall, I don't think £10 per day on food would be crazy, that's £70 per week. If she gets £500 per month that would be £125 per week, which would be wholly sufficient to cover that plus everything else she will incur. As a student you know how to budget. The tube racks up quickly, walking and cycling (if confident, though the infrastructure in London is getting very good in places) are your friends. No, you don't need £50 for a night out in London. As a student in general you go clubbing during the week, as the weekend prices are crazy. Buying tickets in advance, they'll be between £5-£10. Pre-drinking with the friends/ sports team will mean no need to buy drinks in a club. Every uni will also have its own bar with cheap pints and often its own club night with cheap entry and drinks.
• Part-time work: For jobs after uni, summer internship (summer before graduating) are invaluable and depending on the sector can be extremely well paid (banks pay pro-rata on entry-level salaries, so many of my friends made £12k in 12 weeks in investment banking roles). Any part time work experience you get will be good, the more skilled it is though the better (office job over bartending since you can always lever that in a job interview and CV). In the later stages of the degree and with good grades research assistantships for professors are very attractive (did them both at LSE and Kings for about £18 per hour) and look great on the CV. Unis tend to have career portal through which I (and many of my friends) found part-time office jobs. However, I'd advise not doing more than 10 hours per week. I started off with 20 and that was way too many. My work was quite flexible, so I tended to do 7-9am in the office every day, before heading to campus.
• Time: The first year of your daughter's course in particular will not be insanely demanding. Unis know that students take time to adjust and a lot of time is spent to bring everyone from where different backgrounds up to the same level. Even with high-level sports, there should be enough time for socialising and part-time work. I had friends who rowed for University of London (about 12 training sessions a week, many out in Chiswick) even during their last years of their degrees. One of the skills to learn in uni is how to organise your own time (and money).
• To conclude, £500 after accommodation is paid is plenty even in London if you do live like most students (though many students in her hall will likely live a different lifestyle). There should be enough time for uni, socialising, sports and part time work, in particular in the first year.

Dear god. Of course she can get a job, even if it’s to save like mad during uni holidays. And she needs to budget for herself. You are treating her like she is ten.

@WarriorWalrus I think the difficulty B here is that you are asking for advice on money but your DD snd parents have more than enough. Why did dd spend this on accommodation? You are privileged and your parents obviously have a lot of spare money. So I’m amazed you need to ask whet anyone else thinks. She will be in with a well off crowd. So cocktails will cost you! Ask your parents to help out as they are rich and have already agreed to an excessive rent.

I was skint at Uni ,no parental support
No way did it set me up to do better than others who had parental support
I can see no correlation at all

When I went to Uni, in 2005, lots of people's parents drove them there and helped them to set up their entire room including fairy lights. I took a train, by myself, with my two suitcases. I had part-time jobs all through Uni, managed to go to the gym 5 times a week, go on plenty of nights out and graduate with a 2:1 (because I spent most of my time out partying, if I had studied I'd have easily got a First).
It was incredibly useful and character building to have to do it all alone.
I also walked straight out of Uni and into a well paid job, thanks to all my work experience, bought a flat 6 years later and then sold it and bought a house. We're now onto our second investment property. On the other hand, everyone I know who has never had a part-time job has seriously struggled to get a job after Uni, because suddenly they have to work for their money instead of having it handed to them.

Both my boys only paid a max of £110 a month both for halls and then shared accommodation for the final three years. They had to live off of their grants and I gave them £200 a month for food, books and travel to and from uni. The rest should be budgeted by them from their loan as part of the Adult learning experience. You will not be helping her by allowing her expensive clothes, stupidly expensive accommodation, groups, clothes and socialising. How will she cope with the real world once she leaves?

If her accommodation is paid for, realistically she would be able to get by on her loan for the other costs.

It actually helps a huge amount to get a job and summer placement whilst at uni.
Plus also having the motivation to save up for travelling is really good to exist!

You should ease her into the real world with finances. Not pay for everything.

