Student loan/finance question

[petitdonkey]

Apologies if this has been done to death but I really haven't got a handle on the student finance (have had a very fraught period of time and haven't really given it enough thought!)

DS has applied for a maintenance loan - the amount is pretty much equal to the cost of his accommodation. How much do you expect your teens to have at university?

DH thinks we should pay for his accommodation and let him keep the loan but I think that seems far too much money and that he should pay for halls then we give him an allowance which he subsidises with a part time job.

Please can I ask roughly how much your student children are living on? DS will be going to an outer London uni so accommodation is about 6k and his loan is a similar amount.

They don’t have much left but they seem to manage.
my Dd in Case diff has quite a bit left over at the end of the year. My Dd in York really doesn’t, but that is due to the difference in accommodation costs

I pay for stuff rather than giving cash.
Eg phone, laptop, drop offs and pick ups, bedding, towels and kitchen ware, clothes and shoes, toiletries, stock up food shop at the start of each term.

I think giving cash just encourages them to spend it on drink & drugs (what DC's says happens to peers' parents' money at his RG uni).

I also thought ahead to encourage DC to get the skills to get a better than nmw job while at uni/ holidays.

Also cashed in CTF and encouraged 0% overdraft and other student offers/ discounts.

I offered a bike instead of bus fares but DC said no.

I also pay for extra curricular activities (the kind that look good on a CV).

Brilliant- thank you so much. My dd is starting a new school today so my head has been there but I’ll sort dS out next!

i thought him having around £100 a week was about right and will help him out with shops etc. we’re still paying his phone and he will keep his car at home. I don’t want him to have significantly more or less than the average student if that makes sense?!

Thank you again for taking the time to post.

Ours has £250 a month for spends, but we also pay £10 a month phone contract and top up accommodation cost that the loan doesn't cover.
Anything more, they can work for, it's an easy time to get hospitality work right now.

@petitdonkey
You can always adjust what you give. Despite what another poster says, £17,000 is excessive and few have that. £10-12,000 overall is normal. You need to discuss with him how controlling you will be. Just because others may make spending choices you disagree with, what’s your DC going to do. If they want drugs, they will get them! The nanny parent doling out food deliveries won’t stop anything if their student is an idiot. So trust them!!! Let them grow up. Most are sensible snd you know your child. I wouldn’t have spent the time controlling my DC. So the loan paid the rent and we pad the rest. They have to learn to budget. It’s part of cutting that umbilical cord on the way to them being a fully fledged adult.

This.

Controlling their money means they miss out on a stage of learning and thinking they won't get drugs if they want them is naive.

We actually do it a bit differently to many others on this thread - we don't pay for accommodation but give 1/12th of the top up each month. They used their previous savings from wages to cover the first big bill then gradually topped them back up each month. It got them used to budgeting monthly.

I dislike the termly payment model for student halls (and halls-type accommodation), as it doesn't help young adults learn how to manage rent in the real world.
Nearly half the cost for the year is front-loaded in August and September payments, then another big payment in January and a small amount after Easter. Nobody pays normal housing costs that way.

@InMySpareTime I agree

@InMySpareTime
Honestly, if they are bright enough to go to uni they really can work out monthly rents after uni. Or even at uni! Who on earth would worry about this. If they pay from the loan, it’s just a paper transaction. You don’t see the money! Just give them a monthly allowance for everything else.

In DS's case, his final payment is a week before his last loan instalment, and as we are making up the amount the loan doesn't cover it means we need to keep hundreds of pounds by for September and January to make up the difference, then over a thousand ready to bridge the gap in April.
He's learned nothing about monthly budgeting from this, and nothing in later life budgeting is anything like this "lumpy". Possible exception is keeping a tax account if self employed, but most people aren't.
Also, a young adult could easily be clever enough for university but lacking the mathematical skills needed to keep thousands of pounds aside for irregular payments. Non-mathematical courses are available.

@InMySpareTime

Im very sorry but that’s pathetic. Poor lamb!

We gave ours £400 a month to live off which was plenty (but they could walk to uni). Although I can see an argument that for London it might be too low - would £500 a month for 10 months work? With the expectation of working part time over the summer?

@InMySpareTime you're spot on again.

I'd definitely use the loan for accommodation and then give him an allowance each week he's there.

So many people at uni struggle with making a lump sum last 4 months, then end out needing extra money or an overdraft. Much easier to budget a weekly or monthly amount.

Might be a bit late. But what work really well got me, was that my parents got me to save through my summer/weekend job. They then matched what I saved, took control of the account and then spread the amount over the year.

We haven't decided for certain but will probably be paying accommodation and then see how things go. DD has been allocated to cheaper accommodation and it comes out about the level of topping up to maximum loan; if her accommodation costs go up next year as well they might we might have to rethink. She's got savings from her gap year which I'd like to hope she'll not have to rely on, but rather use selectively for extras that are really worth it.

She's been looking at various estimates of student cost of living, and some of the figures out there are quite scary.

@GrassWillBeGreener
Other students are not your DD. Start with £0 and work up. Decide what you are paying for and what’s down to her. The big issue is going out. How often snd what will this be? Or isn’t she bothered about that and likes new clothes? Everyone is different so what others do is a bit meaningless really.