How often do you give your DC top-up money for university?

[llamalines]

If your DC don't get the full grant, how often do you give them your contribution?

Do you give them it fairly often e.g. weekly or monthly, or do you give them a larger sum and let them manage it e.g. termly or yearly?

Thanks :)

We make up the difference between what they get and the maximum, and pay a third at the beginning of each term.

We gave a termly amount to cover fees accommodation and a bit to live on. We could afford to and didn't want DD to start life with a huge student loan.

A bit to live on? Why pay fees if there’s little left to live on? These days the loans are questionable but most don’t repay them. Lower earners certainly don’t.

Monthly…once they got part time jobs!

If they weren't going to put in some effort, they weren't going to live off my effort!😆

DD'S maintenance loan just about covers her rent, and we give her £300 monthly to live on, which is what we can afford. We also pay her phone bill. She has a bursary as well, as she's doing a medical course, and will start her third year having never been in her overdraft, so it seems to be sufficient.
She's not able to work term time due to placements, but works hard in the holidays to save.

Every 4 weeks. They both liked that as felt it was easier to budget.

I knew my DC would put effort into their study. The purpose of being at uni. Plus other things they enjoyed. We didn’t expect them to work for money because finding their feet on their courses mattered to us. Our money and pleased to give it.

Termly. They both had part time jobs working about 12 hours a week. I gave them £1000 a term.

Our DS still at home so no accommodation costs. DS1 was fine with his loan until term ended as no payments over summer holiday period. So ive given him amount similar to loan until term starts again & also bought him new clothes etc for summer hols as he's with us this trip.
I do pay their phones still as on a family deal.
Both have opted to take the 12 monthly payments for coming Yr.

Ours got the minimum loan and we paid all rent, phone, bus passes etc. Then we’d occasionally ping them £100 here or there.

After outgoings DD had approx £55 per week disposable income left over from her loan. She got a part time job. We gave her nothing regularly. We did pay off her student overdraft when she finished her degree which was about £1700.

Termly….so they can budget to spend different amounts at different points of term. Some weeks are much more expensive than others. It was good for them to be able to spend extra in early weeks when joining clubs etc and then have some cheaper weeks later.

Ours was in fully catered 3 meals a day accommodation. They had £800 per term beyind that - ie £80 per week for term time. They’d earned abiut £2k in the year before uni, so had that as a buffer, but didn’t need it. By working three or four shifts in the Easter and Christmas hols at their old sixth form job, they could earn a couple of hundred quid each holiday too, without it interfering with their socialising and studying.

I generally didn’t want to be pinging extra money here and there as gifts….as although nice, I do t think it helps learn budgeting.

That said, grandparents would often bung them £100 in the holidays and if we went shopping together, I’d often buy a couple of items of clothes….but in term time, I think it helped them know where they were to be clear what they had for the term, and to know their savings were there if they really needed them. They aimed to not use them and somehow did manage.

Monthly across 10 months. July & Aug expect him to self-fund with a holiday job. Also ended up paying the deposit for year 2 and year 3 private rental. We hadn't budgeted for that to come in the first term of the first year and then the same comes around as the year 2 deposit is still being held when year 3 deposit has to be paid.

Yes. No one, including us, bunged dc extra. We spent quite a lot of time doing calcs on a reasonable budget. Paying off an overdraft having given £0 for three years seems odd. Clearly even with a job dc couldn’t manage if they had £1700 debt.

We came into some money so we offered to pay off her overdraft. If someone is in a position to finance their adult child through their further education that’s great but we weren’t in a position to. There would have been train tickets purchased and the odd £100 given when she was heading back to university but nothing as a regular income. £1700 after 3 years works out about £10 a week so she budgeted pretty well, got her degree and had a fabulous time.

Exactly this. No top ups. They had to learn to budget through the term with the loan.

We pay her rent and then I send her loan money weekly to her to live off. That’s how she likes it, she said she might overspend if she received it monthly and then have nothing towards the end of the month.

Weekly top up on monzo card, plus we had to top up their rent which was paid from our account (they paid the loan to us when it arrived)

Weekly. We pay rent, fees and phone. So weekly is just food and day to day spending . I like the idea of moving to monthly once they’ve got the hang of budgeting. They are unlikely to have any big one off spends.

I think there are big one off spends. Freshers week is expensive. In the first week or so they probably realise they need some extra stuff for their accommodation. A Ball ticket could use up the weekly budget. A train ticket could be expensive.

I think the OP meant ‘top up’ to mean the parental contribution which tops up any government loan to the maximum level, if the family dint get the maximum level. I don’t think they meant the term to mean additional extra hand outs beyind any regular parental giving. Most of us think of ‘top up’ like a top up shop - ie above and beyond the standard weekly shop, or as an occasional extra. I think OP wants to know simply the time period and regularity with which any regular parental money is given.

@DoAClassicCamel It’s a shame you didn’t pay anything if DC didn’t get max loan. Mostly parents accept their responsibilities and find the money. It’s how the system works. Even going without things. My DHs parents didn’t pay what they were assessed to give and it built up resentment in DH. When he went home he could see where the money had been spent! He worked in the holidays but his parents didn’t pull their weight financially and they only had one child. Their priority wasn’t him.

My dh has also never forgotten his parents not giving him their parental contribution, especially when he saw his older sister working full time and living at home completely free of charge until the age of 30.

My top up is the exact amount that d would get if he were on a full loan. His minimum loan is £4,700 ish per year and his accommodation is approx £7,000. He also works.

Do you have a child at university?

Presumably if you are not that rich then your child would be eligible for maximum loan anyway, so no top up money required.

Young people whose families have an income of less than £25k per year get a loan of over £10k per year.

A family income of £40k reduces that amount to about £8k per year and a family income of £60k reduces it to £5k.

That is why some of us have to give "top up money".