Reducing money for DD at uni

[Lana26]

DD is in her first year at uni. She’s only been there a month. We set a budget but I felt it was a bit low so against my DH wishes added an extra 100 a month.
since she’s been there all she has done is go out and get drunk. Keeps regaling us of stories of getting thrown out of nightclubs etc. I suppose she has only been there a month or so but there has been no mention of studying.
it’s costing so much money and I feel like I’m at home pinching my finance and she’s having the time of her life. Has anyone else dropped their child’s money. She has all her accommodation paid for plus 25 a week for food and her phone bill paid for. I think she should get a job as she’s only at college three days a week and this gives her loads of spare time which just seems to be spent drunk!

This is what we do.

The student accommodation is £8800 a year, we pay this in full, DD then gets the £4700 loan paid into her student bank account and pays for everything she wants and needs from this, materials she needs to buy, food, washing, clubs/student union and socialising. This works out to around £90 per week. £25 a week sounds far too tight to be getting drunk so often.

She has some savings too which she earned by working during sixth form but she hasn't needed to touch that so far. She also applying for Christmas jobs.

@Johaanah we are lucky DD’s rent is only £6000 so are paying that and she lives on £4700. I thought that was generous for food and socialising - uni year is short. We pay phone and contact lenses on top.
I’d stop cash top up and just continue to pay her rent.

Not fair to resent her for a choice your dh made. Talk to him about what is affordable, give her fair warning of any change, and give what you can afford with no strings. Remember this is her brief period of minimal responsibilities. It's good she tells you. And it will settle down.

Are you saying she has £180 per week for food an entertainment? That seems like quite a bit; no wonder she is wasting so much money in alcohol

If you are paying for halls and she is keeping all of the Maintenance Loan then she should have more than enough money for food and socialising phone clubs and societies etc etc . You definitely don’t need to pay her phone and food money on top of this. If she can’t manage she needs a lesson on budgeting, shopping, meal planning and cooking from scratch.

We made it perfectly clear to our ds before he went to uni that we would cover food and living expenses (his loan covers his rent) but beer money was on him. He has £300 a month from us, worked and saved all summer and now has a part time job which will keep him topped up.
I don't think you can really reduce £25 a week - that will barely cover her food and transport - but she could definitely get a job to cover her socialising. Maybe go easy on her in terms of criticising her going out though - this is the time she will be making friends and I can clearly remember being pretty much constantly drunk for those first few weeks!

It sounds like Op is paying all the rent though.
She’ll have far more disposable cash than most students.
Eg max loan £10,300. If yp paying £7500 rent they have £2800 to live on a year.
If min loan and mum/dad pays their rent they have £4700 to live on.
With top up from op she’s got around £5000 to live on a year, nearly double what some students have.

Her rent is paid? So she should have loan?

Mine have approx £100 a week to live on after halls bill (yr1) or £80 pw after rent + utilities (yr2 onwards). That comes from min loan and us topping up to max loan. I don't question what they spend it on. It's their money and their choice

We pay phone contacts, medicine and dentristry, plus a few shops and some treats/gifts in addition. And, of course, fully support them outside of term time.

They're both at Southern Unis (but not in any of the uber expensive cities)

Totally agree.

I skipped from the OP to the end. I admit I'm cross that DS2 graduated uni this summer with £3000 in his a/c. We've been subsidising him to the tune of £40 a week after us paying his accommodation, and him having a loan (in London).

I'd always told them I wasn't going to see them struggle but also I didn't expect them to profit from me...

Be proud, he's obviously got a good business head on him... 😆

My yp's maintenance loan covers her rent. We give her £30-40 a week for food. She has been given a £2000 award from the uni. Anything else she wants to find she pays for herself. She has a job at home who happily give her shifts when she needs them (she's coming home in two weeks to work two shifts). She always knew if she went to uni she would have to work to help support herself.

Forgot to add we will cover opticians and dentist costs until she graduates. We also expect her to take her degree seriously, I'm all for going out and socialising and happy to see her do so but she is there to study. Thankfully she's very self motivated (and better with money then I ever was).

