Weekly spending money at uni after bills/food covered?

[WombatChocolate]

DC is looking at going to a Uni where the halls are fully catered and priced 3 meals a day, 7 days a week. The rents for their halls are high, as they include 21 meals a week.

My question is, how much extra money do you think they need per week in term time?

I know they will still buy snacks and the odd extra meal, but spending in food should be pretty limited. DC isn’t a big drinker but will want to socialise and go out. Realise there will be some bigger costs at start of year for Freshers week etc. But what do you think it would be worth budgeting for them to have weekly?

I’m not so interested in where the money comes from - loans, parental contribution, them working etc. Really interested in what a student who has been fed and watered needs beyond that. Wondering about £60 per week in term time and perhaps £30 a week during hols.

Any thoughts very welcome.

Obviously I (and he) know that not everyone in the South is rich, but if you are used to paying London prices then perhaps your budget expectations are a bit different to if you're used to the cost of living in a much cheaper area of the North. Apologies if a fairly flippant comment was read as offensive. His uni friends are all from South of Birmingham so I don't think he need advising to give anyone a break.
I really don't care whether he chooses to work in term time or in holiday time. My concern (knowing him very well, and not presuming that any one else on the spectrum is necessarily the same) is that without being nudged to find a job he will quite happily spend 3 years putting it off and relying totally on us to finance him, then graduate and find it even harder to get a job than it will be anyway, because he will have no experience at all.

Difficult to say without knowing the course. At vet school I didn’t have time for a job. It wasn’t food that took much of my money (graduated in 2023) but rather other things like running a car, extracurriculars etc. I spent around £50 a week on food and about £80-100 on other things

The best way to agree on how much they need is to do a budget. If they drink obviously that will be more expensive and if he is going to be out socialising almost every night then that will cost. Books, snacks, travel. drinks, coffee, toiletries etc etc. How much does he think he can manage on?

Durham college bars are cheap (£2.50 approx a pint!) and there are many cheap or free activities and clubs. Ball tickets can be very expensive but you don't have to go to lots. I'd say if you didn't go to the one for your college you could feel left out though in first year.
There are college hardship funds to help those who cannot afford it.

Accommodation after first year is very expensive unless you move a bit of a treck away.

There are definitely some high spenders knocking around who are not living on beans on toast!

@Doraemon I agree with work but term time can be quite difficult if DC have a high uni workload. Holiday work is better. Work in his targeted employment field is even better. So be strategic.

That's not unique to Durham. Other universities will also allocate students to catered halls when they have requested self-catered. That's what happened to DS in his first year but he then decided that he liked having a meal plan so much that he opted for catered halls for his second year

Actually it works out cheaper where DS is. Catered accommodation tends to be in the less nice halls so it's cheaper all round - just over £150pw for catered in his first year vs. treating himself to premium en-suite for his final year next year which will be £200pw excluding food.

DD has had a building society account since 11 with a debit card since 11 and has been working a p/t job since she was 14 so knows the value of money and how to balance pocket money / earnings. She gets what she thinks is a generous amount of £120 a week which covers food and some social. Her halls are a hybrid set-up where she can buy credits for catered food and then also cater for herself.

She gets rent paid, college bill paid (which includes the odd formal) and a donation to the theatre which pays for tickets to see her friends in productions at the drama society plays. When she sees some going on varsity skiing trips she knows that is out of our league and doesn't even ask, when she plans trips with her friends to some cheap corner of Europe for a few days it is through paying for it through work or shaving off her allowance or a combination of both. Her father didn't go to university so would rather she had done a plumbing or other trades role and I don't disagree that she could have earned more that way, but it isn't her passion and she did get an offer from Cambridge so it is a different prospect. I try hard to make it work but so does DD, she doesn't take advantage of any contribution we make and works when she gets the opportunity.

We’re looking at Durham self catered for DS too. We’re planning on doing the same as we do for DD in York - we pay rent and she gets the minimum loan to live off: food, travel, socialising etc. it’s more than enough for her and she tends to have some left over. DS will therefore pay the catering charges from his loan (cos it’s his choice to go catered) which will leave him with about £1700 a year for discretionary spend. He also has a casual job in hospitality that he currently works at about every 3 weeks for a weekend day and can continue to do from Durham so that will give him extra if he feels he needs it

Like quite a few on here, we pay rent, food and bills and everything else comes out of the minimum student loan. I'm not sure how much that is per week.

Neither DC spent all that money, they have savings, but it meant that if they wanted to do something they could.

I had £60 pw back in 2002, same catering arrangements. I could have managed on less for sure. Had a bloody amazing time though.

@WombatChocolate Ds in his final year at Durham he was in self catered halls though.

