Cost of student accommodation, I could cry

[ElbowsUpRising]

So Dd has found out today she’s been accepted into Manchester and is looking at accommodation, of course all the stuff she likes is £260 a week. 51 week contract as well! It’s all the fancy, swish stuff though she is adamant the reason she wants the expensive stuff is because she’s prioritising her safety as she wants something close as she’s “terrified of getting raped” if she has to walk back to her digs late at night.

she won’t consider a house share, she won’t consider cheaper halls a bit further out.

so accommodation is looking at 13k a year! She will get minimum student loan so think that’s 5k.

she won’t be able to work partly due to her health- she has fibromyalgia but nowhere near bad enough for PIP. Also she will be doing architecture Masters which if anything like her undergraduate degree will be too full on to be able to work as well.

so we will need to find another 8k a year plus however much she will need per week for food, etc. I’m guessing over £50 a week. Nearer £100 a week? So another 5k. How the fuck do people find 13k a year?

im trying to impress on her the difference that cheaper accommodation will make on her (us) and she’s just going nuts and accusing me of risking her safety and putting her at risk of being raped!

Is £260 a week normal?

“We gave you your house deposit money at 18. You chose to spend it.”

Your son sounds great.

Yes she will choose to keep the lump sum and expect you both to fund her next two years. You can choose to stop this now tell her to find the accomadation out of the 20k what sounds like she thinks is that she thinks she can travel (with you paying for flights) come back after sqaundering the savings on a jolly then have two years funded completely by mum and dad. She chooses not to do what most young people do work as you keep funding her.

Well spending £1,500 is very different from all of it on rent! As she’s 24 and it’s her money, it’s her choice if and how it’s spent. Has dad saved anything for university expenses for her? At potentially £25,000 - 30,000 earnings at 27, a house, with £20,000 deposit, is some years off! (In most places with jobs in architecture). It’s probably another case of wants exceeding reality.

The obvious solution is for Op and DH to set a limit on what they will pay for rent (being realistic) and DD lives on the loan. Not many parents have to live very frugally with both earning to fund a student living at home presumably with a loan. DD is now getting minimum loan for 2 years and OP has not paid out anything in rent for 3 years undergrad, so is better off than many parents. Some of that saving could have been put aside for part 2 costs so planning is a bit awry here.

This, to some extent, is what has caused the issue. Mollycoddled at home with no financial responsibility. No Christmas present for OP is on another level though! Something is very wrong here!!

@ElbowsUpRising

Hi sorry this isn't helpful to you but I have a question as a parent to two little boys who wants to put money aside to help them in the future.

I'm curious about the ISA automatically transferring to her at 18 - did you tell her about it previously or did she get a letter or something? I have two ISAs set up - one for each of my boys - that we pay a little into monthly. I chose that like you for the higher interest rates but also as I felt it was harder for us to then take any money back from it...would you recommend another approach?

Thanks!

So I still say the right thing to do is set your budget and tell her how much you will give. Say £7k per year or whatever. Then she decides how much to spend on accomodation and how much earnings / savings she needs. It's up to her.

She got a letter at 18yo. I believe you could move it into a non child isa when they are still 17yo and avoid this happening!

I wouldn't kick yourself about saving in her name though OP, it is normal. We were positively encouraged to via Child Trust Funds.

A poster on another thread a couple of days ago reckons they will have £1m+ per child by 18, in the DC's names. They think their parenting will prevent misuse of it. We all do when DC are sweet and little, it's hard to tell which DC will have a wild phase!

The upper classes / aristocracy used to hold the ££ in trust until 25/30, for good reason, they had experienced generations of handing down large amounts of cash, but it's unusual for parents of our generation to have experienced receiving large sums, I know my own parents simply weren't able to save on my behalf in the way we did for DC. It's a learning curve for this generation!

Junior isa’s automatically pass onto the child at 18 the provider/ bank would send them a letter. Potentially if this to be used towards future house you could encourage 18 year old to then drip feed into a LISA assuming that product is still available. As long as you instill good financial education most parents are ok with the risk. I think the problem OP here is facing is that because her daughter knows her parents are well off she has less incentive to use her own funds doesn’t see any sacrifice parents have made to save if for her.

Thank you for replying, obviously I would hope not to be in a similar situation but it's good to think about now!

