Weekly budget at uni

[1Wanda1]

How much does your child have to spend per week AFTER rent and bills?

DS and DD both have a weekly spending budget of around £65. Both in unis outside London. DD is sticking to this no problem. DS keeps overspending, has maxed out the overdraft, now doesn't have enough money to pay December rent, and the only way he'll be able to do so is if we bail him out (again).

He doesn't seem to think anything is wrong, as says he hasn't been living extravagantly and only goes out once a week and it's just "cost of living". I think that £65 a week is plenty to buy food and a few drinks.

He's looking for a job but that's not really the point. He thinks I'm really unreasonable and mean and I don't know how to get him to budget. Is £65 enough or am I deluded?

We have a family income of just over £65k. I class us as being highly priveliged compared to many of ds's friends, but the figures some of you are tallking about are just off the charts to us.

Very interesting to read this thread. My ds is 19 and in his first year at a uni outside of London. He pays £133 per week with all bills included with en-suite wet room. Rent is payable termly and he has approx £150 per week for himself plus he earns £115 for working 7 hours per week and he is bloody loaded at the minute!
tends to buy lunch in the subway on campus and eats out a few times a week, is struggling with food shopping and needs some help with that as he’s autistic.

I dont think he knows how good he’s got it to be honest. I will be showing him this thread.

FWIW, I am one of those ex private school parents paying for everything and topping up by a large amount. I’m not suggesting that my way is the norm, the ‘only way’ or the best way. It’s just the way I am doing it.

The OP asked what “YOUR” child’s weekly budget at Uni was/is and I answered that question. She will get a broad spectrum of answers to that question because there are a broad spectrum of families, incomes and specific situations.

Nobody says it was the norm. I was simply pointing out in response to a comment from the OP that the app paying £11k plus £120 a week must be extremely well paid or have some other source of wealth that lots of people are used to paying much more than this in school fees.

nobody tried to make anyone feel bad. I don’t care what you give your child. It is however useful for people to know that if they have a similar income to yours at £60k (which is not a high joint income) then the parental contribution is expected to be circa £5k a year and that experts acknowledge that might not be enough.

I wasn't saying it was the norm either, just stating what we pay!

There were lots of posts saying that what the OP (And me I guess) was giving was ONLY so much per day and that it wasn't enough when it IS enough.

If you choose to give more that is fine.

We pay DDs rent and utility bills, phone and gym and give her £500 pcm. With the exception of her very first month that has been enough. She does teach a couple of children music one evening a week which gives her an extra £50 a week and does some babysitting.

I've just looked at the DC uni website. Their estimated living costs calc which includes accommodation, meals, clothes, transport, other ie books, phone, laundry, socialising, printing is 11055 over 40 weeks which is 270 a week. If you take out accommodation 11055 - 6095 it's 120 a week. I calculated ours over 32 weeks as that's the term dates and it works out exactly 120 pw.

She pays her rent, I wanted to make her responsible first this. I do think it's quite generous but she has to pay for everything although we do give her top up shops.

As regards the rest of the year when she is home she still continues to pay for her phone, haircuts etc. The only things we pay for are food and dentist.

Just to add that we needed to front load payments as she had to buy bus pass up front and had other up front costs. I factored this in and adjusted payments, she will get less per week in the last term. We also pay monthly, some of her friends getting weekly support have struggled to juggle costs. I think monthly is better for budgeting.

@ArcticSkewer

No I 'only' had £35k of debt when I graduated. Despite having 3 part-time jobs in my final year. Took me well into my 30s to pay off. My Mum could not afford to give me an 'allowance' as she had to support herself.

Snark off somewhere else.

His view is that my interest in all this is "controlling" and he's "trying my best to be independent" and I should let him be.

I wouldnt be his guarantor, with that attitude he has! I'd let him be independent all he wants. He is burning through money like there is no tomorrow!

We give dd £50 per week for food and travel. She can pay for her own socialising!

Gosh you were lucky that the bank would lend you £35k all those generations ago. Modern snowflakes have no clue hey.

