If you had/have a dc who stayed at home for uni how much financial support did they need?

[NicoAndTheNiners]

From you?

Dd is putting the local uni down as first choice. I’ve said she can still move out if she wants but she says she’d rsther stay at home.

Household income is just over 80k so I’m not expecting she’ll be able to access a lot of loans.

If we feed her, pay her phone bill, buy her an annual rail pass into town how much do you think is a reasonable amount to giver her in way of an allowance? How much would she need? It’s really going to be clothes, makeup, socialising I guess.

She currently gets £40 a month and I pay her phone. But she taps me up for clothes all the time which I want to stop because she has no concept of money and currently throwing a strop because I won’t pay £40 for a jumper from Zara and have told her to get similar for half the price in H&M.

I don’t want to give her so much that she’s just wasting it all on clothes for the sake of it. And I do think I need to give her an amount which isn’t low enough to encourage her to go and get a part time job.

Sorry, type. is low enough to encourage her to get a job.

I want her working.

What course is she doing? Some are more intensive than others which will have an impact on how much spare time she has for a job.

I'd be tempted to add up what she's saving by living with you (rent, food, phone bill, internet, heating, laundry, etc) and ask her if she would like to pay a reduced rate (e.g. £100 pcm) when she starts her course. That way she'll get used to paying her own rent. Explain that if she gets a job for 10 hours a week she could earn enough to pay you and have x left over, but if she works 20 hours she's have y left to spend on stuff.

Architecture.

I wasn’t thinking of charging her any rent at all.

Was thinking more along the lines of giving her £200 a month! But was wondering if that was too much.

I don't charge DD anything, she pays for her own phones, clothes, toiletries, spotify etc.
She gives me £20 for petrol because I take her to the train station and to work.

You need to work out

Travel costs
Book and stationery costs (lots in the library or she can get second hand but what does she need to buy new, if any)
Socialising costs (it is important to meet people in first year, particularly if she is not in halls - I don’t mean lots of money for drink, but coffee shops, the occasional night out)
Clothes budget
Gym membership (again, something on campus is good for meeting people)
Mobile phone (unless you pay already)

I would agree no part-time job at least until she is settled and has a routine of study. Are you happy for her to take out a loan?

I would cost the above, agree a figure you can afford, and review after a couple of months.

This does not exactly answer your question but is what I plan to do for DD.

I think £200 is quite a lot. Why can’t she work at least through the holidays and then use that money throughout termtime?

I have friends at medical school with jobs so I would imagine she’d have time to work a few hours a week especially if she has no concept of money like you say. If you want to spend £40 on a jumper as a student then fine, but let her earn it and pay for it.

Thanks, yes we’ll need to sit down and work out a budget I guess. I just think we will have very different ideas on how many times a week she needs to go to Starbucks!

I’d prefer that if she’s living at home she doesn’t take out a maintenance loan....maybe she should anyway seeing as she will have tuition fee loans anyway. Maybe a bit more won’t make a difference.

Can she get a job? Mine has applied for one whilst at sixth form...

She will get the minimum student loan which is just under 4K a year.
It's the maintenance loan that all students get (some get more due to lower family income)
She could use this as her 'spending money' many students use this to put towards accommodation costs.
If she wants more that a year, perhaps she could earn it?
You don't actually need to give her anything

I stayed at home for uni and my parents didn't give me an allowance/pay my travel but didn't take dig money from me and fed me, bought my toiletries and paid my phone.

I worked all through uni and didn't find it a struggle as I was only in 3 days a week and that was on a full time course. I'm in Scotland though so unsure if it's different in England.

First two years I worked in a chip shop one or two evenings a week then in my last two years I started working at lush so that was about 2 evenings a week and maybe a day or two at the weekend. I also took a student loan because I waned the extra money for clothes, make up, socialising and holidays etc but now that I'm paying it back I wish I never as I definitely didn't need it and just frittered it away haha.

Both my jobs were really lenient in giving time off over exam period so my uni work never suffered.

A bit of a cross post sorry

Eldest DD is at our local uni , we tax and insure her car and that's it. She's living rent free with all meals so works during the holidays to fund going out and her clothes.

She needs to get a part time job if she wants the luxury of living home while continuing in education. I wouldn't be giving her anything.

I assume she'd get the basic maintenance loan which would cover travel costs/books. If she wants to go to Costas or buy clothes she needs to fund it herself!

DD has just started her 3rd year. Travel costs are around £200 a month which comes out of her grant. She has had a part time job since last year of college. Over the summer she has earnt over £1.2k a month working nights full time so her overdraft is clear before next summer (she has expensive tastes and is out a lot).

No way would I be giving her an allowance while she's living rent free as an adult, to further herself, that's enough support from us.

They generally don't have to into Uni every day. DD has gone in on average 3 days a week, some of those are half days. She needs to be able to study 30 hours a week, so half at home. DD has generally worked 16 hours a week, full time over the summer.