Thanks for the advice, I think everyone hopes they would instill this kind of awareness but it's hard to know until it happens...I'm sure the OP didn't think this would be in their future. I'm happy to save for my boys future but I want it to be used somewhat sensibly.

For balance I was given a similar sum as OPs daughter for university from my grandparents. I was lucky enough not to need it for university as I got a full nursery and worked for expenses alongside my course. I used it to invest in a car for when I moved home for a post-grad and the rest I did use for travel but I was not expecting my parents to pay rent for me so I could do that.

There are savings for DC where parents retain some control. Many standard products are not set up like this.

I think the cost of student rents these days are way above what they were when parents studied. The loans don’t go very far! Often 50% of rent.

But the DD is using the £20K to go travelling and not to work. Then expects parents to gift her another £13K for top of the range accommodation. OP was willing to pay for mid-range accommodation but the DD screamed at her instead.

Not anymore…until this year you could open adult ISAs at 16, but they changed it to 18. I’m not sure what the solution would be now…

Why can’t she get a non architecture related job until September instead of travelling all year? She says she doesn’t want to mess an employer about but she could temp in an office or work in a cafe of something? I’m just so shocked at this mentality 😂

You can’t move it into a different name before they’re 18. The money is theirs. This would be theft.

Not sure all £20,000 is being spent on travelling. So is what’s left for a deposit or not? Not that it’s going to be enough!! Depends if everyone wants savings to go in rent. Of course she could work, but she’s not going to.

Tell her to pay the difference out of the £20k. Surely you are not letting her just have the money, spend the money and get more out of you.
oh please stop. If you are being bullied by everyone maybe you need to look at your facilitating of this.
stop being a walkover. If she cuts you off chances are she would face anyway over something else

just give her a budget and tell her anything above that is her responsibility. If she runs out of money then that will also be her problem. Don’t end up paying the debt if she can’t cover the rent

No, you can't do this. Everything in the child ISA or ctf ISA goes to the child. It would be fraud to try to divert the funds to anyone else.
I think this is to stop canny parents from using a child's ISA as a tax-free wrapper for their own money

I hope I’m reading this wrong but when OP says she says she expects us to pay for all the accommodation upfront is she planning to go travelling until September potentially spending unknown amounts from her 20k, then be at uni using the 5k loan for living expenses then ask op for another years accomadation upfront for 2nd year of masters then when uni ends as she’s spent the house deposit so then ask for more help or move back in with parents at 27. OP hasn’t really said what her DH thinks about all this beyond he might pay not sure how much he has in the bank…A lot of accommodation with students asks for parental guarantees therefore if she runs up debts potentially parents would be liable again. Alarm bells are sounding regarding the potential for future financial abuse.

Sorry, but you need to learn to say no.

she worked full time for a year and paid no board. Where did all that money go? If she has none now, she can’t afford to go travelling. It’s that simple. If she wants ‘better’ accommodation, she can get a summer job and earn the money to pay for it.

If she spends all her ‘nest egg’ then that’s her decision. When will you ever let her learn what consequences are? She’s 24 FFS.

completely true, some (perfectly nice to talk to) in my DD's accomm never cleaned anything, DD had to clean shower to avoid being disgusted, and they compressed the stuff in the kitchen bin for weeks to the point where it was swarming with flies and maggots and weighed about 20kg. Also used her pans, plates and cups when their own were dirty. I assume they had servants back home, given their parents are paying about £50k a year to study here

@NeshButUpNorth Sounds like the shared house DH had with other professionals in his first job. All white British males. Their parents would have been horrified. One repaired his motorbike in the lounge. It’s all walks of life who are messy, including working class, middle class and rich people. It’s just what people do when no one is correcting them. It’s bizarre though!!

In her first year DD was in a flat where almost everyone was an international student from the Far East. I nearly threw up at the state of the kitchen when I dropped her back after the Christmas holidays. Plates of food dumped in the sink, egg shells just dropped on the floor next to the bin rather than in it. Utterly vile.

Son went back after Christmas so nearly three weeks at home. The international students who had stayed had eaten a lot of takeaways as well as using everything in the kitchen. They'd thrown the cartons in the direction of the bins. There was a massive heap crawling with maggots . He and another student just phoned housekeeping. He rexkoned they had staff at home who cleaned up after them.

Friend with an Airbnb found a similar mess when her overseas visitors departed. She photographed everything, sent to Airbnb who fined them steeply. They paid instantly.