If she's not struggling to pay for food and sports and bills, so she can study. That's really nice. Anything on top she should be old enough now to be self funding and learning about the world of work and saving.

Maybe help her more in her first year with getting kit to settler her in?

Don't pay for clubbing/party stuff because that is a money pit
If she doesn't feel the consequences of spending her own money on alcohol and clubs, she's less likely to be careful with it.

You could always have a safe card though for ubers or late night taxis.

I walked home on my own a lot to save money and looking back that's a bit terrifying.

So.
Reduce her stress so she can get by.
But nice bonus things like nice clothes and holidays encourage her to save for.
You could always say you'll match her on what she saves or something.

Or when she starts to plan a trip offer to pay for something. But I wouldn't set it out as a given. :)

No, that's not what most people are saying. They're saying that agreeing to pay for everything isn't going to do her any favours in the long term. Not that her GPs shouldn't pay the rent, not that she should give up her sport. Just that offering to pay for everything right up to nights out, holidays and expensive clothes, on top of having chosen the most expensive accommodation by a long way, isn't going to teach her anything about budgeting - which was the original question.

I honestly can’t believe the amount of people being prejudice because your looking after your daughter!

Ignore them. You’ve worked hard to provide for her and want to continue it so you do you! There are other ways to teach her to budget and learn that she has to pay for things without seeing her live off noodles all uni.

Personally if I were you I would be looking to cover food, textbooks and other uni related materials (like pots, pans or laptop for example). A small amount for socialising and I’d cover her sports and sport related extras. Within reason.

I don‘t have £500 disposable a month to cover food and socialising and I earn a professional wage! You are not setting your child up for real life.

Unless they carry on of course. I know someone who ‘doesn’t want to work full time,’ so little part time dog walking suits her down to the ground d as muggins mummy is unable to retire to subsidise her adult daughter.

Frankly just let her move back in with you now, why would she need uni when she's never going to manage the real world and is always going to need you guys to wipe her bum? And since you clearly want that too, it's a win win!

I also walked straight out of Uni and into a well paid job, thanks to all my work experience, bought a flat 6 years later and then sold it and bought a house. We're now onto our second investment property. On the other hand, everyone I know who has never had a part-time job has seriously struggled to get a job after Uni, because suddenly they have to work for their money instead of having it handed to them

That doesn't make sense. If they are struggling to work for their money instead of having it handed to them, that implies they are struggling with the notion of working, rather than getting a job in the first place. Many people find it hard to work full-time, it's why people look forward to the weekend, a lie-in and some relaxation time.

When I was at university it wasn't that easy to find part-time jobs, yet I think the people I was at uni with have managed to become fully functioning members of society. I did manage to find vacation placements though. They are harder to come by these days though, although there are virtual placements on the website Forage which are helpful.

However, I do think working if you can find a job is incredibly important - both from a work experience perspective and it's good to earn your own money and appreciate its value. And the long summer vacations are long - plenty of time to find something, even if it's ad hoc or voluntary work.

This is the best comment here. If she has picked accommodation that costs 350 pw, 500 GBP pm is not going to be enough to socialise with the people in the halls.

OP, did you have any conversation about money with your daughter prior to creating this thread? Why did she pick such expensive halls? It makes me think she either didn't think about money and all or just assumed you'd cover all of her costs.
Everyone I know would rather stay at slightly cheaper halls and have higher budget for food or fun, than pay 350 GBP pw and live on 500 GBP in central London. It's more than enough to manage well, but she'd have more fun on, say, 700.

OP, why is she staying at some of the most expensive halls? I don't know which uni she is going to, but here is the price list for LSE halls.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/student-life/accommodation/prices-and-payments

There are lots of options for 250 pw and most are below 300 pw!! 350 pw seems excessive. As a student with many activities, I would only go to my room to sleep.

Many people find it hard to work full-time, it's why people look forward to the weekend, a lie-in and some relaxation time.