£200!!! 😯 what course is she studying? Have you seen her uni timetable? When I was at uni (living away from home and financing myself), I had maybe 10 hours a week of seminars/lectures to attend. That was full time.

It was very easy to work around. Part time throughout term time and full time over holidays. If she’s throwing a strop about the jumper, she already sounds quite entitled. Not to mention she’s at least 18 for uni.. why are you paying her phone bill? All of my friends paid for their own phones as soon as they got their first jobs.. 15/16. Living at home, she will have home perks that she wouldn’t have living at uni.. I.e the food being bought/cooked and washing for some examples.

You’d be well within your rights to charge a small amount of board, so definitely don’t be throwing money at her. This will just make her struggle further down the line when she realises life isn’t a free ride on the bank of mum and dad. She will have zero incentive to work if she’s getting handouts

tbh i don't think you really need to give her money or at least no more than the £40 she already gets. She might be too busy with uni to work during term time but she could still work during the holidays. I think that would be enough to tide her over and if she wants more money she could get one of those one off event type jobs (unis are usually helpful when applying for these).

It might help if you pay for her textbooks as they're pricey but bare in mind she would need all of the books her course recommends

As you have to start soemwhere - come up with your own rough weekly budget and see what that adds up to
eg (just my suggestions)
Food £5 - paid for by you but may want little for the odd drink/snack Personal grooming £10 - (hair cuts /toiletries make up etc)
Going out £10 -20
Travel £3 - again covered by you except may the odd extra amout to save to use on a cab very occasionally if needed when going out
Clothes £5
Phone - you pay

The numbers above would come to around £35 to £45 a week. (so about £150 - £200 amonth - Your numbers might be different, depending on what you think is reasonable and you can afford.

Don't show this budget to your DD, just tell her the amount you are paying her and help her make up her own budget like the one above.
It can be differernt to yours but should cover all of the categories she is likely to spend money on and add up to no more than what you are going to pay her

Help her do that, remind her of the things she will need money for and ask her how much she wants to allow for that. She needs to start having an idea of how much she can spend on clothes/hair cuts etc and start keeping to budgets. It is a very important life skill .

Explain to her that if she gets a job or not depends on her willingness to live within her budget. If she has spent all of her clothes budget for the month in one week, then she can't buy any more for rest of that that month or she will have to use the money that was budgeted for something else.

Up until now she has just asked when she wants something and you decide which has left her not really having the skills to manage her own money. I think her learning that skill is more important than the actual amount you give her

DD was at uni away from home, her loan just covered her accommodation and nothing else. I gave her £200 a month and that covered everything from food and clothing to transport and materials.
DS stayed at home and used his loan for living costs. His course was much heavier on materials and equipment than hers.

Whether or not she takes out a maintenance loan, everything should be transferred into her name - her phone and personal bills and 'rent' should pass hands, even if it is a token.
University-life-stage is not just about learning (for her) architecture. It's about having your own money, fucking up your own money and being skint, sorting out the mess yourself and working out how to make £9.62 last the month. It's about remembering not to take that entire £50 out of the bank because your phone direct debit is due on Tuesday. Remember, she will have a safety net nearby that many students don't have - you.
The rent, token or not, can be put aside (secretly) to help with post-graduation expenses.
Yes, she should work, even if only a Saturday job. As for the amount you give her, it's not what you give her it's what she does with it. Give her the chance to learn the hard way before she really needs to learn the hard way.

My DS starts Uni in a couple of weeks and we are giving him nothing. He has taken the available maintenance loan and he has worked at Sainsburys for the last two years. During the long extended summer holidays he has also been doing a lot of overtime as well. He has more money than me!

Only if you want her to have the loan. Some parents prefer to pay living expenses as well as the rent themselves to reduce their child's long term debt (if they can afford it) . A lot just choose to pay the rent and the student gets the maintenance loan to live on

4K works out at about
£95 a week if only coveing academic year - about 42 weeks,
£45 a week if covering the whol year - ie 52 weeks

Maybe start with that as basis but remember that for most 18 years olds going to university , they have parental help either with living expenses or rent, and sometimes with both

Obvously those from poorer backgrounds get a bigger loan. Though it really is not much either (max £8,700 a year) and it often needs to cover rent as well.

Agree with Chilli’s post

She needs to get a job at least in the holidays. My teen is off to uni next week- overnight journey away from home. She has worked four part time jobs over the summer. She worked two from Christmas and has two to come back to when she is off on long holidays. Even if I could support her more I would still encourage her to keep working out of term time. They need to grow up and they need to learn independence and budgeting and earning their own money is the only way.

I'm confused about why you're giving her money at all - she'll have her loan which is just over £3k for stay-at-home students!

Also, if she has no concept of the value of money, wouldn't she be better off getting a job?

whoops, sorry x post