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?

Having more than 1 DC at university is taken in to account when assessing income. It’s not much but £1130 is deducted from the assessed income.

@1Wanda1 you sound very sensible. Micromanagement is not the way to go really. I'd stop funding him.

Can he defer a year to earn some more money?

He is getting into some seriously bad habits on the assumption you will bail him out.

Tell him you will not be funding him further without explanation of where his money is going and a plan to change and budget. Tell him he needs to act like the adult he is and its in his court. He needs to make a proposal to you as to how you can work with him to fund his university education.

Be prepared to walk away. Now is not the time to cave in to demands and childish claim if what everyone elses parents do.

If he hasn't worked he has to live a very frugal lifestyle. He's been very foolish spending his money so quickly and living beyond his means. Now is the time to say no and mean it because if his behaviour has no consequences you are validating it.

Try and get him to agree his goals for life. From the way you talk "going up" to uni I'm imagining a prestigious university which could start him on a good career to live the life he wants. Try and appeal to his love of the high life. If he wants that how is he going to get there? If the degree is what he needs maybe he will take money management more seriously when it's not just a case of stamping your foot like a toddler to get your fun but a means to keeping on track for his life plan.

Sometimes you let your kids fail to learn from mistakes.

Sadly some people just run up debt. I have several friends who spent their 20s in serious amounts of debt because they took every available opportunity for debt: student loans, bank debt (something called a career development loan), overdrafts from multiple banks, credit cards and even tapping up friends and family for money. These were educated lads from good homes. Pissed it all up the wall and dropped out. Or in some cases made it through university but dealt with the debt for a long time afterwards. In one case in his 40s. Most of these lads liked their drugs as well as alcohol.

You need a very serious chat with him so he doesn't go the same way.

I've just done the maths. For a 52 week year DD has £70 left over after rent (her rent is very cheap). She probably spends less than that in the holidays per week so realistically has more to spend at uni. She pays for everything herself except for her phone, family holiday and train tickets to specific family events we want her to attend (eg funeral, wedding, grandmother special birthday). Last year her rent was higher so she had less money per week but still managed to save and had money left at the end of the year. She does work in the summer holidays though. She reckons she spends around £40 a week on food.

You are just being rude now. The OP clearly is supporting her son, in many ways, not least by contributing £1200 a term in cash.

I don't understand the slavish devotion of posters such as @user73 to the formula of "everyone must have an amount equal to the maximum loan". What if you just can't afford that? I have 2 kids at university at the same time. Even though I have a "good" job I can't afford this.

Secondly, even if I did manage to contribute the £1500 extra that would take DS up to full loan, it would put him and his sister in the unfair position of him having more money per week than she does to live on, because she is in a more expensive city. I am already topping her up c.£1200 to make up her rent, and have paid the other £300 to her in handouts for club memberships, travel etc. But she only has £65 a week spending and she has had the "full" £9700 per year. She had little discretion as to which halls she got, so cost of accommodation not a choice. Next year house will be at least as expensive in the city she is in (not London). But even topped up to maximum loan amount she will have "only" £65 a week - she manages fine on that and she didn't start the year with any savings either. DS has that amount but burnt all his savings in year 1 and his overdraft, therefore has no "buffer" left and yet has still run through nearly all his money for term one (£2700) in 7 weeks. His rent and bills are £465 a month

@ZenNudist good advice thank you. It's not a prestigious uni. In fact when he left school, he didn't even want to go to uni (never been an academic boy). So we told him to get a job, which he did, and after a few months of that decided that perhaps he would go to uni after all.

He then had a marvellous time in year 1 out every night spending all this money, went to no lectures and unsurprisingly failed the year and had to resit his assessments.

If I'm honest, I'd be less annoyed by his poor approach to money if it seemed he was applying himself to the reason to be at uni: studying something he's supposed to be interested in.

£65 a week is much lower though than the “expected” amount.

if you haven’t got it you haven’t got it but you do seem fixated on him being extravagant when actually he is on much less than his fellow students who have the maximum loan (or parental equivalent). It will affect his student experience if he can’t do the things others are doing.

it’s difficult if you simply don’t have it. He should probably have delayed going. Is his dad not contributing anything?

I think we will start to see more students deferring due to coats

The government adjust the full student loan based on location - outside London, living at home, in London. Apart from that, all students on full student loan face to same issue - they may live in more, or less, expensive cities, same loan.

It is the literal expectation of the government that the parent provide the rest of the amount of student loan for those who are not getting it. Martins Money Saving expert explains this well if you look on his website. That's why some of us keep talking about it as a concept.

