DS gets £150 per week but runs out of money

[Laundryandtoil]

DS is a fresher in Cardiff (we are England). He gets the minimum maintenance loan which we top up so that he can pay for his halls accommodation. We then send him £150 a week, every Monday. I thought this was ample but he rang yesterday saying all his friends were going out to lunch and he had run out of money so could I transfer an extra £20 so he could join them. I did but was a bit surprised as I thought £150 a week would be plenty?

Sit down and do a budget plan with him.

i would pay accommodation separately and upfront for the term.

i think this once forgive him but make it clear any further requests will be taken out of next weeks allowance.

if his course allows it suggest get gets a job - as much to occupy him build resilience and reliability, as well as income.

The meals cost at least £15 each day in DC's college. Travel, text book etc., not unusual if DC spent more than £150 some weeks. Don't forget the recent year's inflation almost eats up everything.

Exactly @Topseyt123, I've known loads of Uni students, and apart from one (who was bank rolled into a property by parents) they've all gone home for some time after Uni

Yes of course they do more than contact hours. Thing is contact hours are so minimal no one is doing 9am til 7pm mon to Fri, so add in self study they are still more then able to work part time. Ours are topped up by us but also work. I'd be a bit disappointed to have adult kids at uni who had no idea or experience of work. It is part of life and a good work ethic is a life skill.

Do some wait until 22 before experiencing any kind of employment? Yes hopefully they will get a good full time job with their degree but that isn't a given, having had previous work experience that will always be a good thing.

@Gloriia My DD did a bit of work over the summer. Don’t see what’s wrong with that? Not that many high paid lawyers worked at uni - usually the degrees are too important and some unis don’t like it. Horses for courses. Legal employers don’t seem to worry about low paid work at uni. They are more interested in if you are going to have the brains and aptitude to be a solicitor or barrister. Anyone wanting these careers needs to be more nuanced in putting together their cv. Uni work is not vital. Getting knowledge of our legal system, debating and applying for internships and mini pupillages matters far more. Plus holding some office of responsibility and being a confident interesting person.

@Gloriia Of course some dc should work in the holidays or volunteer, as mine did. Yes, some do nothing at all and they might well struggle to get a job post degree. The OPs DS wants law and that’s different. He’s not Oxbridge so he needs to tick academic boxes plus a cv that’s spot on for law and an ability to pass selection tests either to be a solicitor or barrister. It’s hugely competitive and working at Costa won’t help. Working for money is one discipline but juggling other activities with your degree is also very useful and shows leadership, charisma and an ability to multi task.

I agree with Taylor on this. My son is not doing MFL but is doing history and he is in the library / reading pretty much when he is not in lectures.

He is dyslexic on top so it takes him longer to process than others. He is very lucky that we are able to financially support him. I am not keen on him taking on a job as he is pay a lot for his degree and I want him to treat that as full time.

He can work in the summer.

Working at Costa? You sound like you are looking down your nose a bit there.

Working provides important life skills. Time management, resilience, multitasking, interpersonal skills, organisation, planning. Not staying in bed until lunch time to attend one lecture then do 2hrs online study.

One of ours is studying an academically difficult course, not for an 'easy' degree. Manages perfectly well to attend lectures, seminars, plenty of self study even work experience at a an associated firm. Still holds down a few hours a week work too. They love it but they are very motivated and switched on. It isn't for everyone I agree, some possibly couldn't cope yet all our dc's friends do indeed work too. Think it's maybe a parental thing, some encourage their dc to be very proactive and work towards self sufficiency.

With our contribution too they have a fair amount saved so will be a position to buy a house once graduating and finding full-time employment.

@Gloriia no one is looking down their nose at costa. Time management skills etc can also be learnt by managing study, taking leadership roles in sport or other societies etc. Or by work experience at a firm that’s in the target job area, which may be unpaid if that’s manageable financially.

If anyone is looking askance at other people’s decisions, I think it is you.

@IceCreamCookies

Time to start parenting and give him a dose of reality

whose reality though?!

most parents are funding their DC to maintain a standard of living akin to the one that they’re used to. Which seems reasonable.

I want DCs to budget appropriately but that doesn’t mean they need to live on a diet of value bread, waterey tomatoes and cheap tinned fish.

'Time management skills etc can also be learnt by managing study, taking leadership roles in sport or other societies etc. Or by work experience at a firm that’s in the target job area'

Yes we agree work experience is very important. Great if it is their target job area but not imperative. So many skills are transferable and many future employers would be impressed by a student who has shown initiative and determination to widen their knowledge base. Not sure if playing sport is as important CV wise but ours manage that too.

You've misread my post.

We give her £120 per month (not week)

She's very lucky with the job she found - an independent successful small business which pays above the new national living wage to ALL their staff regardless of age. She's in her final year and will have to give up the job after Christmas as uni work will be full on but she's saved hard so has funds to see her through to the summer. This was all planned from day one as she knew £120 p/m was our absolute max on top of other expenditure.

