How much do you give your uni offspring a month?

[fedup21]

Looks like we will only be entitled to the minimum rate of maintenance loan so will have to top it up quite a bit.

His top choice is Birmingham and it’s looking to be between £3/4K for the first year in halls (without meal plan) or £5/7k (with Meal plan) which is the maintenance loan, but how much would they need on top of that?!

£200 a month? £400 a month?

We give ours £200 a month but he gets 100 from a grandparent too. He manages perfectly well on that but then he isn't a big drinker so doesn't waste it on that. If he was going out all the time it might be a struggle I guess.
What I would recommend is him getting a monzo card and you load the money on by standing order weekly, it makes it easier to budget and he will see what his money is going on.

£1000 a term ...she is in a London university and rent is £900 a month. She works 12 hours a week. I'm assuming exdh gives her money too.

Should add that DS works through the summer (his course is full on so no time for part time job) and that money is used for things like clothes/holidays. The money we give him just goes on living expenses.

Re re actually funding our own, we pay hall fees / help with rent and our DC get to use their (minimum) loan for other expenses.

We have paid rent and have expected them to manage on the minimum loan for food and spends. Both have had onky 8 week terms so may have been easier than for others.

In addition from me they have had £100pcm, phone and I have treated them to clothes and pay dentist and optician bills.

They have both had holiday jobs through the summer.

Thank you @MarchingFrogs that is very helpful

We don’t expect ours to do paid work in term time. Our first couldn’t because she did medicine. We want our youngest to get a first so support her to focus on academics. We think of it as investment for their futures. She works in the summer.
Our son did his degree whilst working full time in the military at no cost whatsoever. Limited choice of degree options though.

Overall about £1, 500 a month. We pay £650 a month accommodation and bills for ten months. We pay mobile phone, contact lenses, all dental costs, travel tickets plus about £700 a month living expenses. Her siblings ping her the odd additional £50 sometimes. I gather they ‘send her drinks’ to a Weatherspoon’s pub too. She has access to our Amazon and Netflix accounts too.

We pay for accommodation (which doesn't include food) £10k in London

I think that some people have no idea of the amount of contact hours on some courses. My DD has classes from 9 or 10am until 4 or 5pm each day ( except Wednesday afternoon ). Most evenings she spends in the library writing up here lectures or studying.

One evening a week she trains for a sport and they play matches on Wednesdays. It’s that’s an away game then yes, it takes up Wednesday night too.

Yes I realise that I could condemn her for playing sport and insist that she gives it up and works for a couple of hours in a pub or shop on each of these two nights. But I think that being able to do some extra curricular activities is part of university life.

At weekends she studies, although she does go out on a Saturday night or go into town shopping on an afternoon. Again I don’t grudge her that.

She still has to do her housework , washing, shopping and cooking, just like any other woman. ( I was going to say adult until I realised that many men have this work done for them).

I’ve saved up her whole life to support her through university. No I don’t suddenly have £80 a week spare, I’ve been saving it because it’s important to me to be able to help her.

When I was at university I was pretty much on the breadline - I sometimes didn’t have enough to eat, I never once went to the student union because I had no money, I couldn’t afford to buy text books so spent all my time in the library using theirs.

I worked two shifts in a bar all weekend just to keep a room over my head- I was lucky that it was a well paid job with lots of tips. I dressed from charity shops in the days when it seriously wasn’t cool. It was hard for me to keep up with my course and assignments I had classes all week and worked all weekend. Near exam time I had to do lots of all nighters.

It meant I had a very different experience of university from most people and I don’t want that for my children. No my kids haven’t had private schooling, designer clothes and ski holidays every year. But I WILL support them to get a good education ( or help towards buying a flat if uni/ college isn’t right for them ).

I’m astounded at the parents who say they didn’t know that they had to pay a parental contribution or how it’s worked out - it’s all on the websites. Anyone who has more than about £25k will have to pay towards supporting their child. That’s been the case for years. That’s the government people voted for.

DS is going in September, and we will pay his rent, and he will have the minimum maintenance grant to live off. Depending on what halls he gets into, the rent will be between £4500 - £9000

Wow. Enlightening. Must work harder at paying off the mortgage before they get there (If they get there. Not at all a certainty!)