Sadly it is not backed up by legal weighting so your son has no choice but to rely on whatever you give as he is unable to claim as an independent adult (unless he takes some time out and claims parental alienation/independence).

It should have been made very clear to him that you would not be giving him the full student loan equivalent and so he would have less money than his peers. If he is complaining to you that other parents give more, it sounds like that message hasn't sunk in. Yes, you are giving less, and will continue to give less, it's not a mistake, he simply has to learn to live on less or get a job/take a year out to earn more.

If he stays at Uni over Christmas he can probably earn a fairly decent amount. Uni towns are usually big enough to have decent Xmas jobs. Perhaps if he and his girlfriend both worked there it would be more fun than going home anyway?

You need to start by explaining, again, that yes other parents give more and follow the government expectation to top up the loan, but you will not be doing that

I think we will start to see more students deferring due to coats

costs! Coats have little to do with it!

At the moment, as @italuo says, by pretending he is just being extravagant rather than being upfront that you are providing him with less than the expected contribution, you are not being honest with him. He will be poorer than other students because he is not receiving the full student loan/equivalent. Don't pretend that isn't happening! He needs to face that and perhaps defer if he doesn't want to/can't get a job.

Thanks for the somewhat patronising advice @ArcticSkewer. Naturally I have explained to DS that some people have more. As it happens his housemates all have LESS, as does his GF who he says is on £50 a week after rent and bills.

This isn't AIBU by the way.

And as for him being "extravagant" (not my word), can I just repeat that in year 1 he DID have £100 a week for each teaching week in living allowance PLUS his loan which covered halls PLUS his £4K PLUS £1k overdraft. All of which he spent. Does no one think that was excessive? Had he not spent all of his savings and all of the overdraft, he wouldn't have started this year in deficit and therefore wouldn't be on so much "less" now.

After paying my mortgage, food and bills I have £700 a month left. £250 of that goes on travel to work. So £450 a month to fund the 2 kids at uni and anything I might need myself. I have another child at home. I don't have savings as after raising them as a single mother for 10 years without much help from their father, who stopped paying child maintenance many years ago, I've never had the chance to build up savings. In fact I've had debt.

The clue is in the name - "maximum" loan. Not "minimum living standard".

Besides anyone who has bothered to read and digest the student loan website will have noticed that it actually suggests the student may need to use various methods to top up their loan including parental contributions, part time work, etc. If your parents don't top up your loan to the level you require, for whatever reason, you need to sort that out for yourself, like the adult you actually are.

It's not that some parents have more.

You cannot give him the minimum government expected contribution.
The way you talk about his spending implies he is profligate. He is currently not given the minimum required amount that the government expects a student to need. He is telling you that when he says other parents give more

www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/university-living-costs-calculator/

Noone can force parents to pay but this is what the government expects you to pay

And ... finally .... after years of campaigning due to middle class parents short-changing their kids and whinging about how profligate they are to run up debt when they don't give them enough money ....

a change to the messaging students receive starting next year, so they can clearly show their parents that they are not expected to live off the means tested loan but their parents are supposed to top it up to the minimum amount the government thinks a student needs to survive

www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2021/11/student-living-parental-contribution-win/

You may think students need less. Perhaps you also think people on benefits need less. The government isn't renowned for being over generous in its decisions on minimum levels of finance needed to live!

I'm not sure why you've linked to the money saving expert website. I would have thought it fairly obvious from my posts that I already have child at uni so I already know exactly the amount my child receives as a loan and exactly how much the government thinks a student needs to live on.
I also know exactly what it says about topping it up and there is no requirement for parents to top it up to the equivalent of the maximum loan. That is a conversation for you and your adult child to have. Some parents may top it up to the maximum loan, some may give far more, and some far less. It is not for you, or even the government, to dictate how much financial support parents provide their adult children. If the OP is comfortable with what they provide that's the end of it.

This thread certainly shows that parents need to sit down properly and have very clear conversations with their teens who want to go to university at an early stage. Right from the point at which they start looking at where to apply to since there is a big difference in living costs in different areas. If the parents haven’t saved the circa £15k per child that is expected at incomes over £60k then the child needs to understand this very clearly since otherwise it isn’t fair on them. Not is it fair on the parent of course if they don’t have the money but the teen should know what they are getting into.

@ArcticSkewer - the government website, rather than Martin Lewis, says this

You may not get the full amount, so you may have to find other ways to fund the rest of your living costs. This could include, for example, part-time work, local authority assistance, bursaries, scholarships, or family contributions.