My DD pays £4.8k for rent and bills. She managed to get literally the cheapest room in the entire uni. That's just about paid for by the minimum loan she receives, and we top up to max loan for living costs; at her requests, we pay that spread over 52 weeks so she can save a bit during vacations.

She might need to budget more carefully when she's living in private rented accommodation next year! She doesn't currently have a job, but is planning on finding one next term (she wanted to see how much time/energy she would have on top of her workload).

Op.. are you topping up your ds’s loan to the max student amount ? ( the amount that governments 🙄 say students should be able to live on- £9706 for this year outside London) . This is supposed to be your parental contribution . It doesn’t sound like you are? Or maybe I read that wrong . It sounds like your Ds is an bout £1500 short?

No, it's not topped up to the max amount for the simple reason that I can't afford to. He gets £4500 loan plus £3700 parental contribution.

For those who haven't read the full thread, I did encourage him to save his earnings during year off and he saved £4k. He spent all of that - by his own admission on takeaways and drinks - by May of his first year on top of the loan, parental contribution and £1000 overdraft.

I also pay for occasional larger costs like train home, gym and club membership, and have doled put extra cash when he says he's short.

OP Obviously not everyone can afford to top up to the maximum of the loan but that is what’s expected. As such I think you’re being unfair on your ds. He worked for his money and has spent it yes but he has been £1500 a year short on the minimum the government expects him to be able to live on.

That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t have been wise for him to save some of his money but it is the case that his parental contribution is significantly short.

we can get into debate about whether there should even be a parental contribution but the fact remains that there is.

Children don’t always understand finances either. You’re a lawyer. He probably didn’t realise money was so tight.

So he is on about £3.5k less than his friends on full loan (as they probably get a few thousand bursary as well)

No wonder he is struggling then. He will need to get a job or spend a serious amount less than his friends do.

I'm with you on this @1Wanda1, your contribution plus your DS's own savings adds up to way more than the maximum loan and I would also expect him to manage. (Although I did run up a fair bit of debt quite irresponsibly at university and it was some time before I learnt this lesson for myself!)

But the op is £1500 short per year. That’s £4,500. Plus as pp pointed out those eligible for max loan will also get another couple of thousand in bursary.

so even if she expected the ds to use his own earnings to make up that significant shortfall he wouldn’t have had enough. And it doesn’t sound like it was made clear that he’d be expected to be funding a big chunk of uni living costs himself.

I don’t think people realise how much parents are supposed to contribute

@PhotoDad its crazy how rent costs differ. My ds chose the nicest and most expensive accommodation at his university in the north west. It’s £133 per week including bills and en suite which works out just over 5k for the year. I genuinely didn’t realise how cheap that is until reading some of the costs on here. His is a purpose built campus so all university accommodation is on site which is handy as no travelling to lectures. It reminds me of those American ones you see in films.

Strange though that they guarantee campus accommodation for first years and third years so he will have to look privately for next year and I’m sure the costs will be much higher.

Not all universities give bursaries. Ds’s only does for care leavers. It’s meant to help cover start up costs/deposits rather than to live on.

True.

Most of the better unis do though.
It ranges. Care leavers can get up to £10k at some, sometimes as a partial fee reduction or free accommodation not necessarily cash. Which is absolutely the right thing as they are by far the most vulnerable to financial difficulty. No fallback options with family

A lot then also do more general bursaries of smaller amounts of £1-2k annually to top up the student loan itself. They are usually for students who get or are entitled to get the full student loan, but so young carers and military family background.

Assuming op's child goes to Russell Group/equivalent I would bet they offer decent bursaries.

@Zoflorabore Yes... accommodation cost wasn't the main factor in deciding where to go, for DD, but it was an important one! So many DC (and their parents) don't even consider that when applying. DD's is excellent value for her city. Fingers crossed for rental costs next year...

I am always slightly shocked that many universities have accommodation systems where you just get assigned a room by them, as the difference in rent can be astronomical. For many (most?) "private halls" the rent is more than the maximum loan!

@user73 "Children don’t always understand finances either. You’re a lawyer. He probably didn’t realise money was so tight."

Well, we did explain to him after year 1 that most people at uni can live on less than £100 a week, and he agreed that the £100 a week he had had in year 1 was more generous than most people he knew.