My parents gave me £400 and i had a weekend/evening job min wage in retail. I had more disposable money then than I do now in full time work.

That’s the government people voted for.
Not getting the full amount potentially available, due to someone's income (parents' / own / spouse's - the latter two in first / subsequent years, respectively, in my case) has been the system for decades. The difference being that nowadays it is a loan, not a grant, and one has the tuition fee element added in. Now, who introduced that last bit...?

My dd got minimum loan and was £1000 short for halls (not catered). We paid this plus gave her £200 a month so in effect it cost us £3400 a year in total.
I’d been saving £50 a month from birth, so had enough to cover her for 3 years.

@CherryPavlova
You must have a lot of spare cash!!!

I thi

We send him £300 a month. It seemed scary to start with, but actually it's not tgat much more than we gave/spent on him in 6th form. I added up his bus fares, dinner money pocket money and all the cereal and fish fingers I had to buy for him. It worked out at over £200 anyway.

What I would love to do is to pay the accommodation and give them the maintenance loan to live off, but sadly I don’t have £5000 lying around .

I suppose we’ll go for the £50-70 a week option, not sure about the meal plan.

@ shurruppppp can you tell me any more about why people regretted it? any general Brum tips would be good as well!!

DD has the Birmingham meal plan and loves it. Yes, it's more expensive than cooking for herself, but she is in the cheapest halls and it only works out a few more pounds a week than the next priced halls without meal plan, so really is worth it for her. She doesn't have a big appetite, so can manage the whole week (it's meant to cover 2 meals a day, 5 days a week), and it means she eats properly, which I don't think she would do otherwise.

We pay our daughters accommodation costs - she is in catered halls this year and it’s pretty expensive. She also has the maintenance loan and is quite tight about her spending, works in the holidays and has ended up rather well off!! I see it as a a mistake on our part 😀
Next year we’re paying the rent on her flat and that’s all.
Friends of mine with children at university have made them manage on maintenance grant only, but they work in holidays, took gap years to work/save up and go to northern unis.
When I went to university (in the dark ages) I got the minimum grant which didn’t even cover my rent. Holidays are very long though and I worked in all of them which got me through and looks very good on your CV.
When I was recruiting graduates on from the milk round to the big company I worked for I always rated work experience over parent subsidised travel experiences, which counted as a jolly holiday in my eyes.

@QuercusRose that’s interesting-she gets her money’s worth with the plan, then? Does it work out as cheaper than just buying 2 meals a day?

Can I ask which halls she is in and what are the cooking/bathroom facilities like? Can she walk to lectures from there?

Ds lives still home to go to uni and I pay his phone contract and insurance, this is because he got it for his 17th birthday.

I don’t pay anything else, he is at uni mon-fri and works fri and sat evenings to earn money.

I have another child possibly going to uni in the next year so there is no way I could afford to support both of them so both are having to stay at home, some of these ‘handouts ‘given are more than my monthly wage and I am at college, do placement and also work 2 shifts a week!

I must stress that my info is third hand about the meal plan, but son's friends said it was poor value and not enough choice. Also that MP people in a minority so find that friends are mainly s/c.

He lived in Ashcroft in Pritchatts Park in first year, cheapest but recently refurbished, near campus so no transport costs, surrounded by greenery, perfect imo. Nice room. Shared facilities. Close to transport for getting further afield. No cleaning included so you can imagine the state after a year but students can pay the uni cleaning company to do one off cleans.

For second year and beyond there are plentiful and good value rental properties mainly in Selly Oak.

Overall would thoroughly recommend Birmingham uni

Soontobe60 It’s an expensive city for student accommodation and we think of it as investment. Many of her peers are given significantly more. I don’t think stressing about money is something we want for them, so yes they are fortunate.

Can't believe how much money some people give their adult DD/DS. Most of them have a lot more than I do to live on! My DD works on campus. Lots of her friends have jobs - they are really not difficult to find where she is (might not be the case elsewhere though). I will do the occasional online shop for her (once every couple of months). She also works back home in the holidays. I just don't have any spare money to give her - I just about afford to pay my rent, bills etc. Would love to be able to help her more.