So, please stop telling the OP that she has to top up to the maximum amount. Her DS had more than the maximum amount of the loan in Year 1 - through a variety of sources, as envisaged by the government - and spent all of it.

He could have got a job in the summer - he didn't. He could have got a job whilst at uni - he didn't. He could have lived within the maximum loan amount in the first year - he didn't. The flaming the OP is getting ism't warranted.

You are right, there is no legal requirement. I personally think this is unfair as the student is means tested, not on their own income, but that of the family members who are means tested. I provided the link as, in fact, many posters including op, appear unaware of the minimum contribution they are supposed to be making. The calculator is very easy to use and takes into account country of origin as of course although we always assume all posters are English, the rules are different in Wales and Scotland.

As you can see from the other link, Martin Lewis' tireless campaigning on this is finally leading to changes on the website and next year on the letters to make more explicit the expectation that parents make up the difference. Thank goodness. These threads happen every single year from middle class parents who just don't understand why their child can't live on whatever they have deemed the correct amount (sometimes just the reduced student loan). The previous wording seemed to imply the student was supposed to make up the difference themselves with a part time job!

Fair enough, if you know and choose not to pay, at least have that conversation before your child starts uni. They would be better starting later and saving up, or doing a degree apprenticeship, or waiting til they are means tested on their own income. But many parents literally don't understand that they are supposed to be paying the difference as the loan is means tested and reduced based on their income.

@ArcticSkewer in response to your last post - its absolutely not about mis-understanding. The OP's son did exactly what you're suggesting - he saved up before he went!! Thats the whole point of the post ...... He had £4k of savings when he started!! If he'd have managed that and spent the maximum amount of the loan (and no more) in Year 1, he wouldn't be asking the OP to bail him out now!!

Maybe he thought he would get the same financial contribution overall from his parents that his sister got? Who knows? He made better financial choices than his sister initially, in choosing a cheaper uni at least.

His £4k covered his parents lack of adequate contribution last year and should have covered this year's lack of contribution (they are just under 2k short a year) so yes, he seems to have not saved enough, but it wasn't enough anyway to cover 3 years lack of minimum contribution. He should have saved more. Were his parents clear that they would be underpaying by almost £2k a year?

My point about the bursary is that many universities assume the government minimum is not enough, and top up by £1-5k (was a bit shocked by the Oxford figures!). So really his £4k plus loan plus inadequate parental contribution only put him on a par with everyone else at his uni on full loan plus bursary.

I do think he should get a job. I also think his parents should not call him profligate if they are not actually giving him the expected minimum contribution.

Its like banging your head against a wall!! Its really poor to keep referring to an "inadequate" contribution - as you say, the OP's contribution was about £2k below the maximum amount of the loan. The £4k he'd saved didn't need to cover all 3 years if he'd have got a job last summer. He's only at the start of Yr 2 - maybe he'll work next summer to make up more savings.

The OP has said for this year, his spending is £160 a week (not including rent and bills) which by any stretch of the imagination, is excessive.

As for bursaries - maybe thats for students who don't have parents who can provide a starter kit (bedding / pots & pans / travel expenses / the occasional shop / maybe phone contract). Most parents I know who have children at uni work on the basis that somehow or other, their child should have the maximum amount of the loan - not the maximum amount of the loan and some unknown amount that some kids get as a bursary.

Thanks @Africa2go for your comments.

@ArcticSkewer seems to be determined to find fault. My DS could not "expect" what his sister is getting because he went to uni a year before she did, and a year before we knew even which uni she would go to. We have arranged the available money in a way which gives them each the same weekly spending money.

I worked every summer when I was at uni, and in those 3 months I earned enough to pay off any overdraft and save up a bit extra for the year ahead. This year I encouraged DS to start applying for jobs before he came home, he didn't. I encouraged him to apply for jobs when he got home, he didn't. Then we arranged a job for him, at a local business run by a friend, where he could take shifts whenever he wanted. He did 3 shifts and spent the rest of the time with his girlfriend. I don't think this is ok.

As I've said, pretty much every single friend of my son is on max loan plus bursary. The parents still contribute, all of them, even the foster parents!!, to their children/foster children as well with train fare, student starter kits etc No point pretending a means tested inadequate parental contribution is somehow made up by buying some pans and a train ticket.

I am routinely a bit horrified on these threads by the middle class parents who leave their child to struggle. It's very sad when they then blame the student despite their own, yes it is, inadequate parental contribution. Be honest with them. If you are paying below the bare minimum amount the government thinks is necessary, be honest. Your contribution is inadequate.