I might have missed it but no one is saying LAUNDRY, if memory serves it was £3.70 ish for each load, usually 2 loads as one for clothes and one for bedding and towels. Tumble drying was free in first year but now is around £1.80 per load.

Everyone is different and there are lots of things to consider. Ds spends around £38 a week on food. His allowance from us is £100 per week term time only. He uses his minimum student loan to pay for his accommodation and we pay the rest. He also gets £50 a month from a grandparent. That £50 goes toward phone contract £10 a month, phone insurance (he paid for the phone itself in cash) Amazon Prime, Spotify, Netflix.

Be aware of front loading any child money because the first payment for Durham halls is 1st December! Then 1st February and 1st June. They may not handle that money well and have nothing left by the time December rolls round. This has happened on here where a student blew through thousands and thousands and expected a bail out from his parents, repeatedly.

Ds knew that we had saved up money to pay for the expected parental contribution, so in first year we topped him up to full loan, minus the accommodation cost which left £105 a week term time. It was an ongoing discussion when he started as to whether he felt like this was adequate. He has no course materials, no books to buy. He came home once a semester but not every semester as had one semester where every Friday he had a 9 hour day (8 hours of lectures/tutorials/practicals) and finished at 6pm. So no real travel expenses.

It does depend on the friends, he knows someone who is paid £1k per month for fun spends and complains it is not enough. Ds and mates all prefer a cheap night of chatting, playing guitar and bringing their own drinks than clubbing in Newcastle etc.

Ds had money left over to fund seeing mates when back home, concert tickets etc, he is pretty frugal and saves up. The money has gone into a LISA to save for a house deposit. As I said, sensible.

Thanks for that really useful example. Lots of great tips and things to consider.

I suppose we mostly do ionic our kids and if they are likely to be the big spender and boozer types and also if we are prepared to fund this stuff or leave them to fund anything beyond what we ourselves might consider more reasonable. I guess some kids turn out to be different to how parents imagined they’d be, but probably most of us have a pretty good idea by the time they are heading off to uni.

One thing I remember from a friend with a kid who was a few years older than ours, was that they phoned up in about week 3 to beg for more money. They had joined the canoe club and spent more than a grand on a canoe, which they then used twice. The parents were flabbergasted!

@WombatChocolate DC do all sorts of things when let off the leash. Our neighbour’s DD went to Cambridge and had to resit exams as she discovered the rowing club. Not a great rower but great at drinking with them. Never ever would have guessed this would happen.

Also if they run out of money they should not be bailed out. Use the cheap overdraft and grow up. Most uni accommodation is paid for in advance. Not in December. So a separate account for rent might be sensible.

Yes, am sure you’re right. I think I know my DS, but all kinds of things could be revealed (or not) once he’s out there with proper independence. In fact, I quite like the idea of ‘hidden depths’ I hadn’t spotted emerging and surprising both us and him! And I know lots of teens will make some daft choices along the way and doing that and having to deal with possible consequences is all part of it.

@WombatChocolate I think how you deal with challenges and adversary is what makes you an adult. Hopefully making sensible decisions follows. I’m always a bit wary when posters say DC don’t drink. They might not right now but university opens new doors. Our friends’ DD was perfectly fine after her shock but this was a non drinking academic child before she went to university. It’s all about doing some new things because you can but not going mad and having problems because the fun has gone too far.

I’ve always been bemused by parents thinking going to a coffee shop or having a meal out is decadent and somehow wrong. We do that at home and I was quite happy for DDs to do similar whilst at uni. Not joining in with friends and eventually not being included in social invites wasn’t appealing to my DDs. So we budgeted for reasonable entertainment. That’s why a frank discussion is best and then accept dc have to live the life they want when away.

My DC is self catered. I send them with a terms worth of basic toiletries and a big shop at the start of each term. I pay phone (£8 giff gaff) and Spotify each month, mainly because it never occurred to me to stop. I then give them a lump sum of £500 at the start of term and then a weekly £25 top up on a Friday. They do work during both term time and holidays. I don't buy clothes/trainers anymore unless Christmas or birthday presents. I don't give them any money during holidays which is when I save the £500 to give them the next term. This has worked well so far.

My DD is in fully catered halls this year. We give her £30pp and she works during holidays so that she can top this up if needed.
We also pay for her phone, transport, formal dinners and made sure she had a large stock of toiletries etc when she started, so she will be fine for those until we visit in a few weeks.

Do students buy books these days? DD1 bought quite a few books. Secondhand. I don’t think my DDs had lots of storage for big shops and chose their own shampoo and make up.

Ds has 60-70 a week self catered. I pay his phone bill and Netflix and give him an extra £50 a month for fun. If he starts running out of money I sent him extras as and when he needed it.