But yes, she's better off than many people, however she's made that happen. A good worker, has always worked since she was 16, which made it easier to find jobs at uni as she had a CV with real experience on it.

My daughter is in her third year at Cardiff University, studying a STEM subject. Her degree is definitely not part-time!

I didn't go 'out to lunch' unless it was a sandwich from student canteen for £2.50 when I was a student - I think you need to tell him not again and he has to budget and decide whether he wants booze or meals out

My DS has about £100 pw to live on. He reckons £8 gym, £40 food, £52 left to cover going out, haircut etc

There will be some with more money, there will be some with less. They need to grow up and not try to keep up with the ones with more. Yes it’s only £20, but if that’s a splurge/ more than he has then it needs to be budgeted for.

No, I don't mean part time but even serious academic degrees are not mon to Fri 9 til 7pm. Take into account self study, library etc there is still plenty of downtime.

Each to their own I just firmly believe gaining vital employment skills and experience that allows saving for deposits can certainly occur simultaneously whilst studying for a degree.

Dd is going to uni next year and I was planning on making sure she has £100 a week after rent. Which to me seems enough 🤷‍♀️. I have warned her she’ll have to cut her cloth accordingly though, shop in Aldi not Waitrose, etc.

It isn’t quite a simple as that. Labs, seminars, lectures, tutorials, whatever, can be spread throughout the day between 9am and 7pm. A student might have a lecture at 9, a four hour lab starting at 10 and another lecture at 6pm. The day is fragmented which makes fitting in work during the week awkward unless the employer is very flexible. Supermarkets, for example.

My son has found that. he has nothing on a Friday all day then a class late afternoon which is a bit of a pain. On a Wednesday he has a 1:1 session right in the middle of the day!

Despite having worked full time in a coffee shop chain for the last 7 months dd has still not found a job because everywhere wants a particular day in the week where she is not available due to lectures.

I am responding based on what the OPs DS wants as a career. The legal world simply doesn’t select on what student job you did. The DS is also at Cardiff and not Oxbridge. That’s his first major hurdle and he will need to do very well to get a sniff of a decent legal career. Spending time working whilst at uni is probably not great use of his time. For example, leadership skills would be better. That shows commitment, getting on with others and a high level of organisational skills. Use the holidays wisely and know what you need for this career. Deadlines loom and he might need a job well in advance to get the GDL paid for. Thinking a little job at uni will get him through the selection tests where thousands apply is wishful thinking.

Doing a job where previous experience of work matters would be different. His current career choice doesn’t. It would be far more useful to get some law office experience in the vacations and see what he could do for the CAB.

My DD had some lectures at 9 am. She didn’t lie around until lunchtime.

I agree with @TizerorFizz - we recently interviewed for a role which included recent grads in the candidate mix, and I asked them about the internships and university projects and relevant voluntary/unpaid work they had done (we are in financial services - one candidate told us about his blog on stockpicking, for example). I don’t think any of them wrote down a term time/holiday job done for £ on their CV, though I’m sure some of them did these.

'The legal world simply doesn’t select on what student job you did'

Sorry you misunderstand. I'm not suggesting working 15hrs a week would give a student an advantage CV wise I'm merely stating it is possible to do all the uni stuff, all the extra curricular stuff, maybe a blog too, maybe captain a sports team and be proactive work wise. Not full-time, no.15hrs a week is all that is needed to give them a leg up saving wise.

Having said said it wouldnt give them an advantage per se CV wise, if I were interviewing post grads if be very interested in the ones who were extra motivated who used their initiative workwise and took every opportunity to develop skills related to the workplace.

I'd much rather ours had lump sums saved for their future as well as getting a decent post grad job.

They do hone skills for the workplace. Just not in the way you think @Gloriia . There’s more to get on a cv than low level work. This is rarely targeted work for a law career. Why does it have to be only paid work that counts for you? What about everything else as has been explained? Oxbridge students are not meant to work at jobs at all so would you exclude them? Unfortunately for the DC in this thread, Oxbridge grads rise to the top more than others in law and mostly they will not have had term time jobs. Short terms, high pressure workload and a decent brain seem to be more important.

I never understand why anyone employing people doesn’t have reasonable attributes and skills listed for potential employees and understand they can be acquired in a variety of ways. Not just the way they personally approve of. Turning down first class people because of prejudice is not acceptable.

'There’s more to get on a cv than low level work. This is rarely targeted work for a law career. Why does it have to be only paid work that counts for you'

Low level work?

It isn't only paid work that counts for me, voluntary work great but paid work is more useful to students struggling to get by.

This thread is about a student not managing on his parental contribution. I am merely pointing out that many/most have part time hours too. It then went off on a tangent about how they have uni commitments 24/7, blogs to write and teams to captain etc. Ime they have plenty of downtime to also work. I'd be disappointed and embarrassed if ours didn't have any paid hours to save up and have a lump sum for their future to add to our financial support too.

exactly even if he IS feeding his friend too, that should still more than cover it, if they meal plan, batch cook etc. rather than just live off takeaways and ready meals.