What allowance to give DD when starting her degree in September

[Londonmummy66]

I'm not really sure what to give DD when she starts in September. She has a scholarship so her course fees are only £300 a term. As she is in London her rent is nearly £200 a week. DH and I had originally planned to pay her fees so have decided we should pay her rent instead. Would £500 pcm be about right on top she is sensible so would save any extra cash she had at the end of the month - it feels as if she wouldn't have to decide between a new pair of tights and food and give her enough to do some socialising etc as well. Should mention that she is going to study music so there are instrument costs etc like strings and bow rehairs etc that are not cheap either.

Student tickets are £10. Student only evenings start at £1. I agree, £10 is still a bargain and worth paying. The quality of the concerts and shows you get at London venues is worth 10 or 100 times that, really! I work with the top orchestras in the world and have lived in many cities with great music scenes, but I still think London is the best place to study music. You don’t get as many opportunities anywhere else.

There are so many other music venues, places like St John's Smith Square, the Barbican, and and and, and lots of free stuff. The advantage of being a student is that you have the time to search these things out.

Also sign up to a seat filling sites like TodayTix and Central Tickets. There are some amazing bargains. (Recently there have been some very good on-line talks at bargain rates.)

It is also worth checking out what is happing at other Universities in London. Plays at RADA or student concerts at various music schools, or go to discos at different colleges. There is so much going on (well normally) and so whilst some things are expensive, lots of events are cheap or free.

@PresentingPercy - yes she did go for the ensuite room as she has IBS so the £20 a week extra cost seemed worth it.

Xenia may recall an earlier thread I had when DD was debating between RCM and another non London college where she gave us some good advice. There was absolutely no comparison between colleges but that she didn't want to feel she hadn't moved away from home. So living in halls at RCM was a no brainer in the end, even if a very expensive one. Also the dream of sixth form boarding at a specialist music school didn't quite pan out as she had hoped so I feel for her and want conservatoire to be a better experience for her.

I've summarised the loans and savings vs the allowance argument to her and said that we can discuss properly at half term. I might DH to do a spreadsheet to see how the figures model out.

All advice gratefully received though and I do realise that we are very very lucky to be in a position to help her like this.

yes she did go for the ensuite room as she has IBS so the £20 a week extra cost seemed worth it. you should ask for a dsa assessment you can get the en-suite costs covered in full.

@Londonmummy66 forgot to tag above post.

Neither answer is right. I and the other mother far above who have children without loans are the unusual ones. If you are never going to earn very much then the loans are a no brainer for fees and rent. Even if you are on £30k a year for life you only pay about £500 a year back. I paid my daughters' £1k a year fees (very low under Blair who brought them in) so felt I should treat the 3 boys the same and 2 of the boys are hoping to be lawyers in London so probably would have to pay back a fair bit (being some of the few students likely to earn enough that the loans are fairly steep to repay - 9% of £100k is quite high etc. However even children of the very rich often have loans so it is entirely up to the parents to decide (or I suppose the student - although our agreement is I will fund them IF and only if they don't take out loans - I am not going to bust a gut working full time to fund them and then find they also take massive maintenance loans to spend on alcohol)

We've always paid for accommodation and had the students use their loans and jobs for living expenses.

We give £1100 a month,rent is 500

I definitely wanted mine to have the experience of living away from home
Staying at home just isn’t the same experience

Thank you for the suggestion re the IBS and DSA. She has so much wrong with her one way and another that she could probably single handedly break the DSA bank...

Xenia - I agree it is a difficult equation to weigh up and I have a real reluctance to incur any debt if at all possible (and it is a message I'm trying to pass on to my DC). Going for a loan seems so counterintuitive to me. DC1 is unlikely to overspend on a loan but I could see her little sister using it to fund a Matches habit.....

@ user1487194234 - I agree. I saw my university days as an opportunity for an all round education which had relatively little to do with lectures (think I attended 6 in 3 years) and a lot to do with new experiences. I find it hard to see how that can really be achieved if I am lying in bed with one eye open waiting for them to come home each night.

OP, it is common for London raised DC to live in halls for their first years. Even without budget constraints many drift home in either their second or third years when a social circle has been built and work pressures start to build. Coming home after living away is a different dynamic and we found that neither us nor DC wanted to slip back into a parent child pattern.

I agree with talking to your DD, and with MrKlaw’s sensible posts. Both mine were very happy to leave without student debt and both content to live quite frugally. I think we may have felt quite differently if they had been big spenders, and had expected us to fund them. (I think we would have expected them to get jobs to pay for extras.) Instead they had a perfectly happy time living like, well, students.

Two things to consider. The first term is more expensive than the third, especially if the third is short and dominated by exams. Things like subscriptions and sports kit and big social events. Some Universities even have two twelve week terms and then a six week exam term. Then for us a cookery course before starting proved a really good investment. A student cookery book and practice beforehand would also work. So they know how to throw together what is left in the fridge with pasta, risotto rice and so on. DD was astounded at how much some or her peers, often with parents who struggled to support them, were spending on things like takeaways, taxis, coffees etc. Or buying train fares at the station rather than booking in advance. And how much was wasted by not shopping around for utilities, cleaning the flat at the end, or not returning the modem. A bit of parental mentoring at the start of the second year has gone further than extra money. Also think about going to charity shops for crockery etc. Cheaper than IKEA and it means your stuff is more distinctive. And give DC your old pans, and treat yourself to new, rather than the other way round. Not having loan repayments when starting work will give DC greater freedom in terms of where they live and where they build their careers.

In short if you and they agree that they want to be debt free, then you as a family agree how it can be achieved, without scrimping on core things.

Re halls, when doing a PG at RAM, post UG at RCM, my sister got cheap rates due to signing up to be a hall monitor, or whatever they called them. Basically to check up that everyone was ok and deal with the odd mishap, of which there were few. May be worth considering in future. She also got a lot of paid gigs while a student at RCM as they had a list fo avialable gigs for people to sign up to.

needmoresleep would you mind sharing the details of the cookery course you mentioned?

PM sent

This is a bit of an eye opener .... we give DD £200 a month to live on. She seems to manage but it seems low compared to a lot of you on here (she's not in London though). Her student loan doesn't cover rent so we top that up as well. I also send money occasionally, do a shop or send a food parcel. And we pay for her mobile and her car insurance/tax etc.

Actually reading that back I think she's doing alright. She says she spends £20 a week on food roughly, so has £30 left … she's not a drinker which must help.

@BigSandyBalls2015 Our 3 have all managed fine on a lot less than £200pm from us

thanks needsmoresleep

Dd is a second year medical student living in Hammersmith/Fulham in a shared flat. AFter her rent/bills she has about £85/week left which covers food, entertainment, clothes etc, and travel - her boyfriend is at uni about an hour away and in non covid times they'd spend alternate weekends at his place or hers. This is from a combination of her student loan (lowest level of maintenance) and what we send her each month. She manages fine - she can socialise but has to watch her budget. She feels that she might need a little extra help next year as her transport costs will increase due to the amount of placement time they have. She would struggle to work very much in term time, but has been picking up one shift a week at a vaccine clinic, partly because she's not been able to go see her boyfriend.