Allowance to live on

[AlexanderHamilton]

Dd will be studying for a Level 6 diploma next year which she will hopefully eventually top up to a full degree.

She plans to commute from home for the first year/possibly first two years. Her course is not eligible for Student Finance though her fees will be paid via means tested funding.

She has been offered a part time term time only job on Saturday mornings (at college).

What is a reasonable amount to give her to live on? She will eat her evening meal at home plus take a packed lunch most days. She will have to buy specialist clothes & equipment for the course.

She isn’t really needing money to live on is she? She’s living with you. Just do a budget based on socialising, travel and what the equipment costs. You presumably can buy that as a one off, and if she doesn’t socialise or go out for meals, then it’s pocket money really. It’s more like extended 6th form.

Some stuff will be ongoing like Dance tights & hair stuff. I’m guessing she will need more clothes as no school uniform any more. Plus travel to the Saturday job.

I don’t want her to feel different to the students who will be living out & I want her to start learning how to budget.

She will be different though. It’s inevitable. Taking a packed lunch will probably be different. Lots of students go out to a coffee shop for lunch or the university coffee shop. Other students will be paying bills, getting their own food and household items, paying for the internet, buying their own shower gel and shampoo, talking to the landlord about repairs, shopping and cooking, and managing their own lives. It’s difficult to replicate this at home. You just have to look at transport costs, socialising costs and an allowance for clothes. I assume you have some idea what this could be and you can always revise it! University should be about growing up as well as study. She won’t be budgeting like the others so essentially it’s just larger sums of pocket money. Did she not wear her own clothes in 6th form? You must have some idea what a winter coat costs! What students spend varies and you really have to do a bottom up exercise to work out what is reasonable.

She has a part time job so she should be using that money to fund stuff like travel and clothes. She hasn't got rent to pay and I presume you pay for her food.
Yes pay for the equipment she needs as a one off. Then help her budget from the money she gets from her job.

Most of the other students will be living in landlady accommodation which will include an evening meal. Its an unusual situation in that for this particular course students can be age 16 or 18 depending on circumstances. Once they are 18 they are allowed to live in student housing so several do that for their third year.

Its not possible to nip out to a coffee shop, there are none although there is a Toby carvery about a 10 minute walk away. But most days they only get 30-45 minutes for lunch. There is a college run coffee shop type place that offers things like soup, salads, jacket potatoes and sandwiches and the students have the use of a microwave and kettle. The hours are long, they can be in 8am - 6pm some days.

I think she will be getting about £24 per week from her Saturday job but the train travel will probably be around £8 with a travelcard.

Really it is not unusual for kids in self catering accommodation at University to bring in packed lunches. Only the more affluent can afford to regularly eat lunch in coffee shops, and they tend to form a separate clique. It is also reasonable common for students to live at home, especially those studying within striking distance of London, or those taking more vocational degrees.

Don’t worry. Sit down, add up what she will need including some for social stuff, and how much she will earn.

If there isn’t a coffee shop, or shops, within striking distance then it won’t be a factor. Obviously students bringing in a packed lunch are a “clique” too so I’m sure she’ll find her tribe! I think, if you are talking about dance, then it’s a physically draining course and not like standard academic study. She might need reasonable sustinence at lunchtime and one would have thought a good diet would be part of the training. I was rather assuming she would want to do the same as others on the course and you might find her priorities change as she becomes more mature.

The only way to work out what to give is to work from the bottom up. One way might be for you to let her keep her earnings for socialising. You pay for everything else but give it as a monthly allowance. What would you have done if she had been at school? You would have paid for transport and clothes. So just work out how much that is, plus a bit extra, and hand it over. You need to factor in phone, computer and anything else that’s normal for dance students to have. She will soon let you know if she needs more!

One of the reasons she wants to take a packed lunch is she wasn’t hugely impressed with the mayo laden sandwiches & lack of fruit/plethora of cakes at the Sodexo run cafe at the Open/Audition day. Some of the soups looked nice though. She feels she can eat better & more healthily doing packed lunches. (She often makes herself some salad concoction using chicken, salmon or tuna, quinoa, lentils & soy beans that she says is very filling with wraps or pitta bread.