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 :)

Dc on minimum loan. We give them our contribution termly just before student loan comes in.
They work during holidays to get a buffer

DD going in September - we had a chat last night about how to manage. She left school two years ago and lived in a shared house last year so she has some experience of managing her finances.

I'll pay for her accommodation - she will try to live on the loan. I suggested if it turned out not to be enough to come to us before getting an overdraft. Next year if she lives out I'll pay her rent subject to her choosing something averagely priced for the area.

We won't charge her rent over the summer but that's assuming she makes her best efforts to get a holiday job.

Up to her whether she gets a term time job - won't pressure her to do so. She did say she was thinking about it but we don't know what will be available - she did 18 months working at Costa so may have an advantage getting work in a cafe etc.

I'm basically trying to be as helpful as possible without giving her a blank cheque.

So we'll see how that works out. She agreed that it was fair.

@MrsAvocet My DD1 is self employed too. It’s certainly a different world. DH was self employed for 45 years. Definitely have to understand about budgeting.

I think being at uni is a time to learn but weekly isn’t practical for students with up front costs. Unless parents pay of course. Plus my DC had loans. Others have paid for everything. We didn’t.

Everyone does it differently, depending on theirs and their children's specific circumstances. There's no right and wrong with this really.

Dd gets minimum loan - it goes on rent. This year it covered rent, next year it won't so we will top her up when the rent is due - it's paid in three instalments, in line with the loan payments.

We pay for her phone, gym membership and car insurance. The phone contract is still in our name, but the others are in hers - but I just transfer those to her monthly, when the direct debits go out.

We also pay her bills when they come in and we pay a weekly amount for food/petrol/toiletries of £60. We pay weekly, because as someone above said, the terms aren't exactly three months. I don't pay her that when she's at home, although this summer I've been generous and sent her £60 towards her food when she's been away on holiday!

Dd also works term time and a different job in the holidays and she uses her earnings to pay for clothes, gigs, make up, holidays, car repairs and prescriptions. So she does have to budge a certain amount.

I don't think she'd mind at all if we sent her the food/petrol money at the beginning of term all in one go, but to be honest we can't afford to do that!

We paid a monthly allowance to our DD whilst a uni. We upped the amount in year 2 to cover household bills. Outside of this I paid phone, costs related to running a car but not petrol and paid for a couple of ball dresses in year 2/3. DD had a buffer as she worked at home in the Easter and Summer holidays.

I decided to do it weekly (which I know people will say means they cannot learn how to budget but at least it meant all 5 of them could never say they had run out of money as the next week the same would be coming in. However many parents do different things and plenty cannot afford anything and most students know some of their friends will have very little and some will be rich and hopefully are sensitive to that. [ One of my sons used to pay a boy to go to the shop for him to get food - not sure if that is being sensitive or being very generous with my money (the boy's mother didn't work at all so they had a lot less money than we did as I have always worked full time)]

Rent is payable 4 times a year which is almost covered by his maintenance loan. We pay him a set amount weekly for living costs during term time, I’m not paid monthly so it works out better for us.

@gegs73 Is is not payable when loan is due to arrive? 4 times a year is quite awkward. My DDs were both 3 times a year.

We pay DD’s (basic maintenance loan only) rent (7.5k) and she lives off her loan and her PT job. We pay for her phone, her team subs (cheer) and uniform and Chuck her the odd £20/£50 if she’s properly on the bones of her arse. She’s had to learn she can’t say yes to every single social occasion.

It is a pain! It was termly when he was in halls but now he’s private renting, it’s once in August, then September, January, then I think March for the summer term. It all works out at the end of the academic year but we end up subbing him for the extra money in August. Thankfully he goes to a uni with relatively low accommodation costs which is more or less covered by the minimum maintenance loan.