£50 a week isn’t much for food transport etc. I imagine she’s using a student overdraft or will do if you cut her money further.
You’re unrealistic to think that student life doesn’t involve socialising - she’ll perhaps keep you in the dark from now on if you tell her you’re cutting her down to £25 per week!
Are you sure you’re giving her the recommended sum for your income? She can look for work and also apply for the Uni hardship fund - they would expect you to share your family finances before giving her a grant.

My son is only 14, so no where near the stage for Uni. My husband and I have discussed this already and we have said we'll help out a little - food, phone etc. However, if he wants 'going out money', he will need to fund this himself, by getting himself a job. By all means help a little, but if you start handing it all to them on a plate, they'll take without really learning any life skills, like budgeting!!

This is fine as long as you take into account that it will probably mean at least a year out working and saving before he goes. The jobs simply aren't that readily available. If your child gets the minimum maintenance loan thats £4700 per annum. Out of that they need to pay rent generally circa £7k at a minimum plus weekly living costs - circa £120 a week for 31 weeks.

So you're looking at costs of £11,000ish per annum and the loans only £4700 leaving a shortfall of £6,300 per year. So your child would need that saved before they go. The system expects parental contribution. It's literally designed around the parental contribution being in place.

The world has changed and it isn't easy to get part time jobs anymore. Most university towns will have between 12,000 and 20,000 students term time only. There clearly aren't that many bar jobs. DS1 even struggled to get work over the long summer holidays because they don't want the hassle of training someone up who will only be around for a couple of months. Supermarkets etc didn't want to know.

Main issue is gap between loan and rent costs. Lots of parents naively assume loan will cover rent. Yes some places more affordable than others but often it’s a take what allocated especially if clearing or insurance. My DD’s friend is paying £9,900 in a northern uni owned halls all the cheaper places gone. She’s on min loan. So she needs £5200 to make her rent. She did work pt all through sixth form and summer same as my dc but only got 1 or 2 shifts a week as it’s zero hours. Then they need to pay deposit yr 2 accommodation and often 51 week rent.
It’s far more that just needing going out money.

The system expects parental contribution. It's literally designed around the parental contribution being in place.

This. If you earn enough to get them only the minimum loan, you’re expected to give them the value of the loan again to top it up to the maximum loan (which is what lots of their mates will be on).

If you’re going to give them nothing, your child will be getting a job in a bar trying to earn enough pay for their accommodation and food, not their drinks! Would you really expect them to work in a job and earn £4-6000 a year? Or take a year out and save £12-18000 in that one year?!

My husband and I have discussed this already and we have said we'll help out a little - food, phone etc. However, if he wants 'going out money', he will need to fund this himself,

What about when their maintenance loan doesn’t even cover accommodation, let alone bills or food?

I think some parents are going to find Uni very different now from when they were there 30 years ago. DD gets minimum loan so we pay her rent (8000 a year) and help out with anything else if need be. Jobs in some student cities are really hard to come by. The hours don't always align with studying days, and there literally aren't enough jobs to go around. Also, a lot expect students to work Christmas/Easter when they might not be there because they've gone home for the holidays.

Completely agree!

Paying the rent all summer on an empty house (well, two houses, for two kids) was so painful as well-people forget about that one as well!

Paying the rent all summer on an empty house (well, two houses, for two kids) was so painful as well-people forget about that one as well!

Yes that's quite frustrating as well!! Over this summer DD was coming and going between home and student house visiting friends so luckily didn't feel so much like dead money!

Yes it’s naive when people come in and compare things to their own experience 25-30 years ago. It’s now an extremely expensive private education they are purchasing and if they also choose to live away from home (which most do) then this costs a significant amount of money,

Definitely-I started university 30 years ago and still got part of a grant! No tuition fees, no maintenance loan-happy days.

I don’t think that it’s made clear at all by the government that if parents earn over a certain amount (I forget what it is), they are expected to top their child’s minimum loan up to the maximum loan amount.

It doesn’t help when you get parents on here saying, ‘well, I didn’t give my child a penny when they went to uni and they were fine-they got a job to pay for their beer’ when you find out their income meant their child qualified for the maximum loan! No wonder they didn’t need the extra money!