Lazy people, yes.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 well said @Gerrataere

Also, how much do you expect her to earn once she graduates?

The rent + 500 GBP pm from her loan adds up to 2k pm, an equivalent of a gross salary of 30k GBP. Is she going to earn much more than that, seeing as you expect her to do unpaid internships? From my experience, high paying jobs don't do unpaid internship. Investment banking, FAANG, MBB, etc all pay their interns very well.

£350 a week??? Bloody hell where abouts is she going to university? My freinds just started renting a very nice two bed bungalow all to herself for £600 a month. But yes we are absolutely in the back of beyond 🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

The amount spent on halls doesn’t impact the amount available for everything else. DDs grandparents are covering halls and I guarantee that my mum is more to blame for expensive halls than DD is!!
Since DH and I are covering anything on top of loan, it doesn’t matter if the halls are 200pw or 350pw, it’s not our budget that money comes out of.
The decision we have come to though is,

• We will periodically send a little more than the loan money, as DD is so sporty, her food might come in more expensive than for others (we’ve hired a nutritionist to help her make a meal plan which is both uni friendly and sustains her lifestyle)
• Socialising, Travel, bulk of food etc. Covered by loan. If DD wants a weekend away with her friends she has to budget her money to allow for this
• Before she goes, we will buy her new tech for her 18th (laptop, iPad etc.), then I will take her to get new basics such as jeans, hoodies, a nice coat for winter and shoes, so she isn’t worried about most clothes.
• We will also sort everything she needs for moving in, pots and pans, bedding etc.
• We will cover her private coaching and initial cost of joining sports societies (there is no way she could cover this alone, also any additional expenses, we’ve just bought several new rackets but inevitably restringing will be needed etc.)

I know she will be in a better position than some(most), I also know especially in her halls there will be some better off than her. If DD wants to work she can, but I know it might not be easy to find flexible term time work (also certain MN would lose their mind if DD took a coveted job from someone who needs it more), in the holidays again she can work if she likes, but I’m not going to make it so she “has” to work. She has her whole life to “have” to work, she doesn’t need to leave uni the most perfectly formed well rounded adult, a lot of our first jobs are about learning that too.

To be fair to Op she’s explained that accommodation decision was nothing to do with her and the grandparents are fully funding. They have funded 4 years for another grandson and will fund her younger sibling too.
Particularly if they are from northern rural they may be very concerned about granddaughter who will only be just 18 (she’s still 17) in London.
The accommodation she has chosen is on the University website and has all the support that comes with that, they have a residents programme, staff on hand 24/7 etc.
If all the cheaper had gone or in awful area then I can fully understand grandma saying don’t worry about cost we are paying rather than the girl in private rental or a dodgy area.

My mum thinks my dd yr 12 should just discount London entirely, it’s a horrid place and costs ridiculous money in her view but she’s not funding it so we have been to look at 3 London unis and sat through accommodation talks in last few weeks.
The accommodation is fully booked I think so whatever people on here think people are paying that sort of money.

That sounds like a sensible compromise - I think it will be interesting for you to see her grow more independent and how much of the nutritionists plan and tennis coaching she chooses to attend when there are so many other things to do :) Wish her all the best!

(I wouldn't take the 'coveted job' thing seriously, there's no shortage of jobs in London at the mo.)

I would be advising her to get a job, to have a bit of independence, clubs I’m not sure on as our children are not at that stage or into clubs. Your daughter needs to realise that parents can’t pay for all im not saying she does. One of our daughters is doing an apprenticeship and paying money for her phone and towards bills and the other wants to go to college and get a job.

Well OP, i think it is absolutely wonderful that you can afford to do so much for your DD at uni. I also studied in London and graduated a few years ago. My parents were just over the income threshold so I only got minimum loan. Despite having two jobs, renting in halls was out of the question for me, so I stayed at home and commuted. It was miserable and I had no social life.
I'm so glad you can provide so much for your daughter.