Right. Now we all know that all mumsnet children have been working down the mine since they were 6....

[Hakluyt]

... and wouldn't expect their parents to contribute a penny towards their living expenses from the stroke of midnight on their 18th birthday.

But here in the real world, there are 18 year olds going off to university with very little or no savings. And with loans that barely cover their accommodation. And who will probably not be able to find a well paid job within a week of arriving in a new town and living away from home for the first time.
For those of us with pathetic, dependent, useless teenagers like this- what is a reasonable amount of money to give them to cover sensible expenses and have a bit over for fun?

I agree £112 per week is a fortune but as others have said there seems to be many more costs than when I was at university in the olden days!

Lucky neither of my DCs are out partying however clubs can be a major financial commitment. e.g.. DC1 paid £100 for one sports club fee, AU membership (included compulsory insurance) gym/sports membership and sports kit not included in joining fee. All BUCS (inter university) matches were paid for but they also played as part of a weekend league so they had to pay match fees and contribute to petrol money.

My loans paid for accommodation and left me about £20 per week for everything else.

Mum gave me her 25 year old car and paid the insurance.

I had a pay as you go phone.

I had £750 savings from 2 jobs i worked at the summer before uni started, which I spent the 1st year. 2nd year I ran up overdraft. 3rd year I had to move in with DP's (now DH's) parents as I was completely skint.

I was gobsmacked by how much money some studentswere given by parents they spent it all on beer

I learned how to budget, though. Very handy life skill.

Like many others ds has his accommodation paid for and he lives on the maintenance loan. He spends about £50 per fortnight on food and each week he takes out £40 in cash which he reckons is plenty. I usually stock him up a bit with toiletries at the beginning of each term and we have a sainsburys parent/student card too which I bung a bit on from time to time. He is a lucky chap but he knows it and is very grateful.

112 soon goes if you have to buy food, pay your share of gas, electricity, broadband, pay fares home, buy books, clothes, hair cuts etc...

DS's accommodation contract is only 29 weeks so I know he will be at home almost half of the year! But I also don't want to be subsidising his socialising throughout the holidays so if he doesn't get a job that will come out of his loan leaving him with less for term time.

What I want to know is why the accommodation costs at his university have gone up 6% on last year's cost

We just pay what we can, when we can. Drop of bags of food when in the area or bung her 20 quid here and there when we can. We don't have much spare so she has to manage.

Sainsburys Meal card comes in two parts. Parent puts money on one part and student has the other part. The student uses their part to buy food in Sainsburys.

www.sainsburysgifts.co.uk/meal_ticket_cards.html

Thanks for all your tips - have found this very useful, as this is all new to me. Highly delighted to find that student accounts pay interest!

Pay their fees and accommodation and leave them their loan to live on. Works well.

Pay their fees? In my dreams!

Are sorry out of date! When we were doing this fees had just come in and you had to pay them - there was no loan to cover them too. I forgot they'd hiked right up now!

I have all this to think about in a year's time.
H is planning to give dd £500 a month.

I am quite shocked by how generous some parents are. Our DS gets minimum loan (£3500 or so) plus £3000 a year from us. His flat the year is £4200 including all bills. That leaves him about £2300 to cover about 30 weeks. I guess that's £75 or so a week for groceries, nights out.

He normally has a bit of cash upfront at the beginning of term for societies and books. Hmm is £75 tight? He certainly never complains, is always out and about doing something or other. He's worked this holiday and funded a festival and a holiday with no extra funds from us.

I don't think it's generosity. We want our dd to have an amazing time. And we want it to be possible for her, if she's sensible, not to worry about money. My dp's parents were never able to top up his grant- they ran a small business and money was tight- and he really missed out on soooo much. And he worried a lot about how he was going to manage. We don't want that for ours if we can avoid it.

TinklyLittleLaugh you're very lucky your DS has such a cheap flat - hopefully DS will find something like that in second/third year. Sadly this year DS has no choice but to go with the frankly extortionate university accommodation which is a flat rate of £6,000 a year . With the minimum loan we have to sub him around four grand plus this year.

My mum used to give me £1000 per term. I paid rent out of that and used my loan to cover living expenses. I was at Oxford, which meant I wasn't able to get a job during term time, but I did work during the holidays.

Accommodation costs are perhaps the biggest eye opener. I was in catered halls in my first year, a fair few years back, think Come on Eileen. Musical digression aside the hall of residence cost £330 a term back then for fully catered. The equivalent of that amount today is just over £1100, or £3300 per year. Actual catered halls costs seem around the £6,000 mark. I take friendface's point about a 6% increase since last year, and perhaps that also helps explain why they have risen in cost, compared to my youth, by double the rate of inflation. I'm wholly unconvinced however that they are twice as good. Still won't be living in one, just paying for it

Ours only has about £50 a week from us, so he joined OTC and gets paid to run around the countryside and get some exercise. His course is pretty time-consuming, no chance to fit in a job because it can go on until late at night as well, but OTC is one night a week and a weekend a semester and he manages that. He manages very well, and does all his own cooking, he says that the ones who can't manage are the ones living on takeaways.

I used to get 20 quid a week! (in 1998)

Well DD is 16 & going away to college not uni so we will keep our Tax Credits & Cb

But rent is £75, train fare (she will becoming home weekly to start with) £25, Food & travel & stuff £40, Physio insurance is £175 a year & my parents are paying fees & uniform (over £400 being bought tomorrow)

I am going to be so broke

£6000 or thereabouts is good value for a catered hall! DD just left self catered halls in London that were £8600 pa. These were the second cheapest for her university!!! Think big figures if you are looking at London. We therefore subsidised her accommodation to the tune of £3600 on top of her loan of £5000. We also gave her £500 a month as transport and other costs are also high in London. We feel London is just too expensive for many people now and prospective students should think very carefully before applying there. It is virtually impossible to have a decent time scrimping and saving. Jobs are not as easy to come by as you might think because they have to fit in with lectures. No wonder so many London based students live at home and there are so many overseas students.

Milly oen of the unis I work in is in London, and it defintely has a feel of its own, which I think is partly caused by what you say.

There are lots of London born students who live at home and basically come in and out of college each day as if it were sixth form.

There are lots of overseas students.

Of the out of London students living in London accommodation, many are from wealthy backgrounds.

It's too expensive for most!