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 :)

@WombatChocolate Min loan this year is about £4.7k for 52 weeks - around £90/week. That's not a huge amount for food, toiletries, travel, utility bills (many 2nd year+ house rents do not include bills), course equipment, medical costs (most students in England don't qualify for free prescriptions, dental treatment optician/glasses), social life (not just drinking but uni club memberships, gym membership, the odd coffee etc).

@WombatChocolate you can't choose to take the maximum maintenance loan. The amount of loan a student receives is dependent on the total income of their household. The total household income has to below £25k in England to qualify for the maximum. If the household income exceeds £63k, they get the minimum.

I do believe that parents should make up the loan to the maximum amount as a minimum
That is the way the system is designed

termly, so that DC has to learn to budget rather than spend it all at once

Looking at the 2023/24 figures our DD would get £7125.
If she was going to university now we could afford to give her the £237 a month difference or about £200 but when she was at university in 2018 we just couldn’t afford it as we were still paying our mortgage, which wasn’t huge but our outgoings were different to now and we budgeted accordingly. You can’t give them what you don’t have.

Genuinely interested -term time is only 31 weeks for both my DC so it's seems artificial to divide the loan by 52 weeks? For 20+ weeks, they are likely to be at home when they (presumably) won't be paying bills / food etc. If they choose to stay in their uni city that's likely to be due to work so will be earning?

Sorry @Seeline, that was the wrong quote, I was interested in your earlier post when you say the minimum loan is £90 per week over 52 weeks

We assumed loan was term time in y1 as halls contract was 42 weeks from memory. After that her rent was 50 weeks I think (or 52) so money was needed for that. It’s not just about teaching weeks.

Private rentals are usually for 52 weeks. The bills need paying even if not there - standing charges etc. Hopefully students can get a job, but it's nowhere near as easy as it used to be. The 'spare' shifts that students used to do are often taken by the 'regular' employees.
They don't need as much if at home, but that then gives them a bit extra to cover tickets home or the occasional bug spend like a ticket for a club ball, or maybe a concert.
Mine have found it much easier to budget on a 52 week basis.

Monthly

I work on my dc having money from us from mid-Sept until end of June.

31 weeks seems a very, very short course. 'Typical' halls are paid for 44 weeks.
Yes, Oxbridge are renowned for having 10 week terms, but overwhelmingly terms are a lot longer. Even longer for nurses and some other HCP training courses.

Then, from 1st July at end of first year, until end of Sept when Yr2 loan comes in, the majority of students have to start paying for their accommodation in their shared house. Those bills paid in shared housing (utilities, internet and so forth) still need to be paid over Christmas and Easter.
Plus travel costs to get home at the end of term and back to University in the holidays can be extortionate for some.

@NewName24 Oxford has 8 week terms actually - 31 weeks for actual teaching weeks at non Oxbridge unis is quite standard. Both my DC - just finished 1st year in separate unis - were in halls on a 39 week contracts but obviously that includes 4 weeks at Christmas and 4 weeks at Easter.

They're both on 52 week contracts for private housing for 2nd year (with contracts starting on 1st July) even though neither of them will move in until the end of September.

We pay Dc's Uni rent for 48 weeks and give them £200 a month whilst at Uni. They work in the holidays and draw down a further £250 a month from these savings to avoid taking maintenance loans.

We give an allowance on 1st and 15th of each month. Helps him manage it a bit better.

I did weekly, on a Monday.

Why cannot dc manage monthly? They would have to if working. Weekly just gives problems if they need sports club membership or have a bill to pay. It’s a bit like giving a child pocket money and not ensuring they become an adult. They should be allowed to make mistakes with money. It’s how you learn!

Where I work the majority of the workforce are paid weekly. Not everyone is paid monthly.

Being paid weekly for a student means they can be sure they can do their weekly food shop.

Most graduates would be monthly. Dave’s payroll admin for a start. Manual jobs might be weekly but not in most work places for grad type work. Assuming DC is aiming for this of course. If going to your workplace and aiming for weekly pay, just carry on as weekly. For most students it would be a pain.

My son aims to work in the performing arts industry (he already does to be honest it's a struggle to keep him in uni because he has so much work). The norm there i to be paid at the end of each week unless it is a fixed term contract of say, 2-3 weeks.

What student cannot do a weekly food shop when given money monthly? They really do need to learn to manage without parental cords being pulled. Let them learn and if it’s beans on toast because they have boozed the money away, or paid sports fees, so be it. You can spend weekly money on day 1 if you are an idiot. It’s infantalizing adults in my view. Let them make mistakes and learn.

Most grads are not performing arts or doing manual work. Performing arts can have months between earning! Frequently from what I’ve seen.

I tend to agree @TizerorFizz
Of course not everyone gets paid monthly but it's the most likely interval for the majority of graduates and that did colour my decision to pay my DC monthly at University.
As it happens, the only one who has graduated so far isn't being paid monthly as she lost her job during Covid, less than a year after graduation, so she set her own business up. She could advise me on budgeting now no doubt as she is dealing with big peaks and troughs in income and managing more complex financial issues than I as a life long salaried employee ever have. So not what we expected and tried to prepare her for at all, but I still think that managing a monthly budget as a student was a good foundation.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it is wrong to do things differently but a monthly income seems the most logical choice for most people and I'd expect most students to be able to budget for a month, certainly by the time they graduate.

The replies on here are a little OTT. There is no right or wrong way, there is no 'treating students as children' if you choose to pay one way or the other, its just a matter of preference.

We contribute term time only. That doesn't lend itself very well to monthly payments - a term is never exactly 3 months etc so its easier for me to pay weekly - that way I'm paying a set amount each week, don't have the faff of working out what a pro-rate payment should be if they're only there for part of the month. One DC also had a meal plan via uni for the past year which was £25 per week for lunches (which she used for general food shopping) so it made sense to manage other finances weekly.

They always start term with a "buffer" of their own savings so there is no issue with paying for more expensive things at the beginning of term. I think understanding what expenses you have for a term and then managing that - whether you're paid termly / monthly / weekly is essentially the same exercise.

I understand people have a preference as to how it works for their children / family - if another family has a different system, there is no need to be critical of that.

Most graduates would be monthly

But they are 3 or 4 years off being graduates.
Some people are great with money, others less so. that's not always to do with their upbringing - I have both sorts, with the same upbringing.

Why does it bother you that some people need more support with some aspects of their lives than others ?

@DoAClassicCamel - don't let old Tizz get to you. She haunts MN - especially this board - telling us how much money she has and how much her graduate DD earns. We're all randoms on the Internet so who knows if it's truth or fiction. What's not on is trying to make another parent feel bad about their parenting when they were doing their best.

Well done to your DD and how nice that you were able to pay off her overdraft at graduation.